What are the allegations against Russell Brand?
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
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 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.
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‘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?”
A former British soldier who escaped from Wandsworth Prison has been found guilty of spying for Iran.
Daniel Khalife, 23, who was a lance corporal in the Royal Signals, used a sling made from trousers worn by inmates working in the kitchen to cling to the underside of a food delivery lorry on 6 September last year.
He was being held in the Category B prison accused of handing secret information, including a list of soldiers – some of whom were serving in the SAS – to Iranian spies.
MI5, the Ministry of Defence and counter-terrorism police launched a nationwide manhunt, fearing Khalife would try to flee to Tehran or get to the Iranian embassy in London.
Woolwich Crown Court heard that while on the run he bought a mobile phone to call his handlers, who used the code name “David Smith”, and sent the message: “I wait.”
Khalife was arrested on 9 September. Pic: Met Police
But Khalife was arrested on the morning of 9 September when he was spotted riding a stolen mountain bike along the canal towpath in Northolt, west London – about 14 miles away from Wandsworth Prison.
He initially pleaded not guilty to an escape charge but changed his plea after describing the break-out to jurors, saying it showed “what a foolish idea it was to have someone of my skillset in prison”.
Khalife, who first contacted an Iranian spy soon after he joined the Army aged 16, claimed he wanted to be a “double agent” and “thought he could be James Bond” but had only passed on fake or useless information.
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From October: Jurors shown CCTV of Khalife after escape
Giving evidence, he described himself as an English “patriot”, adding: “I’m certainly not a terrorist or a traitor.”
But he was found guilty of a charge of gathering, publishing or communicating information that might be useful to an enemy between 1 May 2019 and 6 January 2022, under the Official Secrets Act.
Khalife, from Kingston, in southwest London, was also found guilty of eliciting personal information about armed forces personnel that was likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism on 2 August 2021.
The charge related to a photo of a handwritten list of 15 soldiers, including some from special forces serving in the Special Air Service (SAS) and Special Boat Service (SBS).
Khalife was found not guilty of perpetrating a bomb hoax at his barracks in January 2023.
Daniel Khalife joined the Army aged 16
‘The ultimate Walter Mitty’
Dominic Murphy, the head of the Metropolitan Police’s counter-terrorism command, said while Khalife’s approach was “amateurish” with elements of “fantasy”, the reality was he provided “highly sensitive” information to the Iranian state.
“He’s the ultimate Walter Mitty character,” he said. “The problem is he’s a Walter Mitty character that was having an extremely significant impact on the real world.”
A Walter Mitty character is someone who is ordinary but has an extraordinary imagination and daydreams about personal triumphs to escape their dull life.
Mr Murphy said the “game” played by Khalife to “fuel his ego” posed “a significant risk to national security” and he had “enjoyed the thrill of the deception throughout”.
Police have disrupted 20 direct plots from the Iranian government, including assignations or immediate threats to life, and the state’s agents “pose a very real threat to national security and to individuals here in the UK”, Mr Murphy said.
Khalife told the jury he contacted an Iranian agent through Facebook because he wanted to endear himself to the UK security services after he was told he couldn’t pass developed vetting to fulfil his dream of working in intelligence because his mother was born in Iran.
A selfie of Daniel Khalife in Mill Hill Park. Pic: Met Police
Khalife collected cash in a dog poo bag. Pic: Met Police
Dead drops
Khalife left material in public locations in exchange for cash in an old-fashioned spy tactic known as the “dead drop” or “dead letter box”.
He first collected £1,500 in a dog poo bag in Mill Hill Park in Barnet, north London, in August 2019 and made a second £1,000 cash pick-up from Kensal Green Cemetery, in North Kensington, in October 2021.
He twice travelled from his barracks, in Staffordshire, to the Iranian embassy in South Kensington, in London, and even flew to Istanbul, where he stayed in the Hilton hotel between 4 and 10 August 2020, and “delivered a package” for Iranian agents, the court heard.
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Sky’s Shamaan Freeman-Powell reports from Woolwich Crown Court
The contact continued while he was deployed to Fort Hood, Texas, where he received training in Falcon, a military communications system.
Khalife repeatedly contacted the British security services himself saying he wanted to be a “double agent”, but MI5 reported him to police, who arrested him.
While on bail, he went AWOL from his base, leaving a device made from three laughing gas canisters bound with sniper tape on his desk.
Khalife left a fake device. Pic: Met Police
He stayed in a stolen Ford Transit van, later found containing a camp bed, around £20,000, and notes saying he wanted to defect to Iran.
Prosecutors said he planned to leave the country, having previously travelled to Turkey as a test for onward travel to Iran, and he was in contact with his Iranian handlers, making attempts to get to the embassy.
But he was arrested again three weeks later after a colleague spotted him in the leisure centre. He was then held on remand in Wandsworth Prison, where he managed to get a job in the kitchen.
Escape planned for ‘quite some time’
Khalife told the jury he planned the escape because he wanted to be moved to the high-security unit in Belmarsh to avoid sex predators and terrorists who wanted to do him harm.
Khalife escaped under a Bidfood lorry. Pic: PA
Khalife used a makeshift sling. Pic: Met Police
Police believe he had been planning the “pretty audacious” break-out for “quite some time” and he wrote in his prison diary of a “failed” escape attempt on 21 August last year.
Khalife told the jury he attached the makeshift rope to the Bidfood lorry on 1 September to test prison security as it made its daily deliveries.
“When I had made the decision to actually leave the prison I was going to do it properly,” he said, describing how he concealed himself, resting his back on the sling as the vehicle was searched.
The driver Balazs Werner said two guards told him someone was missing as they checked the truck with a torch and mirror and he was surprised he was allowed to drive off and that the prison wasn’t in lockdown.
Khalife said he waited for the lorry to stop, dropped to the ground and lay in the prone position until it moved off.
He used the phone at the Rose of York pub in Richmond before a contact withdrew £400 from a nearby cashpoint, which he used to buy a sleeping bag, a mobile phone and a change of clothes.
CCTV footage captured his movements as he bought clothes from Marks & Spencer, stole a hat from Mountain Warehouse, drank coffee at McDonald’s and even read about his escape in the newspaper.
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From October: Khalife caught on CCTV. Pic: Met Police
When he was arrested on the footpath of the Grand Union Canal in Northolt after four days on the run, Khalife told police: “My body aches. I f****d myself up under the lorry” and “I don’t know how immigrants do it”.
Police said he had no help from anyone inside prison, Iran or close family members in London but a 24-year-old man and a 25-year-old woman were arrested earlier this year on suspicion of assisting an offender and the investigation is ongoing.
The prisons watchdog called for Wandsworth to be put into emergency measures in the wake of Khalife’s escape, while a security audit identified “81 points of failure” and resulted in “long overdue” upgrades to CVTV cameras which hadn’t worked for more than a year.
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) later announced it would be redirecting £100m from across the prison service to spend over five years on bringing in “urgent improvements”.
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Meanwhile, Bethan David, from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), said: “As a serving soldier of the British Army Daniel Khalife was employed and entrusted to uphold and protect the national security of this country. But, for purposes of his own, Daniel Khalife, used his employment to undermine national security.
“The sharing of the information could have exposed military personnel to serious harm, or a risk to life, and prejudiced the safety and security of the United Kingdom.
“It is against the law to collate and share secret and sensitive information for a purpose against the interests of the United Kingdom.
“Such hostile and illegal activities jeopardise the national security of the United Kingdom, and the CPS will always seek to prosecute anyone that carries out counter state threats.”
UK
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The Prince and Princess of Wales have paid tribute to a teenage photographer who they met during an investiture at Windsor Castle.
Liz Hatton, who died yesterday, was pictured hugging Kate after the princess invited her to take pictures of the Prince of Wales at the event in October.
The 17-year-old from Harrogate started a photography bucket list appeal in January after she was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of cancer.
She was given between six months and three years to live.
Kate and Will with Liz (centre), her mother Vicky Roboyna, stepfather Aaron and brother Mateo. Pic: Andrew Parsons/Kensington Palace
In a statement, William and Kate said: “We are so sorry to hear that Liz Hatton has sadly passed away. It was an honour to have met such a brave and humble young woman.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with Liz’s parents Vicky and Aaron and her brother Mateo at this unimaginably difficult time. W & C.”
Announcing her death on X, her mother Vicky Roboyna said: “Our incredible daughter Liz died in the early hours of this morning. She remained determined to the last.
“Even yesterday, she was still making plans. We are so very proud of the kindness, empathy and courage she has shown in the last year.
“She was not only a phenomenal photographer, she was the best human and the most wonderful daughter and big sister we could ever have asked for.
“No one could have fought harder for life than she did. There is a gaping Liz-shaped hole in our lives that I am not sure how we will ever fill.”
She asked people to share one of Liz’s photos in tribute using the hashtag #LizHatton and to support the family’s mission to fund research into desmoplastic small round cell tumours, which Liz was diagnosed with.
She has set up a JustGiving fundraising page with a goal of raising £100,000.
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In a personal message on social media after meeting Liz in October, William and Kate said: “A pleasure to meet with Liz at Windsor today.
“A talented young photographer whose creativity and strength has inspired us both. Thank you for sharing your photos and story with us. W&C.”
Ticking off items from her bucket list, Liz went on to photograph comedian Michael McIntyre, the red carpet at the MTV Europe Music Awards, the London Air Ambulances from a helipad and joined acclaimed photographer Rankin in leading a fashion shoot.
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