A Channel 4 worker told a court she was “repulsed” after Russell Brand allegedly leaned into her groin area during a massage she says she was forced to give him in 2009.
Giving evidence at Southwark Crown Court on October 20, the woman said Brand had been “really lovely” at the start of the recording session for a Channel 4 project, but his mood changed as the day progressed.
Alleged massage demand
The woman told jurors that Brand's associates, Jack Bayles and Gareth Roy, said the comedian would only continue the recording if she gave him a massage. She initially thought it was a joke, but their serious expressions and gestures convinced her otherwise.
“They said Russell won’t carry on … unless you give him a massage,” she told the court. Asked how she responded, she said: “I didn’t want to give him a massage, I actually laughed. I thought they were joking because I didn’t expect somebody to say that. Then I saw by their faces that they weren’t joking.”
Court testimony
The woman described how Brand “leaned into my lap – my groin area”, adding: “I could feel his breath against me.” She looked to Bayles and Roy for help, but they responded with “arms up, as if to say: ‘Come on.’ They were shrugging and gesticulating, to say: ‘Are you going to do it?’”
She said she thought: “Oh my god, I have got to do this”, and placed her fingers on Brand's shoulders. “I was so repulsed by the situation and my automatic reaction was: ‘Urgh, you’re so bony.’” Bayles and Roy laughed, she said, but “Russell didn’t laugh.”
The woman also alleged Brand made offensive comments, suggesting he and Roy had been “wanting to know: is it a girl or a boy?” She said Brand then moved across the room and joked about a calculator drinking from a glass of water, before asking: “Right, are we going to get on with this… or not?”
Trial continues
The woman said she reported the incident to her line manager at Channel 4 the following day, and believes it was passed on to the head of her department.
Earlier in the day, another woman testified that Brand sexually assaulted her in a radio station corridor, pressing her against a wall and planting “sloppy” kisses. She tearfully told the court she had nothing to gain from giving evidence, and criticised workplace “banter” from the 2000s, saying: “Women were rated by colleagues on what we were wearing, how we looked.”
Brand, who denies all charges, is on trial accused of three rapes, three sexual assaults, and an allegation of indecent assault. He is expected to argue that consensual encounters were “reimagined” by his accusers after recent allegations of sexual misconduct. The trial continues.
