Russell Brand’s Defense Comes to a Close in His U.K. Rape Trial

Russell Brand’s rape trial is coming to an end, and his defense team’s closing speech reiterated claims that “Brand is innocent.” The comedian’s barrister, Ian Winter KC, argued that that despite what he called mischaracterizations of his client in the media, Brand is not a psychopath and only a psychopath could have committed the behavior he is being accused of. “You would have to be a psychopath to be raping someone and asking them if they were enjoying it at the same time,” Winter said, referring to the first of Brand’s accusers, per Sky News. He then noted that Brand “left his actual email address — rapists do not leave their address. He left photos she’d taken of him, rapists do not leave their photographs; and he kissed her good-bye, or tried to, when he left.”

Brand is pleading not guilty to allegations from six women spanning a decade, from 1999 to 2009. He is facing one count of rape from 1999, one count of attempted indecent assault from 2001, one count each of oral rape and sexual assault from 2004, another count of sexual assault from between 2004 and 2005, and counts of both anal rape and sexual assault in 2009. That adds up to three counts of rape, three counts of sexual assault, and one charge of attempted indecent assault. 

In Brand’s defense, Winter came out strongly against a 2023 Channel Four documentary about the comedian, in which five women accused him of “rape, sexual assaults, and emotional abuse.” Winter said the journalists involved with the documentary “poisoned the well of justice” by prompting other women to come forward with allegations. “They are all, we say, thoroughly contaminated by the program,” Winter claimed. “The very existence of them as complainants is fundamentally corrupted by that program and publicity and [that] renders it fundamentally unfair.” Speaking about a woman who says Brand attempted to drag her into a bathroom for sex while she resisted, for example, Winter claimed this was not criminal and she was only accusing Brand because she had been “poisoned” by the documentary. “He was behaving like a crazy lunatic,” Winter said. “But when she put her foot down and said, ‘No way,’ he accepted it.”