Russell Brand charged with multiple counts of rape and assault in the UK

Joseph Serna and Alexandra Del Rosario, Los Angeles Times on Apr 4, 2025

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British comedian Russell Brand has been charged with rape and assault by police in the U.K.

The 49-year-old actor, known for his work in R-rated comedies including “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” and “Get Him to the Greek,” was charged with single counts of rape, indecent assault, oral rape and two counts of sexual assault, the Metropolitan Police Service announced in a statement.

The charges are connected to alleged attacks on multiple women between 1999 and 2005. He is scheduled to face charges before the Westminster Magistrates’ Court on May 2.

Brand relocated his family last year from the U.K. to Santa Rosa Beach, Fla., shortly before the 2024 U.S. presidential election, the Sun reported in February.

Brand has pivoted away from acting in recent years and worked to refashion himself as an anti-establishment commentator, and made news a year ago announcing he had been baptized.

The baptism came months after numerous women alleged they were sexually assaulted by him between 2006 and 2013. The accusations first surfaced in a joint investigation published in September 2023 by the Times of London and U.K. Channel 4’s “Dispatches” news program.

Brand denied the allegations a day before their publication, saying in a YouTube video, “The relationships I had were absolutely, always consensual.”

He added: “I was always transparent about that then. Almost too transparent, and I’m being transparent now. To see that transparency metastasized into something criminal that I absolutely deny makes me question: Is there another agenda at play?”

In November 2023, the BBC reported it had received five workplace complaints about the actor, who was a BBC Radio host from 2006 to 2008. Additionally, a woman who worked as an extra in the 2011 “Arthur” movie reboot sued Brand in Suffolk County, N.Y., under the state’s Adult Survivors Act, which expanded the statute of limitations window on some sexual assault cases. She alleges he assaulted her in a bathroom during filming in 2010.

A month later, Brand was interviewed “under caution by detectives in relation to a further six, non-recent, sexual offenses,” the Associated Press reported.

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Former Times staff writer Meredith Blake contributed to this report.