The Russell Brand Trial: The Charges, The Evidence, And What Brand Has Said

Where the trial stands. Nine days of evidence have been heard at Southwark Crown Court. All six women whose allegations make up the indictment have testified. Russell Brand, 51, has pleaded not guilty to every count and says he has never engaged in non-consensual activity. The defence case is expected to open in the week of October 26. What follows is the whole case as it stands — the charges, how it reached a courtroom, the evidence day by day, the defence answer, and, in his own words, what Brand has said. The accounts in the evidence sections are testimony — allegations the jury is hearing, which he denies.

The Charges

Seven counts, six complainants, alleged incidents between 1999 and 2009: a rape at a Bournemouth hotel during the Labour Party conference (1999); an indecent assault in Westminster in 2001, in which he is alleged to have grabbed a woman’s arm and tried to pull her into a male toilet; a sexual assault and an oral rape at a bar in Soho (2004); a sexual assault at a Westminster radio station (2004–05); a rape at his home in Hampstead (2009), alleged to have followed consensual sex; and a sexual assault on a Channel 4 project (2009). The Metropolitan Police charged him in two stages — the Crown Prosecution Service authorised the first five counts on April 4, 2025, and two further counts, involving two more women, were added on December 23, 2025. He pleaded not guilty to the first five at Southwark on May 30, 2025, and to the added two in February 2026.

How It Got Here

On September 16, 2023, the Sunday Times, The Times and Channel 4’s Dispatches published “In Plain Sight,” in which four women alleged rape, sexual assault and emotional abuse between 2006 and 2013, and a fifth woman, a former girlfriend, also appeared. The judge has told the jury that the women in that programme are not the complainants in this trial; the programme’s place in this case is that women came forward to the police after it aired. Brand was interviewed under caution three times (November and December 2023 and January 2024), and the file went to the CPS on November 2, 2024. His broadcasters also examined themselves: Channel 4 apologised in March 2024 over an uninvestigated 2009 allegation; Banijay reported in June 2024 that concerns had not been properly escalated; and a BBC review in January 2025 recorded eight complaints, one formal, and staff who felt Brand “would always get his way” — the BBC apologised. A civil suit in New York, filed by a “Jane Doe” in November 2023 over an alleged incident on the Arthur film set in 2010, is denied by Brand and Warner Bros.; no outcome has been reported. Before this trial, the defence asked for the case to be stayed, arguing the documentary made a fair trial impossible; the judge refused — “I have no doubt that the defendant can have a fair trial.” The trial, first listed for June 2026, was moved to October so all seven counts could be tried together.

The Prosecution Case

Opening the case on October 14, Riel Karmy-Jones KC told the jury the six women “did not know each other” and “came forward independently.” The alleged offences, she said, were “as wide and as varied as the defendant’s career” — a hotel room, workplaces, a bar toilet cubicle, his home. “His desire… was indiscriminate and voracious… women were simply a means to an end,” she said. “He was ruthless, he was calculating, he was manipulative. And, the prosecution say, he was a sexual predator.”

The Evidence, Day By Day

Day 3 (Oct. 14). After the opening, the first witness was Mark Pinheiro, a former friend, on Bournemouth in 1999: Brand had described his pick-up “strategies” and a target of having “slept with over 5,000 girls”; the next morning he was “flustered,” said they had to leave immediately, and later said it “may have gone a bit too far.” Cross-examined on a 25-year-old memory, he stood by it.

Day 4 (Oct. 15). The 1999 complainant’s evidence: a recorded police interview, then live testimony. She had met Brand at a Labour conference cabaret, taken him for a friendly man, and gone to his hotel room to talk. She described him undressing, making her photograph him, being heavy on her until she could not breathe — “I know I said ‘no.’” She said she blamed herself for years and came forward after the documentary. The defence suggested the encounter was consensual; she categorically denied wanting sex.

Day 5 (Oct. 16). The 2001 complainant, live: working at MTV, she showed Brand the bathrooms after some T-shirt “banter”; she described a “wild-eyed maniac” grabbing her arm and pleading “come on, come in with me” for about twenty seconds before she wrenched free. The defence called it a “very short-lived, very minor incident,” said he pleaded and accepted her refusal, and suggested her view of it changed after the documentary. The jury also heard from a friend of the first complainant who recalled a “panicked urgency” to leave Bournemouth, and a statement from a journalist the first complainant called, crying, after the 2023 coverage.

Day 6 (Oct. 19). The Soho complainant, behind a screen: at the Nordic Bar in July 2004, within a minute Brand had grabbed her breasts — “weird maniacal grin” — and dragged her to a toilet, where the oral rape is alleged to have happened; “don’t be a spoilsport”; “I just closed my eyes and tried to not be there.” Afterwards, in a car, she said no to him and he accepted it. She told the court she had told friends at the time she had “got away,” that she had not known forced oral sex was rape, and that “my innocence had been taken.” A producer’s statement said the complainant had warned her Brand was a “sexual predator” days later. The defence said she had been excited, had gone willingly for “a kiss and a cuddle,” and that the encounter was abandoned over a dirty, flooded toilet; asked why she had not come forward during #MeToo, she said she was “not charmed in the slightest” and had hoped someone else would come first.

Day 7 (Oct. 20). Three complainants. The radio-station complainant: leaving a room in 2004 or 2005, Brand “leapt on” her, grabbed her face, pinned her to a wall and kissed and groped her “frenzied” and “violent[ly],” while four entourage members “did nothing”; cross-examined on dates and memory, she answered, “Yes… it was definitely Russell Brand,” and said she had not reported it because of believability, her job and her mortgage. The Channel 4 complainant: in 2009 her team was told Brand would not work unless she massaged him; she described his head in her lap and groin — “Come on then” — and feeling “repulsed”; she reported it to her line manager that year and was told it had been escalated. The Hampstead complainant’s video interview began: meeting at the Apollo, a house visit a week later, consensual vaginal sex, then the alleged anal rape, blood, and being told to clean “the mess.”

Day 8 (Oct. 21). The Hampstead complainant’s evidence concluded, with live cross-examination. The jury saw a text exchange from about six months later, after the Edinburgh Festival — him: “Because you’re dirty and I want to push you further”; her: “I think you’ve pushed me far enough. You treated me like an animal”; him, immediately: “I’m sorry.” She said she felt “completely degraded… like a piece of meat.” The defence put it to her that she was a “massive fan” who went consenting and agreed to anal sex; she answered: “I didn’t consent to what happened to me,” and, asked why she had never texted “you raped me,” replied: “You’re asking me why I didn’t say that to the person who raped me.”

Day 9 (Oct. 22). The witnesses around the Hampstead complainant. A friend who was at the Apollo, by video link, recalled Brand’s sign-off line — “my age range is from 16 to death” — and the complainant crying as she described the night: “He forcibly put it in my bum and it really, really hurt”; she had said no “lots of times” and “couldn’t sit down.” A second friend described repeated “stop,” injuries, Brand “cold and keen to get her gone,” telling her she was “dirty” and to clean up; she had advised medical help, parents and police, and said the complainant felt she would not be believed. Statements came from an Edinburgh Festival friend (“white as a sheet”; she feared he had “tracked her down”; crude messages), from her father — “It was then I said to her: ‘You have been raped, that’s rape’” — and from her mother, read to the court, that he “didn’t stop even when she screamed out in pain and asked him to stop.” A colleague described her as “ashen” and recalled Brand shouting “Look what you’ve done to my fucking sheets,” and the complainant saying: “They won’t believe me. I went to his house.” Her former boyfriend, cross-examined on a June 2025 statement in which he had said she had “come round” to anal sex, told the court she had “surrendered”: “You either fight back or surrender — it doesn’t negate the attack.” The jury also heard the 2001 complainant’s 2023 emergency call, in which she said her account “could be insignificant” but was “a story that shows what he is capable of.”

The Defence

The defence has not yet opened its case; its position is in Brand’s prepared statements to police and in cross-examination. In those statements he said he has never taken part in non-consensual activity, and that the accounts have been “reinvented or imagined after a defamatory documentary.” The judge has directed the jury on the point: “The defence may suggest the programme caused the complainants… to revisit historic sexual events and in their memories twist them from the consensual acts they were to the crimes they now allege.” Whether Brand will testify has not been confirmed; a defendant cannot be compelled to give evidence.

What Brand Has Said

His words, in order, with the date and the platform. Nothing added.

September 15, 2023 — video, YouTube and X, before the investigation was published: “Amidst this litany of astonishing, rather baroque attacks are some very serious allegations that I absolutely refute.” “I was very, very promiscuous… the relationships I had were absolutely always consensual.” “To see that transparency metastasised into something criminal that I absolutely deny makes me question — is there another agenda at play?” “Watch out, Russell, they’re coming for you. You’re getting too close to the truth.” “A serious and concerted agenda to control these kind of spaces and these kind of voices.” “Witnesses whose evidence directly contradicts the narrative that these two mainstream media outlets are trying to construct, apparently, in what seems to me to be a coordinated attack.” “Please stay free.”

January 30–31, 2024 — interview with Tucker Carlson: “What we were experiencing was a public concoction.” “Most appalling crimes… very, very painful and very, very hurtful.” “Of course, I deny any allegations of the kind that have been advanced.”

April 4, 2025 — video on X and Instagram, the day the first charges were announced: “The law has become a kind of weapon to be used against people, institutions and sometimes entire nations that will not accept and tolerate levels of corruption that are unprecedented.” “I was a fool before I lived in the light of the Lord. I was a drug addict, a sex addict and an imbecile. But what I never was, was a rapist.” “I’ve never engaged in non-consensual activity. I pray that you can see that by looking in my eyes.” “I’m now going to have the opportunity to defend these charges in court, and I’m incredibly grateful for that.”

December 23–24, 2025 — video, on the two added charges: “I’ve learned in my own life that attack can bring about grace.” “The opportunity to atone for the many things over the years that I did wrong, and the opportunity to ensure that people understand the truth of my situation and scenario.”

April 22, 2026 — The Megyn Kelly Show: “The age of consent is 16. And I did sleep with a 16-year-old when I was 30… an immature 30-year-old.” “Consensual sex with a lot of people, when there is a strong power differential… I think involves exploitation. I think it is exploitative.” “My sexual conduct in the past was selfish.”

During the trial. Arriving on October 13, to photographers: “Blessed, thank you very much.” On October 14: “I feel blessed… I feel, of course, concerned but hopeful that this process will lead to good outcomes for everybody involved. That’s my prayer.” In an October 18 “Sunday Service” video: “As much as I feel the weight of spiritual warfare, I feel the lightness and the angelic levity of grace everywhere.” He has said nothing in public about the evidence or the charges since the trial began.

What Happens Next

The prosecution has called all six complainants; reporting names no further prosecution witnesses. The defence case is expected to begin in the week of October 26, with Ian Winter KC expected to argue the encounters were consensual and the accounts reimagined. No closing or verdict date has been fixed: the judge estimated about six weeks in total, which points to late November; other reports run to nine or ten weeks, which points into December. If he were convicted, the maximum sentence for rape is life imprisonment; for sexual assault and for indecent assault, ten years on each count.

Sources: BBC, PA Media and Reuters court reporting; The Guardian; The Times; TMZ; Page Six; the family of sources is listed because the Daily’s account draws on all of them.