Russell Brand Treated Consent as “an Obstacle to Remove or Ignore,” Prosecution Tells Jury in Rape Trial’s Closing Arguments

The prosecution has made its closing arguments in Russell Brand‘s highly publicized rape and sexual assault trial in London, saying his defense is “a lot of half-truths, but spun into lies.”

The jury, made up of eight men and four women, will now deliberate. The judge will only accept a unanimous verdict on each count.

As The Hollywood Reporter has covered in detail, the presenter and comedian (also star of St Trinian’s and Forgetting Sarah Marshall) is accused of three counts of rape and three charges of sexual assault. He was initially accused of indecent assault, which was reduced to a count of attempted indecent assault by the judge on Tuesday. Six women allege offenses dating from 1999 to 2009, and Brand denies the allegations vehemently.

London’s Southwark Crown Court has heard from the complainants, one of whom says she was raped by Brand in a Bournemouth hotel room after the Labour Party conference in 1999. Another alleges Brand pulled her into a nearby toilet and orally raped her at a bar in Soho in 2004 and a separate accuser says she was anally raped by the star at his Hampstead home in 2009, after the two had consensual vaginal sex. Brand is also said to have attempted to drag an MTV colleague into a bathroom at work in 2001, and exposed himself while traveling with a complainant in a car, telling her to “suck it.”

Over the last three weeks, the jury has watched police interviews with all of the complainants, whose identities have been kept anonymous during the trial. Their testimonies have been cross-examined, witnesses — including Brand’s former personal assistant, Helen Berger — have been called to the stand, and Brand himself gave evidence just this week.

He revealed he hadn’t persuaded anyone to testify on his behalf, but his wife, Laura, did take the stand on Thursday and told the room that Brand is a “caring and kind, wonderful father” to their three children. The defendant himself maintained: “I know what ‘no’ means… Consent is a fundamental, essential and necessary and in many ways more important than sex itself.”

Lead prosecutor Riel Karmy-Jones told the jury in her closing argument on Friday that these six women do not know each other. None of them “sought the limelight” or “any kind of publicity,” she said. “None of these women has anything to gain — except perhaps some closure.”

She urged the jury: “Listen to their accounts, how many said he was nice, then there was a personality change, a pivot.” She said these women have told the court: “[Brand] didn’t listen when I said no, he didn’t listen, he didn’t care… In the rape cases, he just kept on going until he achieved his ultimate aim and ejaculated.”

All of the accusers have since moved on with their lives, but the trial has forced them to “relive what has happened to them” and describe intimate details to the court, Karmy-Jones also said. They are not “jealous women spurned,” as one complainant was made out to seem, she continued, and it doesn’t matter that the complainants “can’t remember” what they wore. She also said Brand seemed to “remember lots now” despite initially not being able to recollect many of the encounters in his police interviews. Brand’s defense is “a lot of half-truths, but spun into lies,” said Karmy-Jones.

At this moment, per Sky News coverage, proceedings were briefly interrupted by the snoring of a member of the public who had fallen asleep in the gallery.

Karmy-Jones also said that Channel 4’s Dispatches, a documentary built from allegations against Brand that kickstarted the 2023 police investigation, was not a “magic force” that caused the women to “recast” memories of “happy consensual fun.” Instead, these women “have realized they are not alone and have bravely come before you to tell the truth.”

Karmy-Jones asked the jury to sit in silence for 20 seconds — the same length of time one woman alleges her encounter with Brand, as he attempted to pull her into the toilet, lasted.

The prosecution also described Brand’s wife as “undoubtedly lovely” but said Laura Brand was not in touch with the defendant at the time the alleged encounters took place.

Karmy-Jones quoted one of Brand’s earlier statements: “Consent is fundamental, essential, necessary and indeed in many ways more important than sex itself,” before asking the jury: Does that ring true?” She pulled a quote from Brand’s 2007 autobiography My Booky Wook. He wrote: “Now if I want something — whether it’s a job or a woman — I will determinedly, resolutely, remove anything that’s in the way, until I possess the object of my desire.” Karmy-Jones said consent was maybe “just an obstacle to be removed, or perhaps to ignore,” for Brand.

Brand had a “tendency” to “swiftly make things sexual,” said Karmy-Jones, wrapping up.

Court has ended for the week. The defense’s closing arguments will take place on Monday.