It is the verdict that countless people have been hoping for. The most deserving, of course, are the women who have been raped or sexually assaulted by Russell Brand, who was convicted of one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault in court today. After a gruelling and frequently ugly trial – in which their testimony was, inevitably, called into question by Brand’s probing defence lawyers – they have been believed over this preening popinjay, and justice has finally been done.
A truly appalling man has been found guilty of heinous crimes
Brand will be sentenced on Monday – a custodial sentence is inevitable. He has been remanded in custody. Even as he mouthed ‘I’m good, I’m good’ to his defence team and supporters – words that he may yet come to regret – he now knows that he is likely to spend years inside jail. This episode brings to an end a career that began with this most loathsome and arrogant of men taking delight in the power that he had over his female admirers – a power that he detailed, in a way that was deservedly used against him in court, in his pitiful autobiography My Booky Wook. It continued with a strange acceptance of him in mainstream circles. He married Katy Perry, became a Hollywood film star, was a household name and caused more misery to his victims than virtually anyone else in a similar position of fame. Now those days are well and truly over.
This has been a very long time coming. Justice for his crimes is something that, at times, seemed impossibly distant. Brand, in recent years, has been a diminished figure, apparently jumping on whatever bandwagon would find space for him – not least the MAGA movement and evangelical Christianity, both of which must now be regretting their associations with him. He is still a figure of enormous wealth and power. But, thankfully, the court has not been swayed by his standing or fame, and his conviction ends his public career for good.
His downfall was precipitated by a 2023 Dispatches documentary, entitled In Plain Sight, and the parallel with another famous celebrity sex offender, Jimmy Savile, is unmistakable. Like Savile, Brand was an eccentric figure whose apparently flamboyant and loquacious persona concealed a vicious, calculating wickedness that led to endless degrees of misery for those he prayed upon. But unlike Savile, who went to whatever fiery pity his crimes merited, Brand has been tried and found guilty in this world, rather than the next.
Many will believe that such a cancerous figure should never have been given the indulgence and leeway that he received. Yet it is an indictment of those who not only tolerated Brand but enabled him that he was allowed to rise to the eminence that he enjoyed. Owen Jones, ridiculously, wrote in 2015 that Brand’s endorsement of Ed Miliband and Labour was likely to sway the general election that year. It did not, but there was no denying Brand’s quasi-messianic power over a certain kind of person, often young and credulous. It was this power that he exerted over countless women.
The sentence that will be passed next week will be lengthy, and wholly merited. And hopefully other celebrities, some of whom were high-profile friends with Brand when it was considered acceptable to pall around with him, will be looking nervously over their shoulders for whether it is their turn next. This is not the shrill outcry of social media ‘justice’, but a carefully considered verdict arrived at by a jury of Brand’s peers. A truly appalling man has been found guilty of heinous crimes, and everyone who cares about right being done should breathe a sigh of relief that the reckoning has arrived at last.
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