Six women who have been \u201chaunted\u201d by their encounters with Russell Brand came forward to give evidence against him with nothing to gain and no appetite for fame, a court has heard.<\/p>\n
The prosecutor, Riel Karmy-Jones KC, said the women, who do not know one another, had not been compelled to make police complaints by the \u201cmagic force\u201d of media reporting on Brand\u2019s alleged misconduct.<\/p>\n
In her closing speech, she told jurors at Southwark crown court that the women had \u201cvivid recollections\u201d and had \u201cbravely\u201d come forward to the tell \u201cthe truth\u201d after realising they were not alone.<\/p>\n
Brand, 51, is accused of seven offences, including rape and sexual assault, against six women in allegations spanning 10 years from 1999. He denies all the charges.<\/p>\n
Karmy-Jones denied that a 2023 Dispatches documentary about Brand had had \u201csuch a subliminal hold on the minds of six perfectly rational women\u201d to make them \u201cinvent, reimagine, recharacterise, recast\u201d their encounters with the comedian.<\/p>\n
She said the complainants had described a similar pattern of behaviour, saying: \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.<\/p>\n
\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
She said the women described how Brand\u2019s \u201cdemeanour changed\u201d before he assaulted them. \u201cListen to their accounts,\u201d the prosecutor told the jury. \u201cMany said he was nice and then it was like there was a personality change. A pivot. His eyes changed, he snapped from charming to frightening and nasty.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe didn\u2019t listen when they said no, he didn\u2019t stop, he didn\u2019t care, he kept pulling, pushing, tugging, thrusting. In the rape cases, he kept on going until he achieved his ultimate aim.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said the women had given the court \u201cspecific details\u201d about Brand\u2019s conduct. \u201cWhat\u2019s happened, we suggest, is these women have realised they\u2019re not alone and they\u2019ve bravely come before you to tell you the truth. The truth of what happened to them so many years ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe truth they have lived with, which in some cases has haunted them for years,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The prosecutor also accused Brand of using \u201cgaslighting\u201d to \u201cgood effect\u201d by asking some of his accusers for their telephone numbers or emails after the alleged assaults.<\/p>\n
She said women were a \u201cdisposable commodity\u201d to Brand and later added: \u201cHe was a defendant who was rampant in his desire to have sexual contact whenever her wished, whenever he pleased.\u201d<\/p>\n
Karmy-Jones described the account of the youngest witness, a fan then in her early 20s who accused the TV personality of anally raping her at his London townhouse after meeting her at the Hammersmith Apollo in 2009.<\/p>\n
He cared only 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
The court heard Brand had a \u201cflavour of disdain\u201d towards the allegations, which the prosecution suggested was \u201ca reflection\u201d of his \u201cwhole approach to the female species at that time\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWomen as a whole were disposable, they didn\u2019t matter to him. He 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,\u201d Karmy-Jones continued.<\/p>\n
Earlier on Friday the judge, Mr Justice Bennathan, gave legal directions to the jury in which he pointed out that they would have \u201crival arguments\u201d to consider.<\/p>\n
Brand is accused of three counts of rape and three counts of sexual assault. On Tuesday, an allegation of indecent assault was changed to a charge of attempted indecent assault. Brand has pleaded not guilty to all 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":"Six women who have been \u201chaunted\u201d by their encounters with Russell Brand came forward to give evidence against…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":819126,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-819125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=819125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819125\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/819126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=819125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=819125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=819125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}