Russell Brand is at the center of a lengthy exposé in which four women accuse the comedian of rape, sexual assault and emotional abuse over a seven-year period, but the 48-year-old comedian says he “absolutely refutes” the litany of claims.
In a joint nvestigation by The Sunday Times, The Times and Channel 4’s Dispatches, the four women claim the sexual assaults happened between 2006 and 2013, while he was a presenter for BBC Radio 2 and Channel 4 and then as an actor in Hollywood. That timeframe includes Brand’s entire 14-month marriage to Katy Perry, which ended when he filed for divorce in December 2011. The finalized their divorce in 2012.
According to the joint investigation, one woman claimed Brand raped her during their second meeting in his Los Angeles home on July 1, 2012. She claimed they had consensual sex the month prior. Citing medical records, the outlets report the woman was treated at a rape crisis center that same day. Hours after the alleged incident, the woman claims she texted the comedian, “When a girl say[s] NO it means no.” According to text messages reviewed by the news organizations, Brand replied he was “very sorry.”
A second woman claims she was only 16 when she met Brand, then 31, in 2006 while out shopping in London. During that outing, the woman claims Brand reached into her shopping bags, pulled out a dress and said, “You’re going to wear this on our date this week.”
The woman claims she told her mom about the chance meeting, prompting her mom to insist that she tell Brand her age in hopes of putting him off. The woman claims she told Brand her age, but he didn’t care. She claims that on their first date Brand immediately asked her to confirm she was definitely 16 by saying, “I don’t give a f**k if you’re 12 … I need to know where I stand legally.”
The woman claims in the report that Brand — who would allegedly send a car to have her picked up at her school — started out “very charming.” But relationship, the woman claims, turned sour near the end. The woman, who alleges her mother once met Brand when she dropped her off at his house, claims the comedian became abusive and controlling near the end of what she claims was a relationship that lasted approximately three months. The woman went on to claim that Brand once “forced his penis down her throat, making her choke.”
A third woman claims she was threatened with legal action if she told anyone about being sexually assaulted by the comedian while she worked with him in Los Angeles. A fourth woman claims Brand sexually assaulted her and that he was also physically and emotionally abusive.
The Forgetting Sarah Marshall star got ahead of the story by taking to social media on Friday to “absolutely refute” the allegations, which he referred to as “extremely egregious and aggressive attacks.” The story was published Saturday morning.
“I’ve received two extremely disturbing letters — or a letter and an email — one from a mainstream media TV company, one from a newspaper, listing a litany of extremely egregious and aggressive attacks,” he says in a video posted on Instagram. “But amidst the litany of astonishing, rather baroque attacks, are some very serious allegations that I absolutely refute.”
He added, “As I’ve written about extensively in my books, I was very, very promiscuous. Now during that time of promiscuity, the relationships I had were absolutely, always consensual … I was always transparent about that then, almost too transparent. And I’m being transparent about it now as well. And to see that transparency metastasized into something criminal, that I absolutely deny.”
The Get Him to the Greek star would go on to say in his video that “it’s worth mentioning that there are witnesses whose evidence directly contradicts the narratives that these two mainstream media outlets are trying to construct apparently, in what seems to me to be, a coordinated attack.”
The Sunday Times reports that its reporters asked Brand’s lawyers for the evidence the comedian referred to in his video, but the newspaper reports no answer was provided.
In conjunction with The Sunday Times and The Times, Channel 4 is set to air a 90-minute Dispatches special investigation on Saturday night at 9 p.m. in the UK, which is 4 p.m. ET in the states.
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