A woman who has accused Russell Brand of rape repeatedly insisted in court that she did not consent and had not agreed the comedian could “treat her like an animal”.
Brand, 51, is accused of raping the woman at the end of a sexual encounter at his £2.3 million Hampstead townhouse in 2009.
Giving evidence at Southwark Crown Court on Wednesday, the woman told jurors she engaged willingly in a threesome with Brand backstage at the Hammersmith Apollo despite having a boyfriend at the time, then agreed to have sex with him at his home a few days later.
She alleges Brand forced her into anal sex without warning, at the end of a consensual but “awkward” sexual encounter.
“I haven’t painted myself in a very good light,” she told the court.
“I had just met Russell Brand at the Hammersmith Apollo, I did have a partner I really loved, and I made a huge mistake.”
Brand’s barrister, Ian Winter KC, highlighted that the woman was a “massive fan” of Brand at the time, and he suggested she had gone to his home knowing they would have “transactional” sex.
She replied: “I didn’t think I was going to be his girlfriend.”
Mr Winter pressed on: “In a way you went along with what he wanted because you were impressionable and obsessed with him,” before suggesting the woman had “agreed to” the anal sex.
She replied: “I didn’t agree to do it.”
The court has heard the woman has spoken to friends, family, and a journalist in the years since her interactions with Brand, and she has also battled alcoholism.
In her interview with police, she repeatedly made a point of saying that she had consented to the Apollo sexual encounter and had willingly gone to Brand’s house for sex. But she insists that she never agreed to anal sex.
She told the court in evidence: “We are not here to discuss my morality.”
Mr Winter put to her: “What you have struggled with is you went there consenting to what happened.”
She replied: “I didn’t consent to what happened to me. I’ve said that repeatedly in the questioning.”
The woman told the court she encountered Brand at the Edinburgh Festival after the alleged rape, and in a text exchange she told him: “I think you’ve pushed me far enough, you treated me like an animal.”
She says Brand replied: “I’m sorry” immediately afterwards, and she told the jury: “I feel how I felt at his house was that I felt completely degraded and like I’d been treated like an animal, like a piece of meat.”
Mr Winter, presenting Brand’s case that she had consented to the whole sexual encounter, told the woman: “He had pushed you and probably had treated you like an animal, but he didn’t rape you.”
The woman replied: “I didn’t consent.”
She added: “I carried that feeling of guilt and shame and I felt lots of things but particularly for exactly the reason that you are doing right here that I brought it on myself.
“That just because you go somewhere willingly and the outcome in the end is not consensual, it’s a different scenario.”
Earlier in the cross-examination, Mr Winter pointed out that Brand was named “shagger of the year” three years running by The Sun newspaper.
He said Brand’s Apollo show was “crammed largely with young women”, adding: “On occasions, women were actually throwing their bras at him and lifting their shirts to show their naked breasts at him.”
The woman agreed the tone of Brand’s show, including stand-up material about “the previously unspoken nature” of sex, would not now be tolerated.
“Things have changed between those times and now,” he said.
“In terms of that sort of attitude towards women, things have fundamentally changed now.”
Brand denies three counts of rape, three counts of sexual assault, and one charge of indecent assault.
The trial continues.
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