Russell Brand accused of rape, sexual assaults and abuse: The Times/Sunday Times story

[BrontëParsonage]

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/d4d93e74-5478-11ee-bc18-cbdd58145dc6?shareToken=b3cd34ae6268daad4741e6c092ceac97

I think many more will come forward; not all will be verifiable but enough will.

I then think women will start speaking start speaking up about others.

There were episodes in the book in which he described how he and Paul McKenna ( who sounds even worse....) would go on the hunt, that were pretty gruesome.

Review of one of his shows. He called a rape helpline for the lolz.

www.theguardian.com/stage/theatreblog/2008/jul/16/russellbrand

Anna, the 16 yr old is on woman's hour today.

She would like the law to be changed around teen relationships with adults

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1035333/Outcry-Brands-joke-police-hunting-sex-fiend.html

I think I'm going to have to entirely disengage from this subject.
I am finding it incredibly upsetting to see how many women are finding justifications for this behaviour.
I really do feel we are making progress in the world but there is so far to go if even the feminism boards of Mumsnet are this depressing. I dare not look too deeply into the wider picture as I know it will be rife with rape apologists, horrendous victim blaming and misogony.
For the record I believe the victims and I hope they find peace. Fuck Russell Brand and anyone that supports him (or Depp or Tate or any number of these hideous abusive men).

I think it's more that any trending or active thread will attract comments, not always from feminists.

I'm so sick of this.

All our daughters are at risk of meeting men like this.

When does it stop?

How does it stop?

People say he's been 'hiding in plain sight' and intimate that the background is him being 'promiscuous'.

I say the background is sexism-saturated rape culture.

He doesn't stand out because our culture struggles to recognise that women and girls' wellbeing and safety is as important as men's egos.

Men using women is sanctioned, expected, excused and tacitly endorsed.

Women 'putting up with it' and staying silent is expected.

is that all of the 'incidents' arose in the context of an already existing and 'consesnsual' relationship - even the 16 year old.

If those things had happened in the context of a relationship ( however short lived) with someone non famous would the women ( or myself in that situation) have come forward - or would they ( I) have just moved on and put it down to a bad experience?

If someone carried on having sex with me while I tried to get them to stop, tried something like strangulation or forced oral sex without asking me first, or secretly removed a condom so it was unprotected, I would absolutely call that sexual assualt, and probably report to 101. At the very least, I would report them to the dating app I met them on (how I am currently meeting men).

I think everyone should be able to refer to their own experiences as how they feel about them - but I am disheartened at some of the views regarding the standards of what girls & women should have to put up with @RebelliousCow

EDIT: and to add, the most important thing, rape is rape, regardless of a pre-existing relationship, or whether 5 mins ago you were having consensual sex. If someone asks you stop, or indicates they want you to stop, and you ignore this- that is rape.

Woman's hour

Anna speaks to Emma:

"You believe a bbc chauffeur driven car picked you up at 16 and drove you to Russel Brand's house"

"Yes"

People say he's been 'hiding in plain sight' and intimate that the background is him being 'promiscuous'.

I say the background is sexism-saturated rape culture.

He doesn't stand out because our culture struggles to recognise that women and girls' wellbeing and safety is as important as men's egos.

I think the hiding in plain sight is part of his narcissism. He gets off on it, like Savile did.

He also knows how he can manipulate other people to his advantage. I have told several times here and did on the other thread how Savile licked a young woman's bare arm at a work event held by the company I worked for. He was the guest of honour, so obviously no one challenged him.

Alice sorry

Satire but looking at the experiences of women who have reported famous men, accurate
https://newsthump.com/2023/09/18/why-didnt-these-women-come-forward-sooner-ask-men-immediately-dismissing-them-as-lying-sluts-looking-for-a-payday/?fbclid=IwAR0TjL8l1pqIqtz3AvpZ3M2aWU3mt0jipejiwYuRCMYQiPi1XLv9IYBENdg_aem_AXeNRDay-3LgGLV8aR8FLgBicenQs1KZ0udKz9tyRvIXd30rXLAeosiAvRe0P7zjqyM

Kirk Douglas. Never had a wife he didn't cheat on, was big on Civil Rights and anti McCarthyism .
Liked " non vanilla sex". Said that he preferred European women as they were more " open minded" pertaining to BDSM ( from his end) and non monogamy ( from his end).
Took one of his sons to lose his virginity to a prostitute. Gay son killed himself. Decades long rumoured to have raped Natalie Wood and had his name called up in the infamous Black Dahlia los Angeles murder case . Over represented his place in getting a blacklisted writer back in the swing of things. Most famous son saying it isn't easy being his son .
Only on the death of his wife after he died at over one hundred years old ( I always wondered if he hung on waiting for all who could talk to die) was it accepted that he did in fact rape Natalie Wood and his most famous son, Michael not disputing it.
Russell Brand is a rapist. The train of thought that designates the court of law the arbiter of all truth is disingenuous and is never trotted out on behalf of those designated as racist, cheats, fraudsters, etc.
It's ALWAYS when a male is accused of or shown to be some type of nonce, whether famous or not.
And it's always some fucking PickMe female fighting to get front of line to defend or both sides on behalf of some male ingrate who if he knew her and if he does, laughs at her behind her back. Or worse in the case of a mother I knew in a Kingston ghetto who when her son was accused of terrorising a woman in the community, she would strip off her clothes and sell herself to raise his bail money .
Ten years of this and he turned around and raped her.
And yes; an eye should be kept on sex offender defenders. And yes, I do have more of a handle on righteousness than they.
None of you can chat to me.

Now caught up with Emma's interview with Alice. I admire Alice's ability to talk so calmly and clearly about her experiences. I was interested that she was firmly of the view that building up a fanbase of conspiracy theorists was a deliberate tactic.

I'm a bit annoyed about this "he's a sex addiction, not a rapist" line. There seems to be little said about 1) the ongoing debate about whether or not sex addiction is real and 2) that "sex addicts" often engage in non consensual sexual behaviours.

Everything I see is entirely consistent with him being a sexually entitled narcissist who objectifies women, pays to get his needs met and boasts about pushing boundaries around pain and consent. I have no reason at all to think he's not a rapist.

We really need to make it much harder for men like him to be accepted for this disgusting behaviour.

I’m concerned about his wife and daughters as well. I hope someone is supporting them and checking that they haven’t also been subject to abuse.

Me, too, Alstroemeria123.

https://twitter.com/loopylooozz/status/1703405054063972755

'As well as the sexual assaults and rapes, Dispatches details Brand’s inappropriate behaviours on set and with colleagues, such as exposing his genitalia.

C4 now has a zero-tolerance approach to these unacceptable behaviour.

Will this apply to males like Jordan Grey here?'

I also wonder why this investigation now? What is the motive? It is years after the alleged incidents.

Why investigate any historical crime? Because victims deserve justice, perpertators should be held accountable, and the public should be protected from further crimes @RebelliousCow

Do you there shouldn't have been an investigation into Saville? Rotherham?

I also have concern for his pregnant wife and daughters
So do I, but I don't see how that's mutually exclusive with releasing this documentary which has now led to police involvement.

An account of Brand's sexual 'addiction':

'One day I had to write a victims' list - a litany of the women I'd wronged as a result of my sexual addiction. I felt like Saddam Hussein trying to pick out individual Kurds.'

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/nov/12/biography.mikeleigh

Here's the description of what he did to his dog. When he said he kicked it cruelly back down to the bottom again, my instinct was instantly to minimise, to think, 'Well, he probably didn't literally mean kick cruelly down the stairs, because who could do a thing like that?'

I had to remind myself, no, hiding in plain sight. Just like the mascara blowjob joke, and the spit joke, and all the other gross jokes. It is interesting - that desire to believe better of someone when they are telling you they're a fucking horrible person, and when I always found Russell Brand completely repellent and charmless anyway, so wasn't even fighting a former opinion.

That was the exact thought that came to mind when I saw his pre expose video.

So fucking obvious.

I posted this on the 'biggest news story 3' thread but putting it here too - I'm not easily shaken but I was by this, and I think it speaks to comparisons with Saville and also the animal cruelty stuff:

"Just to add - incredibly, I have personally been in a situation where I felt forced to step in between Russell Brand and some younger women, because boundaries were being pushed in the most extraordinarily rapid, completely overt, and thus very hard to challenge manner. They were young women in a work environment and he was a celebrity, so they were trapped. It was exactly the kind of 'look at me being - or perhaps pretending to be - a predator ' hiding-in-plain-sight MO that the documentary tried (and failed I think) to describe.

He knew exactly what I was doing and gave me what I can only describe as a look of pure hatred, as cliched as that sounds. He quickly turned that look into a mocking attempt to 'sexy-hug' me too (I was late-forties then, it was designed to humiliate me as I was so obviously undesirable and shrivelled up). His eyes were just.. dead. It genuinely frightened me and I am a loud-mouth rad fem who tells men in vans to fuck off etc.

I've never forgotten it, it was absolutely extraordinary. It's the only time I've ever felt like I've come into contact with something like a psychopath."