{"id":656003,"date":"2026-10-16T00:10:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-16T00:10:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/656003\/"},"modified":"2026-10-16T00:10:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T00:10:13","slug":"i-couldnt-fight-back-woman-accusing-russell-brand-of-rape-tells-london-court-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/656003\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I couldn\u2019t fight back\u2019, woman accusing Russell Brand of rape tells London court \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A woman accusing Russell Brand<\/a> of raping her in a hotel room broke down in tears in court as she insisted \u201cI couldn\u2019t fight back\u201d.<\/p>\n

Brand, now 51, is accused of forcing himself on the woman after meeting her at a cabaret show at the 1999 UK<\/a> Labour Party conference.<\/p>\n

She told Southwark Crown Court in London<\/a> on Thursday that she invited Brand to her hotel room believing he was gay and says she did not feel able to flee when he turned on her.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know he raped me, I know I said \u2018no, no, I don\u2019t want this\u2019\u201d, she said, in a series of exchanges with Brand\u2019s barrister Ian Winter, telling the him: \u201cI am the one who is being silenced.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said she struggled to breathe when Brand was on top of her and told the court: \u201cI did not want sex from him … I couldn\u2019t fight back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Raising her voice, she added: \u201cI don\u2019t love him, I don\u2019t find him attractive. Never have.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brand has been accused of telling the woman \u201cit\u2019s just fun\u201d as he was raping her that night in 1999.<\/p>\n

He denies allegations from six different women and has pleaded not guilty to three counts of rape, three counts of sexual assault and one count of indecent assault.<\/p>\n

In her recorded interview with the police, which was played to the court on Thursday morning, the woman said she talked to Brand at the cabaret show and invited him to continue their conversation at her hotel room when he showed interest in her political ideas.<\/p>\n

She says Brand, once in the room, stripped off his shirt and began to \u201cprance around\u201d like an ostrich and perform \u201cgoose steps\u201d in the style of Basil Fawlty.<\/p>\n

The woman said she first saw Brand as an \u201cintellectual person\u201d when they met and believed she was \u201csexually safe with him\u201d.<\/p>\n

When Winter suggested she \u201cwanted a young man who you met for a short time to join you in a very small bedsit\u201d, she responded: \u201cI thought he was a gay man, very softly spoken, very effeminate.\u201d<\/p>\n

She responded angrily to the suggestion that she \u201cfell under his spell\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s not correct,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe seemed to have empathy for what I was saying, but all the time he seems to have had something else in his mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

She told police Brand had a \u201csnake-like, disgusting\u201d body and she told the court she saw him \u201cas a bit of an \u2018ugh\u2019\u201d who made her feel \u201cnauseous\u201d.<\/p>\n

Over the course of nearly two hours of heated cross-examination, Winter accused the woman of not telling the truth about her encounter with Brand and suggested she would have left the hotel room if she was in danger of being raped.<\/p>\n

She said she was \u201cterrified\u201d as she complied with Brand\u2019s request that she photograph him and baulked at the idea that she could have fled.<\/p>\n

She asked: \u201cWhere am I supposed to go? Run into the night and him chase after me?<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course I wanted to distance myself but I had nowhere to run.\u201d<\/p>\n

At one point, Winter also clashed with trial judge Joel Bennathan, who had to \u201cshush\u201d the barrister during a tense exchange in court.<\/p>\n

The barrister was grilling the alleged victim on whether she said out loud that she did not wanted to have sex with Brand during the hotel encounter.<\/p>\n

When the judge interjected to point out evidence the court had earlier heard on the video-recorded interview with police, Winter said tersely: \u201cForgive me … I am conducting a cross-examination.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the two legal figures then spoke at the same time, the judge said to the barrister: \u201cShush. I\u2019m the judge.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the close of the cross-examination, the woman referenced Brand\u2019s recent appearance on Piers Morgan\u2019s show \u201ctalking about shame and reputation\u201d, and told the court: \u201cI am the one being silenced.\u201d<\/p>\n

Faced with the suggestion that she wanted to have sex with Brand at the time, she added: \u201cI can 100 per cent tell you I did not consent, I did not find him attractive.\u201d<\/p>\n

The trial continues. \u2013 PA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A woman accusing Russell Brand of raping her in a hotel room broke down in tears in court…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":656004,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[93,61,60,99,109394,303],"class_list":["post-656003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-london","tag-russell-brand","tag-united-kingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=656003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/656004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=656003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=656003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=656003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}