Russell Brand has been found guilty of rape and three sexual assaults following a four-week trial at Southwark Crown Court.
The 51-year-old was convicted of raping a 21-year-old woman after meeting her at a 2009 stand-up show at the Hammersmith Apollo. He was also found guilty of groping an MTV worker in 2004, sexually assaulting a radio employee in 2005 and sexually assaulting a Channel 4 worker during a forced massage in 2009.
Brand was cleared of raping a woman he met at a cabaret show held on the fringes of the 1999 Labour Party conference in Bournemouth. He was also found not guilty of orally raping the MTV worker in a toilet.
The verdicts came after almost nine hours of jury deliberations. Brand is due to be sentenced on Monday and was held in solitary confinement at Wandsworth Prison after the hearing.
As he was taken from the dock, Brand mouthed “I love you” to his sobbing wife, Laura.
Russell Brand rape trial heard accounts from four women
The youngest complainant told jurors she had been selected from a line of female fans after Brand performed at the Hammersmith Apollo. She said he invited her to his £2.3 million home in Hampstead after promising to help her following the end of a relationship.
The woman said she initially had consensual sex with Brand but that he later removed a condom and raped her without warning. She told the court he forced her face into a pillow and that she struggled to breathe.
“I felt like I could not speak and breathe,” she said. “The amount of pain. I was not aware that he was going to do that, there was not any conversation.”
She said she asked him to stop several times, but he continued. Afterwards, she said, he told her to clean the bed before putting on the television to watch Quantum Leap.
The complainant said she was left feeling “small and powerless” and later developed an addiction to alcohol. She told police in 2025: “I don’t want to live with this anymore. I don’t want to die not saying this to the right people.”
Six months after the alleged attack, Brand contacted her again by text, saying he wanted to “push her further”. She replied: “I think you’ve pushed me far enough, you treated me like an animal.”
She said Brand immediately responded: “I’m sorry.”
The court also heard that he had saved her number in his phone under “T” for “Tart”, alongside two stars.
A radio journalist described being attacked by Brand in a booth at Choice FM studios in central London in 2005. She said he pinned her against a wall, kissed her and touched her breasts while other members of his entourage watched.
“He just leapt on me,” she said. “This is a perfect stranger that just grabbed me and was running his hands over my body.”
She told jurors the attack was “very, very rough” and “violent”, adding that those watching laughed as she looked towards them for help.
A Channel 4 employee said she had been pressured into giving Brand a massage during a recording session in 2009. She said he thrust his head into her groin and only moved away after taking offence when she described his body as “bony”.
“I was so repulsed by the situation,” she told the court.
The fourth complainant, an MTV worker, said Brand grabbed her breasts without warning while they were discussing Big Brother in a Soho bar in July 2004.
She described him as having a “big, weird grin” before the incident. Prosecutors alleged that he later dragged her to the toilets, where he orally raped her, but Brand was acquitted of that charge.
Police warn more historic allegations could emerge
Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said he would not be surprised if the case encouraged other people to report historic allegations against well-known figures.
He said the cases that had reached court could be only the “tipping point”, adding that “many, many more” alleged victims might come forward with further accusations against Brand.
The Crown Prosecution Service is considering whether to bring additional charges after Brand was accused of two more rapes, including an allegation involving a 16-year-old girl.
Brand has also faced civil claims in Britain and the United States. A High Court claim has been brought by a woman seeking £100,000 in damages over an alleged incident at his Los Angeles mansion in 2008.
In a separate New York lawsuit, he has been accused by an extra from the 2010 film Arthur of exposing himself to cast members before sexually assaulting her on set.
The criminal trial heard that Brand’s conduct towards women had been celebrated during the height of his fame. The prosecution argued that he used his status to obtain sex while treating women as objects.
Prosecutor Riel Karmy-Jones KC described him as a “sexual predator” and told jurors: “They didn’t matter to him. He didn’t even need to know their names. They were just a means to an end.”
Brand’s past comments about his sex life were also examined in court, including passages from his 2007 autobiography in which he described himself as “demonically sexy” and wrote that he would remove anything in the way of possessing “the object of my desire”.
Jack Bayles, who was present during the incident involving the Channel 4 worker, said he was “appalled and sickened” by Brand’s actions and had co-operated with the investigation. He said he did not remember the incident but accepted that he had “clearly missed something at the time”.
Mr Bayles said the incident took place in a “frantic, pressured and toxic working environment” and that Brand had been “chaotic, dismissive and manipulated the people around him”. He said he had not worked with or had contact with Brand since 2010.
A conviction for rape can carry a life sentence, while sexual assault carries a maximum sentence of ten years for each offence.
