Russell Brand Rape Trial Hears Wrenching Testimony

Russell Brand's rape trial heard wrenching testimony Thursday from a woman who says he told her "it's just fun" while attacking her in a Bournemouth hotel room during the 1999 Labour Party conference. In a recorded police interview played for jurors, she alleged Brand ignored her pleas to stop, describing freezing in fear as he pinned her to the bed and left her in pain and struggling to breathe, the Guardian reports.

• The woman said she met Brand at a cabaret event he was performing in. She said she was not attracted to him and assumed he was gay, but she found him to be polite and intelligent and they chatted for a long time. She said she would not have invited him back to her hotel room to discuss working on a project together if she had believed he had sexual intentions.

• The woman said that after she came out of the bathroom, she was shocked to find him "prancing around" wearing only underwear. "He did rape, he did push me on the bed," she told police. "He did pull my clothes off, he took my trousers off. I remember him on me, very heavy," she said. "I'm saying 'no, no' but I was really scared."
• After Brand left, saying he had to get back to his mother, "I stayed in the bathroom for ages just washing myself," she said. "I was beating myself up in my head, thinking, 'what was I going to do'. I just had these plans in my head of if I was pregnant, what I was going to do."
• The woman said she stayed silent for years as his fame grew, and went to police only after a 2023 TV investigation into his alleged misconduct.
• The woman was cross-examined behind a privacy screen by Ian Winter, Brand's lawyer, the Telegraph reports. Winter suggested that the woman "fell under his spell—he's a very attractive young man, he's brilliant, he's charismatic." She replied, "I did not fall under the spell, and I did not find him attractive. Like I said, I thought he was a gay man." The woman, who became increasingly distressed during cross-examination, said she blamed herself for allowing Brand into the room. "That was my office, that was my workspace," she said. "He violated that space."
• Brand, 51, is charged with three counts of rape, three of sexual assault, and one of indecent assault involving six women between 1999 and 2009; he has pleaded not guilty. The trial in London is ongoing.