A woman has told Southwark Crown Court that Russell Brand turned into a “wild-eyed maniac” as he tried to drag her into a toilet for a sexual encounter in 2001.
The woman said Brand grabbed her arm and pleaded with her to join him in the men’s toilet, as she pulled back and managed to “wrench” herself free.
Looking back at the incident, she told the court Brand was “affable” at first, but “suddenly turned into this wild-eyed maniac trying to pull me into the toilet”.
Why she did not report the incident
Questioned why she did not report the incident to police at the time or mention it to her bosses, she pointed out that Brand was one of MTV’s star presenters at the time.
“There he is, one of the big assets at MTV and I have got a mortgage to pay so why make it hard for myself?” she said.
“It would have been my word against his, I had a job to consider, I came away relatively unscathed, and he didn’t rape me. I managed to get myself out of the situation and I wanted a quiet life.”
The alleged incident in 2001
Brand is on trial accused of three rapes, three sexual assaults, and an allegation of indecent assault. He is accused of indecently assaulting the former MTV worker when they came across each other in 2001, and briefly exchanged words after she complimented his “I am Spartacus” t-shirt.
She told jurors Brand asked for directions to the men’s toilets, and she “pointed him in the direction” before showing him the way. “His manner changed,” she said. “He grabbed my forearm and he was leaning into the door. It was quite forceful, the grip. It took me unawares, I wasn’t expecting that.”
She recalled Brand’s “hard” grip on her arm, and said he was “pleading” with her to join him in the toilet. “He was trying to pull me into the bathroom and I was trying to pull myself away,” she said. “I said to him ‘what are you doing? Are you mad? Let me go. Then he started to plead, almost ‘go on, go on, come in’.”
She added: “He had what I would call a wild look in his eyes. I might have called him an idiot.”
Defence challenge and further evidence
Brand’s barrister, Ian Winter KC, suggested the woman had reassessed her memory of the incident after seeing a 2023 Dispatches documentary which accused the comedian of sexual misconduct. She replied: “I always knew it was wrong. That didn’t change my mind.”
She said she decided to go to police in 2023 because it was “the right thing to do”, and rejected suggestions from Mr Winter that Brand had been seeking a consensual encounter and stopped when it was clear that she did not want it. She told him: “You don’t drag someone by the arm, not in my world anyway. You don’t grip someone to drag them in, that’s not consensual.”
She added that she “wrenched” herself out of Brand’s grip, and suggested that she may have been stronger than he had expected her to be. Asked how she felt after the alleged attack, she said: “Bewildered, confused, ‘what the hell happened there?’.”
Earlier on Friday, the court heard from two men who were once part of a theatre troupe with Brand, as they were asked to recall the 1999 Labour Party conference where he is accused of raping a woman. Andrew Dobson, who also lived with Brand, called him “very egotistical” and “erratic”, and added that he found him “hard to predict”.
In the afternoon session, jurors heard evidence from a friend of the MTV worker, recounting how she had been told about the incident when Brand allegedly tried to drag her into a toilet. Jurors were sent home for the day after the prosecution presented a series of agreed facts and pictures of Brand from 1999.
Brand denies all the charges against him, and is set to argue that consensual encounters have been “reimagined” by his accusers after he faced allegations of sexual misconduct in recent years. The trial continues on Monday.
