The Russell Brand Sexual Abuse Allegations

In case you hadn’t noticed, comedian turned social commentator Russell Brand has been hit with a string of sexual abuse allegations dating back a decade and more.

A Channel 4 documentary interviewed five women who claimed to have been sexually abused by Brand, four of them anonymous. The Sunday Times has published a parallel report. Currently, Brand has over 1.3 million subscribers on Rumble and 6.6 million on YouTube.

Before examining the allegations it is best to remind the reader exactly who and what Brand is. He is currently 48 years old and began his career as a teenage actor. He studied at the Italia Conti whose distinguished alumni include the theatrical giant Noël Coward. He made his TV debut in 1994 appearing in a short-lived series called Mud and making a single appearance in the popular crime soap The Bill.

From acting he moved into comedy including presenting. His brand of comedy might best be described as gross, leaning heavily on sex and innuendo. Sadly, many people of his generation find this reverting to the lowest common denominator appealing. Brand claims, or claimed, to be a sex addict and to have a serious drug problem. The former is confirmed by his being awarded the title “Shagger Of The Year”; he has been quite open about the latter and to his credit has done much to raise both awareness and funds for people who suffer from the same problems.

One of the many low points in his early career, and a truly disgusting one, was a so-called prank call he and his chum Jonathan Ross made in 2008 to the actor Andrew Sachs, now deceased. Sachs was the grandfather of the actress Georgina Baillie. Brand had had sex with her, and this phone call relayed that information to Sachs, although a stronger word than sex was used. The broadcasting of this call led to a deluge of complaints.

In spite of his at times gross behaviour and substance issues, Hollywood called and Brand answered. He was a success, and in 2010 married singer-songwriter Katy Perry, who was quite a catch. The marriage didn’t last, which is nothing unusual for two people in such peripatetic professions. It is notable though that whatever differences they may have had, Perry has not accused Brand of either sexual or physical abuse.

In 2017, Brand married his second wife, Laura Gallacher, who might be described as a minor celebrity. They had actually dated briefly in 2007 when she was still a teenager. They resumed their relationship in 2015 and their first daughter was born in November 2016. If Brand were the monster he is currently being made out to be, she would surely have given him a miss the second time around. Now to the allegations.

The Dispatches documentary will be on the Channel 4 website for a month, but edits if not the entire thing will surely find their way onto sundry video sites. It is called Russell Brand: In Plain Site. This is a common theme with these kinds of allegations, a dangerous sexual predator is said to be hiding in plain site because nobody sees anything. The obvious reason nobody sees anything is because there is nothing to see. Donald Trump was alleged to have sexually violated a woman in an expensive department store at a time when he was one of the most famous men in New York and under CCTV cameras with other customers a few feet away, yet nobody saw anything.

The list of male celebrities accused of sexually abusing women is impressive, but the vast majority of these allegations are not impressive because they are made months, years, decades later when an accuser may describe an imaginary assault with a wealth of detail while all an innocent man can say is it never happened, or she consented.

Indeed, there are hints of this in the documentary. One of the people interviewed here is Helen Berger, who was briefly Brand’s PA. She said women would send him intimate photographs. With some celebrities, it isn’t only the photographs that are intimate. Although they are somewhat out of fashion now, rock groupies were a real thing. In 1973, Grand Funk wrote a song about them: “Sweet Sweet Connie was doing her act” is a bland reference to something sexual. Frank Zappa was anything but discreet with his references to groupies on his classic triple album Joe’s Garage.

Brand was said to have had an endless stream of women walking into his bedroom. For this he has been accused of using women or degrading them, but these were clearly two way transactions. Brand may have been able to boast that he’d had sex with Georgina Baillie, but many women can boast they had sex with Russell Brand. Those who consider it something to boast about. This may be a bitter pill for some people to swallow, but women who have no self-respect deserve none from men.

One of Brand’s accusers said their relationship began when he was 31 and she was 16. She says she was groomed. The age of consent in England is 16, so in law she was a consenting adult.

One, and only one of his accusers claimed she had reported an actual rape at the time, not to the police but to a rape crisis centre, although she didn’t use those precise words. If this were indeed the case then there would be a contemporaneous record. If and when such a record materialises it can be evaluated, first by forensics to confirm it really is contemporaneous. In that connection, at least two YouTubers claim an exchange of text messages between Brand and one of his alleged victims has been doctored. By the same token, Brand claims to have exculpatory evidence in his possession. A decade ago, Jian Ghomeshi was the victim of serial false allegations but was acquitted when he produced in court, documentation from years before which exposed his accusers as liars. It is possible we may see something similar with Brand should the police on either side of the Atlantic undertake a full investigation.

Finally, many people have suggested Brand has been so targeted because of the content of his podcasts. This may be true but the mainstream media has never needed any prompting to pour vitriol on powerful politicians or even mere celebrities. Neither have scorned women.