Russell Brand trial: ex-MTV employee testifies
The complainant, identified as C3, says Brand attacked her in a Soho bar in 2004 and forced her to perform oral sex. He has pleaded not guilty to all seven counts.
A former MTV employee accusing Russell Brand of a 2004 assault gave evidence to the jury at Southwark Crown Court in London on Monday, October 19. The court refers to her as complainant C3, because she has lifelong anonymity. She testified behind a protective screen so that Brand could not see her in the courtroom.
According to her account, the comedian and actor grabbed her breasts at a TV producer’s birthday party at the Nordic bar in Soho in July 2004, dragged her into a toilet and forced her to perform oral sex. Brand denies all the allegations.
What did the complainant tell the jury?
She met Brand that evening. She knew him from shows linked to “Big Brother” on Channel 4 and thought he was funny. She says they spoke only about his work on those shows, and nothing in the conversation was sexual.
Then, she said, came the attack. In a statement given during the investigation and shown to the jury, she described the first moment like this:
“Suddenly, without any warning, he grabbed my breasts while we were just talking.”
She added that she remembers a “strange, manic smile” on his face. He then took her by the hand and pulled her into the toilet, she said, where she kept repeating that she did not want to do it and tried to push him away. She cried as she described this in court.
She also described how it ended. Brand, she said, asked to swap phone numbers, as if nothing had happened. Later, in a car taking them to another bar in Camden, he tried unwanted contact again. She told him “no,” and by her account he accepted the refusal.
Why did she wait until 2023 to report it?
She went to the police only in 2023, after The Times and Channel 4 published an investigation into Brand’s behavior toward women. In court she explained why she waited almost twenty years. The first reason was shame:
“I was ashamed that I had let him do that to me. I didn’t want to admit it even to myself, let alone to anyone else.”
The second was fear that nobody would believe her. “He was famous and it would all come down to his word against mine,” she said. Asked by the defense whether she had worried about her job, she answered that the “media industry protects its own,” but said work was far down her list of concerns. At one point she also said: “I wanted to change the narrative, so I wasn’t the victim.”
A few days after the night at the bar, she phoned the producer whose birthday it was and warned him that Brand was a “sexual predator.” In a 2023 police statement read out in court by prosecutor Riel Karmi Jones, the producer said she had described Brand as pushy and aggressive and that she was frightened. He also said he contacted Brand’s associates and told them the behavior was not acceptable.
What does the defense say?
Brand’s barrister, Ian Winter, repeated throughout the cross-examination that everything was consensual. He argued that the complainant went into the toilet voluntarily so that they could kiss, and that she was starstruck. He also asked why she had not reported the incident during the #MeToo movement, or to colleagues at MTV.
As for MTV, she explained that Brand was not employed by the network at the time. He hosted the Channel 4 show “Big Brother’s Big Mouth.” She dismissed the starstruck claim in a single sentence:
“He did not impress me at all.”
She added that she had known him for only a minute before he sexually assaulted her, as she alleges, and that she did not behave like an “excited schoolgirl.”
What is Brand charged with?
Brand, who is 51, is being tried on seven counts: three of rape, three of sexual assault and one of indecent assault. The indictment is based on complaints from six women covering the period from 1999 to 2009. He has pleaded not guilty to every count.
In his police interview he declined to answer questions. He instead submitted a written statement saying he does not recall meeting the women, does not remember their names and that every sexual contact was consensual. He will present his defense later in the trial.
C3’s testimony follows evidence from another former MTV employee, identified as C2, who told the same court last week that Brand tried to pull her into a toilet in the network’s offices in 2001. According to the court record, the two women have never met. The trial continues.
