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Russell Brand’s criminal trial continued in London on Tuesday with testimony from his fourth accuser, who alleged the actor and comedian violently assaulted her while she was working at Capital Radio in the early 2000s.
Brand has been charged with three counts of rape, three counts of sexual assault and one count of indecent assault relating to incidents with six women spanning from 1999 to 2009. He has pleaded not guilty and denied all allegations against him.
Speaking from behind a blue screen — all alleged victims of sexual assault cases are granted lifelong anonymity in the U.K. — at Southwark Crown Court on Tuesday, Brand’s fourth accuser detailed the alleged assault, which she said occurred during the summer of 2004 or 2005.
As reported by Sky News, the woman said she was having a “normal day” at work when she ran into Brand at the Capital offices, who then “just leapt on me” after she left a room. Brand, who the accuser said was accompanied by one woman and three men, “grabbed my face, and was pushing his body against mine, literally walking me backwards,” she alleged.
She claimed he pushed her against a wall and began kissing her, describing the alleged attack as “violent,” “sloppy” and “frenzied.”
“He touched my bum, my breast, his hand on my waist and his other hand was just pinning me against the wall, and his body was just pressed up against me,” she said, according to Sky News. Asked by prosecutor Reil Karmy-Jones KC how forceful Brand was, the woman said: “It was rough, his whole body was pressed against me… his hands were moving up and down so much it was violent. It was hard, and he just wasn’t stopping.”
The alleged victim said the woman and three men who were with Brand didn’t intervene. “They didn’t say anything; they didn’t move,” she said. “It was the middle of the working day, and they just didn’t say anything.”
The woman eventually pushed Brand away and told him to “fuck off,” she said, according to Sky News. Brand fell back, she claimed, and let out a laugh, causing one of the men to start laughing as well.
She then left the building to smoke a cigarette, telling the court she felt “dirty, shocked, stunned and shaken.” She did not tell anyone about the alleged incident at the time, but reported it in 2023 after watching few minutes of Channel 4’s documentary about the allegations surrounding Brand.
Questioned by Brand’s defense lawyer Ian Winter KC about her uncertainty of the exact year the alleged incident occurred, the woman said: “It was over 20 years ago.”
Winter questioned how she was certain the man who allegedly attacked her was Brand. The woman said she had never met him before but was aware of who he was: “The person who assaulted me was Russell Brand. I can’t forge that.”
She tearfully added, “This is a situation I did not want to be in. I don’t gain a single thing by saying what happened to me.”
When asked why she didn’t report the alleged incident to Capital Radio, the woman said the environment wasn’t right and her colleagues probably would have told her she was “lucky.” “Women were rated by colleagues on what we were wearing, how we looked,” she said. “I did not feel at that stage there was someone I could go and talk to … It wasn’t a culture where, as a woman, something like that happens to you and then you tell people and they believe you.”
Brand’s trial is expected to last six weeks.
