LONDON (The Thursday Times) — Russell Brand was a “sexual predator” whose fame protected him for almost two decades, the judge who jailed him for 10 years and six months said on Monday, as he set out the crimes Brand committed against four women between 2004 and 2009.
Mr Justice Bennathan delivered his sentencing remarks at Southwark Crown Court, days after a jury convicted Brand, 51, of one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault. He was cleared of two further counts of rape and one of attempted indecent assault. Brand denied all the charges.
“About 20 years ago, Russell Brand, you were becoming famous. You were clever and, in many people’s eyes, funny and charismatic. You had also become a sexual predator,” the judge said. Brand’s status, he said, protected him until 2023, when journalists published allegations that “empowered a number of women to come forward”.
The judge reminded the public that it is against the law to name the women or to reveal details from which they could be identified, and referred to each of them only as the victim of a particular count. He said he had disregarded the allegations made in the 2023 documentary and those on which the jury had acquitted.
How the judge reached 10 years and six months
The longest term, nine years, was for the rape of a 21-year-old fan in spring 2009, when Brand was 33. The judge said Brand removed a condom without her agreement and carried on when she asked him to stop, and that she was left in severe pain and spent months fearing she had contracted HIV. Those two features, he said, raised the sentence two years above the guideline starting point. Brand had saved her number in his phone under “T” for “tart”, which the judge cited as a demonstration of his “contempt” for his casual sexual partners.
In her victim impact statement, the judge said, the woman described struggling to eat and sleep, taking months off work and abandoning the career she had begun. Seventeen years later, it still affects her ability to trust people.
For the three sexual assaults, Brand received nine months for assaulting a woman at a party in July 2004; 18 months, reduced from two years to keep the overall total proportionate, for assaulting a radio newsreader at her workplace in front of his entourage; and eight months for an assault in late 2009 on a woman working on an advertisement for his DVD. Those three terms run at the same time as each other but after the rape sentence.
The 2004 assault, the judge said, “displayed your casual, arrogant disregard of any woman’s right to say ‘no’ to you”, and he went above the guideline range because of the distress it caused. The 2009 offence showed “yet again your staggering arrogance”, he said. “The whole episode reeks of casual disrespect and your belief that fame meant you could act how you liked, when you liked.”
Fame, mitigation and release
The judge rejected some of the aggravating factors put forward by the prosecution. Being a celebrity did not count as an “abuse of trust” under the sentencing guidelines, he said, and while he had taken Brand’s fame into account in judging the harm the women suffered, “I also need to be careful I am not punishing you more because you are famous.”
He also declined to treat two of the women as “particularly vulnerable” because one had been drinking and the other admired Brand, saying both had made perfectly reasonable choices. “Whatever women wear, wherever they go, indeed whatever they drink, they retain the right to say no,” he said.
In mitigation, the judge took account of Brand’s lack of significant previous convictions, the 17 years since his last offence and his work since then, particularly in helping people with addictions, often by paying for their treatment. Although the guidelines give little weight to good character in rape cases, he took a year off the rape sentence. Brand’s imprisonment would deprive his children of their father, he said, but that “sad loss” was “caused by your serious offending”.
The judge did not order a pre-sentence report, and said there was “no sound evidential basis” to conclude that Brand posed a risk in future. Brand will serve two-thirds of the sentence in prison before being released on licence, and can be recalled if he breaches its terms. On release he will be subject indefinitely to the notification requirements of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, known as the sex offenders register.
The judge paid tribute to the “determination and bravery” of the women who gave evidence, who he said had been accused in court of lying or twisting the truth on Brand’s instructions, and commended the Metropolitan Police for its investigation.
On the day of the sentencing, Brand’s former partner Jemima Goldsmith, the ex-wife of Imran Khan, published a statement accusing him of violence and coercive control during their relationship in 2014. Those allegations did not form part of the case.
