Britain - Al Sharqiya September 22: A group of women accused British actor Russell Brand of raping them, sexually assaulting them, and inflicting psychological violence against them between 2006 and 2013, in an investigative report conducted by three media outlets and published on Saturday.
Four women reported that Brand sexually assaulted them when he was at the peak of his career, whether as a presenter on BBC Radio 2 and Channel 4, or as a film actor in Hollywood.
These accusations, which were denied by Russell Brand, were included in an investigative report conducted by the Sunday Times and The Times newspapers, in addition to Channel 4.
This investigation, published by the Sunday Times, also included testimonies from other women who accused Brand of controlling, abusive, and sexually assaultive behavior.
Russell Brand, 48 years old, anticipated publishing the investigation and showed a documentary on Saturday evening on Channel 4 with a post on his account on “X” (formerly Twitter) to “deny” what he described as “very serious criminal accusations” against him.
The post stated: “I received two very disturbing messages (...), one from a television channel (...) and the other from a newspaper, containing a series of attacks (...) which I completely deny.”
“The relationships I had were always with the complete consent” of the women involved, Brand added. He considered that the media was launching a "coordinated attack" against him.
In the investigation, one of the women accused Brand of raping her at his home in Los Angeles, while another reported that she was sexually assaulted during a three-month relationship, when she was still a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl.
During his career as a comedian on television and film in the United Kingdom, and then in the United States, Brand was known for his previous addiction to alcohol and heroin, his short marriage to pop singer Katy Perry, and his tendency to flaunt his many female relationships.
In the middle of the second decade of the twenty-first century, he presented himself as an anti-capitalist activist and called for a “comprehensive revolution,” and he recently made a number of media positions that adopt conspiracy theories and are against vaccines and to major media outlets, both through his channel, which has more than six million followers on YouTube platform, or through his account on “X”, which has more than 11 million subscribers.
In these posts, Brand urged his fans to remain “vigilant” and “free” regarding the information published by traditional media.
In 2014, in his book Revolution, he called for a “radical redistribution of wealth,” the “break-up of global corporations,” and the injection of a heavy dose of “spirituality” into society.
When the “Me Too” movement began, Brand, who has been married to Laura Gallagher since 2017, and with whom he has two children, confirmed that he did not regret his previous sexual behavior, noting that he had sexual relations with hundreds of women.
Russell Brand is currently performing a series of concerts entitled “Russell Brand Polarization” as part of a tour in the United Kingdom.
