Russell Brand’s wife has told a London court the British entertainer’s promiscuity left her “heartbroken” and caused their relationship to end years before they married.<\/p>\n
The actor and comedian is on trial in London’s Southwark Crown Court charged with three counts of rape, three counts of sexual assault and one count of attempted indecent assault.<\/p>\n
The 51-year-old is accused of committing the crimes against six women in the United Kingdom between 1999 and 2009.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, Brand told the jury himself no friends, acquaintances or colleagues were prepared to give evidence in his defence and had not touched him “with a bargepole” since the allegations became public.<\/p>\n
But on Thursday, Laura Brand took the stand, telling the jury her husband of nearly 10 years was a “very caring” sexual partner.<\/p>\n
Laura Brand was 19 when she met the then-31-year-old Brand after his show “Shame” at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August 2006.<\/p>\n
Laura Brand is the sister of well-known British model and television presenter Kirsty Gallacher, which the court heard Brand knew “within moments” of the pair meeting.<\/p>\n
The jury heard the two exchanged phone numbers, met up the next day and started dating shortly after.<\/p>\n
“I felt entirely cared for and looked after by Russell,” she told the jury, referring to their sex life together.<\/p>\n
Laura Brand tells court she wanted monogamy<\/p>\n
Laura Brand told the jury she was left “heartbroken” when the relationship ended a few months later, in February 2007.<\/p>\n
“I was aware that he liked women and I was aware towards the latter part of the year that he was engaging with other women,” she told the court.<\/p>\n
“I was not interested in having a relationship with him if he was sleeping with other people.<\/p>\n
“It was clear it was difficult for him to be monogamous.”<\/p>\n
The pair started dating again in 2015, Laura Brand told the court, before marrying in 2017.<\/p>\n
“Russell, my husband, is caring, he’s kind, he’s a wonderful father,” she told the jury.<\/p>\n
“I feel very seen by him; I love him very much.<\/p>\n
“Our relationship has always been about honesty.”<\/p>\n
The jury heard after the birth of the pair’s first child, Brand went on an American talk show and described his relationship with his wife while they were going out.<\/p>\n
The court heard that on the programme Brand said they “loved each other very much” but “I was in a phase where I thought the world was an amusement park full of orgasms”.<\/p>\n
Laura Brand told the court she probably did not watch the programme but did not dispute the comments.<\/p>\n
The court also heard that Laura Brand told a podcast in 2020 that when the pair rekindled their relationship years later, Brand was “so different to how I knew him before”.<\/p>\n
Under cross examination, Laura Brand said she did not know her now-husband during some of the period of his alleged offending.<\/p>\n
Brand nodded along to much of his wife’s evidence in court and at times closed his eyes, playing with the red scarf he was wearing.<\/p>\n
The jury also heard from two of Brand’s former partners.<\/p>\n
A dance teacher who had a three-year relationship with Brand from 1996, described the comedian as “gentle, warm, kind and adventurous” despite having acquired a “bad boy reputation”.<\/p>\n
In a statement read to the court, the woman said when she was with Brand, he was very different to the person he was in front of an audience.<\/p>\n
“At home he was more introspective, gentle and loving,” she said, but went on to say their relationship ended after she felt she could no longer trust him to be faithful.<\/p>\n
Another previous partner, who met Brand in 1999 at an English school in London, said the actor was “undoubtedly promiscuous” but described him as “very loving, thoughtful, patient and charming”.<\/p>\n
She said they never engaged in sexual activity without consent.<\/p>\n
Where to get help: Sexual Violence<\/p>\n
If it is an emergency and you feel like you or someone else is at risk, call 111.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Russell Brand’s wife has told a London court the British entertainer’s promiscuity left her “heartbroken” and caused their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":645398,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-645397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=645397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/645398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=645397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=645397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=645397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}