Russell Brand's rape and sexual assault trial moved through its second week at Southwark Crown Court, with several women testifying about alleged attacks they say happened over a decade, between 1999 and 2009. Brand, 51, has pleaded not guilty to three counts of rape, three counts of sexual assault and one count of indecent assault involving six women, and his defense maintains every encounter was consensual.

The trial opened October 12 with jury selection, after the judge dismissed six prospective jurors who said they recognized the case from media coverage. A panel of eight men and four women, plus an alternate, was sworn in the next day, and prosecutors opened their case on October 14. Estimates of the trial's total length vary — some reports put it at around six weeks, others closer to ten — but jurors have been told to keep themselves available into mid-December.

The allegations date back to a joint investigation by Channel 4's Dispatches and the Sunday Times, published in 2023, which first brought multiple women's accounts of alleged assaults by Brand into public view and led to the criminal case now playing out in court. Brand has consistently denied wrongdoing since that reporting first surfaced.

Under UK law, the women testifying are granted lifelong anonymity and are identified in court only by number. One accuser told the court, in a police interview played for jurors, that Brand assaulted her at his home after she had gone there willingly for what she expected would be consensual sex. A Reuters account carried by U.S. News describes her saying she pleaded with him to stop.

A separate accuser, describing an alleged assault at a London radio station where she worked, told the court Brand grabbed her face and pushed his body against hers while bystanders nearby did nothing to intervene, according to ABC News Australia's coverage of the hearing. A third woman, who worked at Channel 4 in 2009, testified that a sexual encounter she initially experienced as consensual later felt, in her words, "awful" — and alleged a separate assault followed.

A Long Road Ahead

Brand denies all seven charges and says his accusers have "reimagined" encounters that were consensual at the time. Variety reports the trial is expected to run at least six weeks, with jurors sent home for the week while the prosecution prepares to close its case when proceedings resume.

"IT LIVED WITH ME EVER SINCE."

One accuser, in testimony widely reported under that line, described a years-long decline into alcoholism and mental health struggles that she traced back to the alleged encounter — testimony that underscored how the case has stretched well beyond the courtroom for the women involved. With the prosecution's case nearing its close, the defense's turn, and Brand's own expected testimony, looms as the next major phase of a trial that has already drawn sustained international attention.