Police chief expects more Brand accusers to speak out

By Jordan Reynolds and David Hughes in London

London’s police chief would not be surprised if “many more” alleged victims of Russell Brand now came forward.

Brand has spent his first night in a cell before a potentially years-long imprisonment, after he was convicted of raping one of his fans and sexually assaulting three women during his showbiz heyday.

Brand, now 51, preyed on women he encountered while becoming one of Britain’s best-known stand-up comedians, a lauded TV and radio host and a Hollywood movie star.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Mark Rowley said he would not be surprised if “many more” alleged victims of Russell Brand now came forward.

He said high-profile cases often led to an “upsurge” in reporting because they gave victims the confidence to speak up about attackers in their cases.

“It does make a difference because people see it is possible, and you will be believed,” he told BBC Breakfast on Friday.

Brand’s victims went to court to reveal how he had forced them into sexual activity, sometimes within seconds of them first meeting, using his fame to determinedly pursue a goal of sex with 5,000 women.

A Southwark Crown Court jury on Thursday found him guilty of one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault.

He was cleared of two further charges of rape and one allegation of attempted indecent assault.

The Met has confirmed investigations are ongoing into two allegations of rape made against Brand.

At pre-trial court hearings, it was revealed one of the complaints comes from a woman who dated Brand when he was 30 and she was a 16-year-old schoolgirl.

“There’s two more cases we’re investigating at the moment. I clearly wouldn’t be surprised if many more came forward,” Rowley said of Brand.

The shamed comedian-turned-conspiracy theorist will spend the weekend in custody before he returns to the same court on Monday to learn his prison sentence.

His wife Laura Gallacher, who attended much of the trial, was seen to hunch over in the public gallery as Justice Joel Bennathan told Brand that he faced an inevitable and lengthy jail term.

A couple of months after he started hosting Big Brother’s Big Mouth in 2004, Brand sexually assaulted a woman in the Nordic bar in Soho, central London, by grabbing her breasts in the middle of the bar during a party of his former MTV colleagues.

She accused him of dragging her to the men’s toilets and orally raping her, but the jury found Brand not guilty on that count.

A worker at Capital Radio said Brand forced himself on to her during a visit to the station in 2005, pinning her to a wall while he groped and “sloppily” kissed her.

Brand was found guilty of sexually assaulting her.

The victim told jurors that members of his entourage laughed as they saw the attack happen.

He was also convicted of anally raping a 21-year-old super fan in his Hampstead townhouse in 2009, days after meeting her at one of his Hammersmith Apollo shows.

The same year, during a recording session at Channel 4, Brand sexually assaulted another woman by thrusting his head into her groin after she was told to give him a massage.

In September 2023, an investigation by journalists from The Sunday Times, The Times, and Channel 4 Dispatches published accusations from women who said they had been raped, sexual abused, and degraded by Brand.

The revelations prompted four women to come forward to accuse Brand of criminal offences, while another two women came forward once Brand had been charged.