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The Sunday Times and Channel 4’s Dispatches published their joint investigation on Saturday accusing Russell Brand of rape, sexual assault and abuse. 

Four women alleged Brand assaulted them between 2006 and 2013.

This period marks the height of Brand’s fame – he was a presenter for the BBC and Channel 4 before becoming a high-profile Hollywood star.

The comedian vehemently denied “very serious criminal allegations” in a YouTube video on Friday night, claiming his relationships were “always consensual”.

Here are the allegations against him in full.

Warning: This article contains details of a graphic nature that readers may find distressing

‘Grooming and sexually assaulting a 16-year-old’

Alice – not her real name – alleged she had a sexual relationship with Brand aged just 16 and that he sexually assaulted her.

Brand, who was 30 at the time, sent cars to Alice’s school to collect her from lessons so they could have sex at his home, she said.

He became increasingly controlling during the relationship, Alice said, and encouraged her to lie to family and friends about the relationship, even instructing her to save his number under the name “Carly” to avoid suspicion. She says Brand’s management also told him to keep their relationship private.

She also alleged that he removed a condom during sex without her knowledge.

“Russell engaged in the behaviours of a groomer, looking back, but I didn’t even know what that was then, or what that looked like,” she said.

While in bed with Brand, Alice says the comedian forced his penis into her mouth to the point she was unable to breathe.

“I was pushing him away and he wasn’t backing off at all,” she said.

“I ended up having to punch him really hard in the stomach to get him off. I was crying and he said, ‘Oh, I only wanted to see your mascara run anyway’.”

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How the Brand allegations came out

After this, he held her mouth open, drooled into it, and then held her mouth shut, forcing her to swallow his spit and leaving her “gagging and crying”.

Alice also told the investigation that Brand found it arousing that she was a virgin, called her “the child” and “my little dolly” and asked her to read the 1955 novel Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov about a professor sexually obsessed with pre-pubescent girls.

‘Raping a businesswoman in LA’

Nadia, who did not use her real name to protect her identity, said Brand raped her at his home in LA in 2012.

They previously had consensual sex but Nadia said he had a “glazed over” look during the encounter.

In the early hours of 1 July 2012, Brand pleaded with her to visit his house.

When she got there, he asked her to join him and a “friend” for a threesome in his bedroom, she alleged.

When she refused, Nadia said Brand pushed her against a wall and raped her without using a condom.

Russell Brand in 2012 Pic: AP
Image:
Russell Brand in 2012. Pic: AP

After escaping his house, she said Brand sent her a text at 3.29am, which said: “I’m sorry. That was crazy and selfish. I hope you can forgive me, I know that you’re a lovely person. X.”

She said she ignored a call from him but texted him the following morning to say he had “scared the s***” out of her, adding: “When a girl say(s) NO it means no.”

Brand replied he was “very sorry” and “embarrassed” by his behaviour, The Times reported.

Nadia provided the team of journalists with her medical records from a rape treatment centre she went to after the rape, as well as therapy records.

Several months later, she said she wrote to Brand, saying: “You completely broke me down.”

Brand ‘fired woman who worked for him after sex assault’

Phoebe – not her real name – had a brief consensual relationship with Brand after they met at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in 2013, she said.

He later hired her for a project they worked on together.

During this time, Phoebe said she became “trapped” in a bedroom in Brand’s home and he started chasing her around the room.

Russell Brand in his latest YouTube video Pic: YouTube/Russell Brand
Image:
Russell Brand denied the allegations in his latest YouTube video. Pic: YouTube/Russell Brand

Brand, who was naked, “grabbed me and got me on the bed” and tried to forcibly remove her clothes.

She said: “I was screaming, and I was like, ‘What are you doing, stop, please, you’re my friend, I love you, please don’t do this, I don’t want to do this’. I think he had his hands down my trousers but I was fighting so hard and I was screaming so hard, hoping that I could get through somehow.”

When the assault ended, Phoebe said Brand became “super angry” and shouted “f*** you” and told her she was fired.

She ran out of his house barefoot, running into a group of people outside who had arrived for a business meeting, Phoebe said.

One of the people in the group apologised to Phoebe years later, she claimed.

She said: “He pulled me aside and he said to me, ‘I have never forgiven myself for not running in that house to save you. I heard you screaming. And I didn’t know what to do. And we were all so scared of him and I didn’t do anything. And I am sorry’.”

Phoebe continued working with Brand but she said he “cornered her” and threatened legal action when he discovered she had told friends about the alleged assault.

‘Sexually assaulted ex-girlfriend’

Brand’s former girlfriend Jordan Martin did not provide an account to the journalists working on the investigation due to “personal family circumstances” but confirmed to the team that she stood by allegations she made in a self-published book.

The former model had a six-month relationship with Brand in 2007.

In her book, she detailed an alleged sexual assault at The Lowry Hotel in Manchester between Dina and Randall Grand – pseudonyms she used for herself and Brand.

Ms Martin said the comedian became angry when he found out she had spoken to an ex-boyfriend.

He then grabbed her phone and assaulted her in the bathroom, sliding his hand into her underwear, she claimed.

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Brand arrives at gig after sex assault claims

She said she was “not ready for this intrusion” and did not find it “sensual or pleasant”.

Brand also forced her to brush her teeth so hard that it made her gums bleed so she would taste “anonymous” to him, Ms Martin said.

She wrote that Brand “pushes boundaries, controlling other people to fulfil personal perversions for the sake of dominance”.

“There were times when I felt bullied and abused, not in a physical or sexual way, but mentally. I was vulnerable… His manipulative side was so powerful it was easier to just submit.”

Brand has never disputed Ms Martin’s account in her book.

‘Offered naked assistant to Jimmy Savile’

Dispatches and The Times also detailed other disturbing behaviour in the documentary – including inappropriate comments made to paedophile Jimmy Savile.

On his radio show in 2007, Brand spoke with Savile, who said they could meet if Brand brought his sister.

The comedian said he didn’t have a sister but offered to bring his assistant naked to the meeting.

“I’ve got a personal assistant, and part of her job description is that anyone I demand she greet, meet, massages, she has to do it. She’s very attractive, Jimmy,” Brand is claimed to have said.

Savile died in 2011 aged 84.

More than 450 allegations of sexual abuse against children were reported to police after his death.

Read more:
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From drug addict to star often at centre of controversy

‘Flashing junior staff’

Brand’s personal assistant between 2006 and 2007 also alleged he showed friends intimate pictures of women.

Brand also instructed the assistant, Helen Berger, to procure women for him to have sex with from audiences on shows he presented, she claimed.

She also said Brand often wore only underwear around her and had a “very active sex addiction”.

Meanwhile, a production runner on Big Brother’s Efourum said Brand flashed her on set and insinuated she “might like to suck his d***”.

She added: “I was incredibly shocked. I wasn’t going to tell anyone what he’d done because I didn’t want to lose my job.”

She later had consensual sex with him but he insisted she had to keep it a secret.

“As an older woman I can say with clarity I felt like I was groomed for sex,” the runner said.

“Production companies enabled him to exist in environments where he was able to take advantage of who he was.”

Another crew member said she raised a separate complaint with a colleague about Brand’s sexual pursuit of audience members on his shows.

The crew member said women often phoned her in tears “because they felt used”.

“I don’t know what went on once they left the studio,” they added.

She said it felt she was a “pimp to Russell Brand’s need” and that they “were taking lambs into slaughter”.

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Brand denies ‘serious allegations’

Brand denies allegations ‘absolutely’

Denying the allegations in a video posted online ahead of the publication of the claims, Brand said he was facing a “litany of extremely egregious and aggressive attacks”.

The 48-year-old said: “These allegations pertain to the time when I was working in the mainstream, when I was in the newspapers all the time, when I was in the movies and as I have written about extensively in my books, I was very, very promiscuous.

“Now during that time of promiscuity, the relationships I had were absolutely, always consensual. I was always transparent about that then, almost too transparent, and I am being transparent about it now as well.

“To see that transparency metastasised into something criminal, that I absolutely deny, makes me question – is there another agenda at play?”

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UK weather: Scottish hamlet reaches -18C in coldest January night in 15 years

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UK weather: Scottish hamlet reaches -18C in coldest January night in 15 years

Temperatures in a hamlet in northern Scotland fell to -18.7C (-1.66F) overnight – the UK’s coldest January night in 15 years, the Met Office has said.

Altnaharra, in the northern region of the Highlands, reached the lowest temperature while nearby Kinbrace reached -17.9C (-0.22F).

It is the coldest January overnight temperature since 2010, when temperatures dropped below -15C several times at locations across the UK, including -22.3C (-8.14F) on 8 January in Altnaharra.

Forecasters had previously said there was a very small probability it could reach -19C.

A Highland cow grazes in a snow-covered field near Shotts, North Lanarkshire. Temperatures will continue to fall over the coming days, with the mercury potentially reaching minus 20C in northern parts of the UK on Friday night. Weather warnings for ice are in place across the majority of Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as large parts of the east of England. Picture date: Friday January 10, 2025.
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A Highland cow grazing near Shotts, North Lanarkshire. Pic: PA

Met Office meteorologist Alex Deakin said: “Friday night into Saturday morning may well be the nadir of this current cold spell.”

Temperatures for large parts of the UK are set to fall again as the cold weather continues.

St Andrew's church, Kiln Pit in Durham Pic: PA
Image:
St Andrew’s church at Kiln Pit in Durham. Pic: PA

Met Office meteorologist Zoe Hutin said: “We’ve still got tonight to come, and tomorrow (Saturday) night could also be chilly as well.

More on Uk Weather

“Temperatures for tomorrow night, it will be mainly eastern parts that see temperatures dropping widely below freezing, so East Anglia, the northeast of England, northern and eastern Scotland as well.

“So another chilly night to come on Saturday, but then as we go into Sunday and into Monday, then we can start to expect temperatures to recover somewhat.

“I won’t rule out the risk of seeing something around or just below freezing again on Sunday night into Monday, but it won’t be quite so dramatic as the temperatures that we’re going to experience as we go overnight tonight.”

Ugo Sassi from Cambridge skates on a frozen flooded field in Upware, Cambridgeshire. The Cambridgeshire Fens were the birthplace of British speed skating and require four nights of frost, with a temperature of -4 or colder and little or no thawing during the days in between, to make ice strong enough to skate on. Temperatures will continue to fall over the coming days, with the mercury potentially reaching minus 20C in northern parts of the UK on Friday night. Weather warnings for ice are in pla
Image:
Skating on a frozen flooded field in Upware, Cambridgeshire. Pic: PA

On Monday, temperatures are expected to be more in line with the seasonal norm, at about 7C to 8C.

A family walk across Hothfield Common in frosty conditions near Ashford in Kent.
Pic: PA
Image:
A family walk across Hothfield Common in frosty conditions near Ashford in Kent. Pic: PA

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The freezing conditions have led to travel disruption, with Manchester Airport closing both its runways on Thursday morning because of “significant levels of snow”. They were later reopened.

Transport for Wales closed some railway lines because of damage to tracks.

Hundreds of schools in Scotland and about 90 in Wales were shut on Thursday.

Meanwhile, staff and customers at a pub thought to be Britain’s highest were finally able to leave on Thursday after being snowed in.

The Tan Hill Inn in Richmond, North Yorkshire, is 1,732 feet (528m) above sea level.

Six staff and 23 visitors were stuck, the pub said on Facebook.

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Government contract ends for controversial asylum barge Bibby Stockholm

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Government contract ends for controversial asylum barge Bibby Stockholm

The government contract for the controversial asylum barge in Dorset has ended.

The last asylum seekers are believed to have left Bibby Stockholm at the end of November after Labour said it would have cost more than £20m to run in 2025.

Its closure this month was expected, and on Friday the management firm and the Home Office confirmed to Sky News the contract had now expired.

It’s currently unclear when Bibby Stockholm will leave Portland and what it will be used for next.

The Conservative government started using the vessel in August 2023.

It said putting nearly 500 men on board while they waited for an asylum decision was cheaper than paying for hotel rooms.

However, it was controversial from the start and sparked legal challenges and protests.

More on Asylum

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August: 2023: Barge reminds migrant of Islamic State

Days after the first group boarded there was an outbreak of Legionella bacteria in the water system and it had to be evacuated for two months.

In December 2023, an Albanian asylum seeker, Leonard Farruku, died on board.

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A Home Office spokesperson said the government was determined to reform the asylum system to make it operate “swiftly, firmly and fairly”.

“This includes our accommodation sites, as we continue to identify a range of options to reduce the use of hotels,” the new statement added.

“We are already closing some hotels and will continue to engage with local authorities and key stakeholders as part of this process.”

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How is your local NHS coping under winter pressures?

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How is your local NHS coping under winter pressures?

Pressure on hospitals is particularly high this winter, with more than a dozen declaring critical incidents in recent days.

Hospitals struggle every winter with additional pressures due to the impact of cold weather, but the early arrival of flu this season and high volume of cases meant Christmas and New Year’s weeks were even busier than usual.

There are currently at least 20 hospitals that have declared critical incidents in England, although this is a fast-moving picture, and some trusts will go into critical incident for as little as half an hour.

The latest NHS winter situation reports give a more detailed look at the level of pressure experienced by individual trusts, including those with the worst ambulance handover delays and highest levels of flu patients.

Ambulance handover delays

When a patient arrives at a hospital in an ambulance, clinical guidelines suggest that it should take no longer than 15 minutes to transfer them into emergency care.

It is now common for handovers to regularly exceed this timeframe, however, when emergency departments are overcrowded and lack the capacity to keep up with new patient arrivals.

This is risky for patients because it delays their assessment and treatment by clinicians, and also reduces the availability of ambulances to respond to new incidents.

The trust with the longest delays was University Hospitals Plymouth, with an average handover time of three hours and 33 minutes over the week – two hours and 40 minutes longer than the average for England. It also recorded the longest average handover times for a single day, at five hours and 14 minutes on New Year’s Day.

Use the table below to search for local ambulance handover times:

On 7 January, University Hospitals Plymouth declared a critical incident at Derriford Hospital due to “significant and rising demand for hospital care”, though this has since been stood down.

The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital Trust had an average ambulance handover time of three hours and 15 minutes, increasing by more than an hour from one hour and 51 minutes the week before.

In Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust, 83% of handovers took more than 30 minutes, the highest share among areas dealing with more than five ambulance arrivals per day.

This area also recently declared and then stood down a critical incident.

In total across England, 43 trusts out of 127 had average handover times of more than an hour, while nine areas had average handover times of more than two hours.

Flu

This winter’s flu wave arrived earlier than usual and has hit health services hard.

Over New Year’s week, there were 5,407 flu patients in hospitals in England on average each day, more than three times higher than during the same week last year and increasing by 20% from the week before.

The worst impacted trusts were Northumbria Healthcare and University Hospitals Birmingham, with 15% and 13% of all available beds occupied by flu patients respectively in the latest week.

Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust had among the biggest increase in flu patients from the previous week, more than doubling from 18 to 42 patients per day on average.

Use the table below to search for local flu hospitalisations:

There are some indications that flu activity may have now peaked, with national flu surveillance showing a decrease in positive flu tests in the latest week, though activity remains at high levels.

Bed occupancy

Current NHS guidance is that a maximum of 92% of hospital beds should be occupied to reduce negative risks associated with overfilled beds.

These risks include the impact on patient flow resulting from it being more difficult to find beds for patients, and negative impacts on performance and waiting times, as well as being linked to increased infection rates.

In the week to 5 January, 92.8% of 102,546 open hospital beds were available each day on average, not far off the recommended level.

However, bed occupancy was very high in some trusts, with more than 95% of beds occupied in 43 trusts on average over the week.

The trust with the highest rate of bed occupancy was Wye Valley NHS Trust, with 99.9% of 332 beds occupied on average throughout the week.

There was only one day when beds weren’t fully occupied, on 3 January, when two beds of 322 were available.

Use the table below to search for local bed occupancy:

Kettering General Hospital NHS Trust recorded bed occupancy of 98.5% over the week. This trust declared a critical incident on 8 January.

Part of the problem for bed availability is prolonged hospital stays – also known as bed-blocking.

This is often linked to pressures in other parts of the health and social care system, for example when patients can’t be discharged to appropriate social care providers even though they are ready to leave hospital.

Just under half of beds occupied by patients in English hospitals last week were occupied by long-stay patients who had been there for seven or more days.

In seven trusts, at least three in five beds were occupied by long-stay patients, while in Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust the figure was more than four in five beds.


The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.

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