RUSSELL BRAND CARRIED out rapes and sexual assaults while treating women as a \u201cdisposable commodity\u201d and a \u201cmeans to an end\u201d, his trial has heard.<\/p>\n
Brand, 51, faces allegations that he attacked women in a hotel room, at his luxury London home, in their workplaces, and in a Soho bar toilet.<\/p>\n
Prosecutor Riel Karmy-Jones KC told Southwark Crown Court Brand liked to exercise \u201ccontrol\u201d over the women, and felt \u201cdisdain\u201d towards them as he pursued his goal of sleeping with 5,000 women.<\/p>\n
She pointed jurors to his 2007 book, where he discussed his \u201cbirthright orgasm\u201d, and a 2017 interview Brand gave when he referred to women as \u201camusements\u201d in a \u201cplayground of orgasms\u201d.<\/p>\n
Karmy-Jones suggested Brand\u2019s attitude to the women\u2019s accusations was \u201cwhy on earth are they complaining about things that were plainly so trivial?\u201d.<\/p>\n
And she told the court in her closing speech to Brand\u2019s trial: \u201cWomen as a whole were disposable who didn\u2019t matter to him.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe didn\u2019t even need to know their names. They were just a means to an end.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs he said in a 2017 interview, they were the amusements in what he described as his playground of orgasms.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe suggest you will be satisfied so you are sure that the six complainants told you the truth, not an invented truth, not a reimagined truth, but the real truth of what happened to them.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe invite you to find him guilty on all counts.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brand faces three counts of rape, three counts of sexual assault, and one allegation of attempted indecent assault.<\/p>\n
One of his accusers was a 21-year-old fan when she met Brand after watching him perform stand-up comedy at the Hammersmith Apollo in 2009.<\/p>\n
She told the court she willingly had a threesome with Brand backstage on the night of the performance, then went to his Hampstead home a few days later to have sex.<\/p>\n
But she told jurors Brand forced her to shower and brush her teeth before sex, then during their time in bed he forced her into anal sex.<\/p>\n
Karmy-Jones suggested on Friday that Brand had been \u201cgetting off on the control\u201d when he forced the young woman to strip and shower while he watched.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe had showered before, she had put her make-up on, she had just tried to make herself pretty and he just shoved her in the shower,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe stood and stared at her while she stripped down and went in.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was like he was administering her \u2013 was it the control of the situation that he was getting off on?\u201d<\/p>\n
The alleged victim conceded in court that she had not \u201cpainted myself in a good light\u201d as she gave evidence of cheating on her boyfriend during the encounter at the Apollo, then knowing she was going to have sex when she later headed to Brand\u2019s house.<\/p>\n
But Karmy-Jones told the jury they could assess the woman as \u201ccompletely honest\u201d, who had been \u201cfair\u201d to Brand when she insisted that their sex at first \u2013 though it \u201cwasn\u2019t nice and wasn\u2019t done to pleasure her\u201d \u2013 had been consensual.<\/p>\n
The prosecutor said: \u201cShe said it felt like he could have been f****** a hole.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn effect, she said it could have been anyone or anything.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut she doesn\u2019t suggest it wasn\u2019t consensual.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the woman went on to tell the court that Brand had \u201cflipped her over\u201d and started to have painful anal sex without consent and without a condom.<\/p>\n
He only cared about his \u201cbirthright orgasm\u201d and ignored her pleas for him to stop, the prosecutor said, adding that she was \u201cjust another number to add to his 5,000 notches which he was marking up\u201d.<\/p>\n
Karmy-Jones said: \u201cShe did say no, she did say stop, but he did not.\u201d<\/p>\n
During his evidence on Wednesday, Brand said consent during sex is \u201cfundamental\u201d and suggested, to him, it is \u201cmore important that the sex itself\u201d.<\/p>\n
But Karmy-Jones said in her closing speech: \u201cMembers of the jury, taking into account what you have heard in this trial, does that ring true as something Mr Brand believed during this period of time?\u201d<\/p>\n
She went on to quote Brand\u2019s own words from his 2007 book, My Booky Wook, when he wrote: \u201cIf I want something \u2013 whether it\u2019s a job or a woman \u2013 I will determinedly, resolutely, remove anything that\u2019s in the way, until I possess the object of my desire.\u201d<\/p>\n
Karmy-Jones said: \u201cA lack of consent, no problem for Mr Brand, just an obstacle he would have to remove, or perhaps ignore.\u201d<\/p>\n
Turning to one of the other allegations, that Brand had thrust his head into a female Channel 4 worker\u2019s lap in 2009 when she had been forced to give him a massage, Karmy-Jones asked the jury to remember Brand himself saying he was \u201cstaggeringly famous\u201d at that time.<\/p>\n
She said: \u201cThe defendant was rampant in his desire to have sexual contact whenever he wanted, whenever he pleased.\u201d<\/p>\n
She asked the jury to consider how they would feel being forced to massage a powerful man in their workplace, and added: \u201cWomen, particularly subservient women, were simply a disposable commodity to him.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Friday morning, Karmy-Jones accused Brand of gaslighting the women after attacking them by giving them his email address or phone number and pretending nothing had happened.<\/p>\n
She said the six women, who do not know each other, have been \u201chaunted for years\u201d by their experiences, with one slipping into alcoholism and several saying they blamed themselves and were afraid to speak out.<\/p>\n
Describing Brand\u2019s alleged demeanour, she said: \u201cHis eyes changed, he snapped, from charming to frightening to nasty.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said they are \u201csix women who have nothing to gain, who have not sought the limelight, who have not looked out for some form of publicity, who have not taken part in a documentary, not made claims for compensation\u201d.<\/p>\n
She added: \u201cThere is no benefit to them, apart from perhaps some closure by coming before you and telling you their accounts of what happened to them so long ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brand is accused of trying to indecently assault an MTV worker by pulling her into a toilet in 2001, forcing himself on another MTV worker in a Soho bar toilet during a party in 2004, kissing and groping a radio worker in 2005 in a corridor, and raping a woman in a hotel room at the 1999 Labour Party conference.<\/p>\n
Brand denies all the charges.<\/p>\n
His barrister, Ian Winter KC, is due to deliver his closing speech on Monday.<\/p>\n
The trial continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"RUSSELL BRAND CARRIED out rapes and sexual assaults while treating women as a \u201cdisposable commodity\u201d and a \u201cmeans…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":670550,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[93,61,60,99,40078,109394,51180,283986,187647,5509],"class_list":["post-670549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-london","tag-rape","tag-russell-brand","tag-sexual-assault","tag-sexual-assaults-trial","tag-southwark-crown-court","tag-uk-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670549","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=670549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/670550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=670549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=670549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=670549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}