Russell Brand found guilty of rape and sexual assault
Russell Brand has been found guilty of rape and sexual assault, according to The Guardian. The verdicts came at Southwark Crown Court, a criminal court in London, where the comedian and television presenter was tried on seven charges including rape.
The trial moved through several stages in the autumn. A jury was selected in October 2026 for a case concerning alleged historical crimes, including rape. Brand appeared at the court on October 27 and gave evidence later that month, according to Reuters. The jury began its deliberations, the private process in which jurors weigh the evidence, in early November, Reuters reported.
The same day, The Guardian reported that television insiders believe the misogyny and sexism highlighted by the case have not gone away. The paper described the experience of people who worked with Brand on earlier projects. According to the article, Naomi Harvey was a researcher assigned to find Big Brother fans to appear on Big Brother's Big Mouth, a show Brand hosted.
Harvey and colleagues, the article says, saw Brand ask a runner to obtain the phone numbers of female audience members so he could receive them. A distraught audience member phoned Harvey to complain after Brand invited her for drinks following the show. Harvey and two colleagues reported Brand's behaviour to their boss and said they never heard anything further about it.
Other accounts in the article point to why some people stayed silent. One of Brand's accusers told the court she had not come forward earlier because "the media industry protects its own." A former MTV employee said she did not report an incident at the time because she was scared, as Brand was famous "and a big asset" to the channel. The article also says rumours about Brand's inappropriate behaviour circulated within the stand-up comedy circuit before he moved into television.
Serious allegations about Brand did not become public until 2023, after a joint investigation by Channel 4's Dispatches programme and the Sunday Times. The Guardian also cited earlier incidents. In a 2007 interview with Jimmy Savile, Brand joked about sending a female assistant to Savile naked. In 2008, on BBC Radio 2, he laughed on air about exposing himself to a woman working in the same building in Los Angeles. He left the BBC after Sachsgate, the 2008 affair in which he and Jonathan Ross left obscene messages on the answerphone of the actor Andrew Sachs.
