Jurors in Russell Brand’s trial have been shown pictures of the bedroom in his townhouse where a woman claimed she had been raped.
The 51-year-old British comedian and actor, who is alleged to have raped the woman so forcefully she “could not speak or breathe”, is facing seven charges, including rape and sexual assault against six women from 1999 to 2009. He denies all the counts and has pleaded not guilty.
On the fifth day of the trial at Southwark Crown Court in London, jurors saw photographs of Brand’s home in Hampstead, London, where the woman, his youngest alleged victim, said she had been raped in February 2009.
The images show Brand’s bedroom, living room and two bathrooms in the three-storey house, with all-black furnishings, wallpaper and curtains. The photograph of the bedroom shows black and white sheets on a black bed, beneath a framed picture of a crucifix.
The court heard evidence from the woman, who had been in her early twenties and said she was a fan of the comedian when she met him after one of his gigs at the Hammersmith Apollo.
In a recording of a police interview from 2025, played to the court, she said she went to Brand’s house knowing she would have vaginal sex with him, but that he then anally raped her. She said she had begged him to stop and later feared she had contracted HIV.
The jury also heard evidence from two other women, who both said they had been sexually assaulted by Brand while members of his entourage watched and did nothing.
One woman said Brand had “mauled” her when he grabbed her face and pushed her against a wall inside the London offices of a radio station.
The complainant, speaking in the courtroom from behind a privacy screen, said she had been working alone in a room and noticed that Brand was waiting outside when she went to leave. She said: “I literally opened the door and I’m standing in the space, very cramped, and he’s just leapt on me.”
The woman said there had been three men and a woman with Brand, whom she described as his “entourage” in a previous statement, but they had “just stood watching”.
She became tearful as Ian Winter KC, defending, asked her about the people nearby. She said: “They didn’t come to my aid – they didn’t do a single thing.”
She recalled attempting to appeal to the woman for help, adding: “I was trying to plead with her somehow to stop it, but she didn’t say anything.”
She added: “He grabbed me by my face, started to kiss me and when he was kissing me he was pushing his body against mine, walking me backwards, my back was against the wall.”
Jurors later heard evidence from a woman who was working for Channel 4 in 2009, when she claimed she was sexually assaulted by Brand as they were recording a project for the broadcaster.
The complainant, speaking from behind a privacy screen, said two men who were part of Brand’s team had asked her to give him a massage. She said: “I actually laughed – I thought they were joking because I wouldn’t expect somebody to say that.”
‘I was so repulsed by the situation’
The woman said that she had been sitting down as Brand came back into the room and then laid his head in her lap, facing her groin. She said she could feel his breath through her thin trousers, and he then said: “Come on then.”
She said: “I was so repulsed by the situation I automatically said, ‘oh, you’re so bony’.”
Brand then jumped up and asked what her name was, she said. The woman said she was “really uncomfortable, really confused” and that the incident was reported to the head of her department.
In the last half of the afternoon, the court was played a police interview with the woman who alleged she had been anally raped by Brand. She said Brand had seen her and her friend in the foyer of the Hammersmith Apollo after his show had finished.
The complainant said: “He went towards a door and his security team came over and said that we had been invited upstairs for drinks with Russell.” She said she had ended up in a dressing room with Brand and another woman, where they had had a consensual threesome.
The woman said afterwards he asked for her phone number and she gave it to him. She said she was upset as she had a boyfriend and felt “stupid”, to which Brand allegedly replied, “we don’t belong to anyone” and “we’re all free”.
She said: “I genuinely thought that I would never hear from him again.” But she said she and Brand had texted and spoken on the phone in the following days and he had invited her to his house.
She said she was told to go to a restaurant in Hampstead and give a different name, and that she would be collected by a driver. When she arrived at his townhouse, a man answered the door and asked her to wait in the living room.
When Brand came into the room, she said he told her: “This is the best decision you’ve ever made, well done.” She told detectives she went up into his bedroom, “knowing that I would have sex with him”, adding: “What I knew of sex was vaginal penetrative sex.”
She said: “I really want to make that clear, because I’ve really struggled for a very long time to accept what happened, because I went there knowingly and willingly.”
The woman said Brand had said her hair “smelled funny” and had made her take a shower in his ensuite while he watched. She said he had asked her to brush her teeth, and this made her feel “dirty”.
When they went back into the bedroom, she told him he had to wear a condom before they had sex, which he initially did, before allegedly anally raping her.
She said a staff member then told her to leave because Brand had a show that evening, and she was driven home by a driver who handed her some tissues on the way.
She said her friends had told her beforehand not to go to see Brand, saying his messages to her were “disgusting, like ‘I’ll fix you’.” She said: “I genuinely thought he had given me HIV.”
At a sexual health clinic, she said: “They thought I was very at risk of having contracted it.” She said she finally got the all clear, adding: “They referred me for therapy and I had three or four sessions.”
During the trial, the court heard that Brand had allegedly grabbed the breasts of a woman in the middle of a conversation, before pulling her into a lavatory and orally raping her.
Jurors were played the first complainant’s police interview, in which she described Brand’s body as “snake-like and disgusting” as she gave her account of the alleged rape after a Labour Party conference event in 1999.
She said she felt “sexually safe” inviting the comedian back to her hotel room after meeting him at a fringe show he had been performing in. She said she thought he was gay and “didn’t feel threatened by him at that point at all”.
The trial continues.
Sign up to Herald Premium Editor’s Picks, delivered straight to your inbox every Friday. Editor-in-Chief Murray Kirkness picks the week’s best features, interviews and investigations. Sign up for Herald Premium here.