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<\/p>\nEnglish entertainer Russell Brand asked a woman to take photos of him “prancing” in “horrible budgie smugglers”, shortly before he raped her, a London court has heard.<\/p>\n
Warning: This story contains details some readers may find distressing.<\/p>\n
Mr Brand, 51, is standing trial in Southwark Crown Court accused of several sexual offences relating to six women over a 10-year period from 1999.<\/p>\n
He has been charged with three counts of rape, three counts of sexual assault, and one count of indecent assault. He pleaded not guilty to all.<\/p>\n
The trial began this week, and on Thursday, local time, the court heard evidence from a woman given the pseudonym Ms A, who claims Mr Brand raped her at a political conference in 1999.<\/p>\n
Pictures she took of Mr Brand in her hotel room on the night the actor and comedian’s alleged assault were shown to the jury.<\/p>\n
Ms A told the court she had met Mr Brand, who was performing but not yet famous, on the sidelines of the Labour Party’s conference in Bournemouth.<\/p>\n
She told the court they started talking about politics and discussed the possibility of collaborating on a creative project.<\/p>\n
Ms A told the court she invited him to continue speaking in her hotel room and did not initially fear for her safety because she thought Mr Brand was gay.<\/p>\n
“I blame myself for inviting him back to my room \u2026 that was my office. That was my workspace,” she told the court, through tears. “He violated that space.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
This image of Russell Brand from 1999 was shown to the jury on Thursday. (Supplied: Metropolitan Police)<\/p>\n
Mr Brand was aged 24 at the time of the alleged assault, and is now 51.<\/p>\n
The court played video on Thursday of an interview police conducted with Ms A in September 2023, in which she outlined her accusations.<\/p>\n
In the video, Ms A told a detective that when she and Mr Brand arrived at her hotel room, she suggested he make a cup of tea while she went to the bathroom.<\/p>\n
She told the detective that when she emerged, Mr Brand had undressed and was in his underwear.<\/p>\n
“He was prancing around, I remember him prancing around being silly and asking me to take pictures of him,” Ms A told the detective.<\/p>\n
In the video played to the court Ms A told the detective Mr Brand was “jumping up and down and being silly like an ostrich kicking his legs up”.<\/p>\n
She said he then pushed her onto the bed and raped her, which she described in detail.<\/p>\n
If you or anyone you know needs help:<\/p>\n
Later in the day, the jury saw some of the pictures Ms A said Mr Brand asked her to take.<\/p>\n
Mr Brand’s barrister Ian Winter KC challenged Ms A’s memory of the alleged assault during his cross-examination.<\/p>\n
“You fell under his spell,” he said to Ms A. “He’s a very attractive young man. He’s brilliant. He is very charismatic … you wanted to spend more time with him.”<\/p>\n
Ms A replied that was “incorrect”.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I thought he was a gay man, somebody who was intellectual and somebody who was friendly,” she said.<\/p>\n
Ms A told the court she had no idea why Mr Brand had asked her to take photos of him wearing his “horrible budgie smugglers”.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
British actor and comedian Russell Brand arrives at Southwark Crown Court on Thursday. (Reuters: Corey Rudy)<\/p>\n
In the video played to the court, Ms A wiped away tears as she described how she felt “guilty” and “dirty” after the alleged assault, but that Mr Brand had acted like “nothing was wrong”.<\/p>\n
She also said she did not tell police about the alleged assault until 2023 because she did not think she would be believed, but decided to after she saw a documentary airing allegations of misconduct about Mr Brand.<\/p>\n
The trial continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"English entertainer Russell Brand asked a woman to take photos of him “prancing” in “horrible budgie smugglers”, shortly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":929410,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[64,63,134,251987,496270],"class_list":["post-929409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-russell-brand","tag-southwark-crown-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=929409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929409\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/929410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=929409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=929409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=929409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}