Comedian and actor Russell Brand has been accused of rape, sexual assault and emotional abuse at the height of his fame, between 2006 and 2013. The allegations emerged after a joint investigation by the Sunday Times, the Times and Channel 4 Dispatches.
Brand denied the allegations and said that his relationships have always been consensual. Of the five alleged victims, four of them were anonymous. The women alleged that Brand abused them when he worked for BBC Radio 2 and Channel 4 and starred in Hollywood films.
One woman accused him of rape and another one said Brand assaulted her when she was 16 and still at school. The woman who was abused at age 16, when Brand was 31, said that he was emotionally abusive and controlling and once, he even “forced his penis down her throat”, making her choke. One woman who accused Brand described him of being “physically and emotionally abusive,” the Guardian reported.
Channel 4 TV’s documentary show Dispatches broadcast several clips of the women on X, formerly known as Twitter, describing the alleged incidents, according to an Al Jazeera report.
It isn't clear if any of the women filed a police complaint. “Amidst this litany of astonishing, rather baroque attacks are some very serious allegations that I absolutely refute,” Brand said in a video message posted on X.
“These allegations pertain to the time when I was working in the mainstream, when I was in the newspapers all the time when I was in the movies. And as I’ve written about extensively in my books, I was very, very promiscuous,” Brand added.
