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Russell Brand was a ‘sexual predator’, prosecution alleges as rape trial begins

wiredgorilla — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 16:22:28 +0000

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Helena Wilkinson and Sima KotechaSouthwark Crown Court

14 October 2026, 14:42 BST

Updated 37 minutes ago

Russell Brand was described as “ruthless” and a “sexual predator” by the prosecution at the start of his trial for rape and sexual assault on Wednesday.

The 51-year-old actor and comedian faces three counts of rape, three charges of sexual assault and one of indecent assault.

The allegations, made by six female complainants, span a 10-year period between 1999 and 2009. He denies the charges.

Riel Karmy-Jones KC, for the prosecution, told Southwark Crown Court in London the women “did not know each other”, “have never met each other” and “came forward independently of each other”.

Warning – this report contains graphic content

Julia Quenzler/BBC

The barrister said: “The circumstances of the offending were as wide and as varied as the defendant’s career.”

She said that “regardless of who the women were and what they said or did, Brand was not deterred”.

“His desire, strong desire, for some form of sexual contact was indiscriminate and voracious,” she told the court.

The prosecutor told jurors that Brand would be “nice when he wanted to be, funny – undoubtedly – charming, likeable even, when he wanted something in return”.

But she said he would also be “demanding, entitled, a flirt with a huge sexual appetite – childlike in his expectation that his every desire should be met”.

The prosecutor said Brand would “appear indifferent, normal and untroubled by what had just occurred” after the encounters.

She added that “sometimes he would leave promptly after the incident, sometimes making an excuse to get away, or sometimes simply continuing as though nothing wrong had happened”.

Reuters

On Wednesday, the jury heard details of the alleged offences.

The first complainant says she met Brand before he was famous in 1999, the jury was told.

She had attended the Labour Party conference and went to a fringe event where she spoke to Brand. He later allegedly raped her.

The prosecution said when Brand was questioned by police about this allegation of rape, “he said if it happened, he didn’t remember the incident”.

He added that he did not remember the first complainant’s name and that he “had never engaged in non-consensual activity”.

The second complainant worked for MTV at the time when she says Brand indecently assaulted her.

She said Brand asked her where the toilets were and the woman offered to show him.

When they reached the toilets, prosecutors say, Brand asked the woman to “come in” before grabbing her forearm.

She resisted by struggling and pulling back. He had what she described as a desperate, wild-eyed look on his face, as he said: “Please please come in – oh go on.”

The third complainant says Brand orally raped her in a toilet after meeting her at a party in 2004.

Within a minute of meeting, in the middle of a conversation, he lurched forward and grabbed her breasts and squeezed them with both hands, the jury was told.

The prosecution said the woman remembered he had a “big, weird grin” on his face as he did so, then grabbed her arm and pulled her towards the toilets.

The same woman said that as they were driving to another venue, Brand exposed himself, the court heard.

“He said, ‘Come on, come on, suck it’ – to which she just said, ‘No no’,” the prosecution added. “He simply laughed but appeared to accept her refusal.”

Fame Under Fire: Russell Brand on Trial

You can follow the trial day by day on the BBC podcast Fame Under Fire: Russell Brand on Trial – available on BBC Sounds, YouTube, iPlayer, or wherever you get your BBC podcasts

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The fourth complainant says Brand pushed her up against a wall at Capital Radio in 2004 or 2005 and kissed her “sloppily and aggressively”, and “grabbed her body, at her breasts, sides and buttocks, aggressively”.

She was able to push him away and he “just sniggered, like it was a joke”, the prosecutor said.

The jury then heard how the fifth complainant says she met Brand when he was performing at the Hammersmith Apollo in London in 2009.

The prosecution said their encounter began with consensual activity, but that he raped her anally on a later occasion.

The jury heard how the woman “spent months and years blaming herself”, becoming anxious and unwell.

They were told Brand texted the woman after seeing her at an event the following summer, saying: “I wanna push you further.”

She is said to have replied: “I think you pushed me far enough – you treated me like an animal.” He allegedly replied: “I’m sorry.”

The sixth complainant – who has accused Brand of sexual assault – says he demanded a massage when she was on a work assignment in 2009.

He “fell to his knees and placed his head directly into her groin area”, the prosecution said.

After the accounts of the final two women were heard, the prosecutor said Brand told police in 2023 “he has never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity, and that any accounts had been reinvented or imagined after a defamatory documentary and subsequent press reporting”.

On Wednesday afternoon, Brand’s former flatmate Mark Pinheiro was the first witness to give evidence.

Pinheiro told jurors that Brand had told him he may have gone a “bit too far” with a woman when visiting the Labour Party conference in 1999.

“He said that things got a little bit heated and a little bit out of hand, and he thinks that maybe he did go a little bit too far.

“Those were his words – ‘I think I may have gone a bit too far’.”

Pinheiro was pressed under cross-examination about whether he accurately remembered the comment, but he told the court he was sure Brand had said “things may have gone a little bit too far” or “I may have taken things a little too far”.

The trial continues and is expected to last for six weeks.

Brand was accompanied by his wife Laura to the court on Wednesday.

He rose to fame as a stand-up comedian and became a household name as host of TV shows such as Big Brother’s Big Mouth, and with his own radio programmes on stations including BBC Radio 2 and 6 Music.

He went on to establish a Hollywood career, starring in films including Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Get Him To The Greek. In recent years, he has turned to podcasting and now lives in Florida in the United States.

Here’s what you need to know about teens and sexual choking

wiredgorilla — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 13:00:03 +0000

However, sexual choking has gained increasing attention in recent years, particularly in regards to young people.

We would like to acknowledge and thank Giselle Woodley, Sexologist, Lecturer and Research Fellow in Communications and Culture at Edith Cowan University for their support and contribution to this research.

New South Wales police are investigating what led to the girl’s death and have not disclosed the nature of her injuries. But media reports have called it a case of suspected sexual choking.

So, how can we improve safety for teens? Young people we’ve interviewed in our research have told us what they want and need.

Is porn the problem?

For example, Miles (16) told us more information about how to set up consent boundaries, such as safe words, would help:

But even in situations where both partners confirm consent was given, participants may be charged with a criminal offence as sexual violence perpetrators.

Instead of focusing on who or what is to blame, we need to shift our attention to focus on minimising harm.

Comprehensive education and information increases understanding, allowing teens to make informed decisions, and often leads to less harm.

It’s not a new phenomenon. Records of sexual choking date back to the 18th century. Restricting breathing during sex (breath play) has also long been practised by the BDSM and kink community as a way to intensify sensations, or as part of power exchange.

The bottom line

This response is frequently echoed. However, in our research, teens expressed that the depiction and normalisation of choking has been shaped by a range of media influences, not just porn.

For example, we know criminalisation can increase risks for sex workers, who may be afraid to seek help when they’re in danger or have experienced sexual assault.

Young people need safe avenues to seek support without fear of legal repercussions or stigma. This includes the ability to have open conversations and gain information on sexual activities, including high-risk activities like choking, without judgement.

in my cohort, [sexual choking is] seen as something that’s a bit risky, but a bit cool, […] so there’s a lot of lines that are crossed because they don’t know how to set them up or while there might be safe words, they might not actually know how to [implement them].

Criminalisation may be viewed as a positive step towards addressing sexual violence.

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Trump’s quest to ‘conquer’ Greenland closer to reality — thanks to Dr. Phil

wiredgorilla — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 03:33:59 +0000

President Donald Trump has long craved Greenland, a large island in the North Atlantic controlled by Denmark. He has played a game of chicken by threatening to conquer the island and even vowed at a July NATO summit in Ankara to take Greenland for the United States. He has repeatedly posted a meme of his face acquisitively looming over a Greenlandic village with the slogan “Hello Greenland!”

Now Greenland Energy, a company created by Trump supporter Larry Swets of Texas last year in the midst of Trump’s imperialist rhetoric toward the island, has started moving drilling equipment to East Greenland’s Arctic basin. They claim they will mine $1 trillion in crude oil beneath the Jameson Land region. Both Denmark and Greenland are protesting. And, as one prominent TV news anchor pointed out, America may have in effect begun to invade Greenland.

“The minister in charge of mineral resources in the Greenland government did a local interview in Greenland in which he said he was absolutely sure this American oil company would never break the law and try to start this drilling project without permission,” MS NOW’s Rachel Maddow explained. “Should that happen, he said, Greenland has the means to stop their actions. He said, ‘This is a society governed by the rule of law, so I have some broad-shouldered men in black uniforms in the first instance who can help me deal with some illegal activities if I ask for them’ — by which he means, I think, the Greenlandic police. Then he said, ‘Ultimately, I’m sure that the Arctic Command will also contribute’ — by which he means the Danish military would also, he believes, intervene to stop this American oil company from trying to drill for oil in Greenland without any permission to do so.”

Maddow added, “So you put all this together: this Trump-aligned oil company based in Texas saying, ‘We’re going to drill for oil in Greenland.’ Greenland saying, ‘Oh, no, you’re not.’ The company going ahead and dropping off their drilling equipment anyway. Local residents saying, ‘We’ll fight tooth and nail.’ The local government saying, ‘We’ll use the police, we’ll use the Danish military.’ You put it all together, and it kind of seems like we’re invading Greenland. I mean, this company has somehow hornswoggled itself into a partnership with Dr. Phil to make what sure looks like propaganda TV shows about this ‘heroic and exciting’ oil-drilling project — which the government of Greenland says is illegal, and which they don’t have permission to carry out.”

Ultimately she asked, “Honestly — is this how we invade Greenland? With Dr. Phil doing a ride-along, like he did with ICE [which Greenland Energy says they are going to do]? All because a Trump donor billionaire says he needs to drill this oil, and who cares what this little country says?”

If America invades Greenland, the European Union could activate its Anti-Coercion Instrument, a series of boycotts and trade restrictions that would effectively devastate America’s economy in retaliation for violating the sovereignty of European nations.

“The EU’s single market counts roughly 450 million consumers,” wrote the German Marshall Fund’s Antonia Wunnerlich and Georgina Wright in February. “As a result, these tools can have significant extraterritorial impact, even targeting foreign businesses without European subsidiaries. US and Chinese services firms are particularly exposed because their home countries run sizeable services surpluses with the EU.”

Additionally, Greenland’s ice sheet is melting as a result of man-made climate change, which is destabilizing the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. If the situation worsens, it could lead to rising sea levels, widespread floods, severe storms and other extreme weather events.

“That rate of Greenland melt is approaching or exceeding rates of melt during natural warming periods over the past 12,000 years is not surprising,” Michael Mann, at the time a professor of atmospheric science at Penn State University, told this journalist for Salon in 2020. “It’s what I would expect given the evidence we have already.” He also said that one of his studies found “evidence of the freshening of the sub-polar North Atlantic that we would expect as Greenland continues to melt. That freshening is reducing the stratification of the ocean and likely slowing down the ‘conveyor belt’ ocean circulation (the real-world equivalent of the ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ scenario) showing how these potentially threshold-like climate responses are potentially linked.”

Mann added, “As I am fond of saying, uncertainty is not our friend. It’s cutting against us, not in our favor, as we see and learn more.”

[embedded content] – YouTube youtu.be

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