Russell Brand 🤢🤮

[Netcurtainnelly]

🤢 🤢 Russell Brand. I never liked him anyway, Now he's on trail. Denies all charges of course.

No one has to prove consent or otherwise. In many ways legally its not relevant whether a person consents or not. The contest is, did the defendant reasonably believe she did consent. If the defendant reasonably believed she did consent at the time, there is no rape.

I believe that reference in his book can be mentioned in court by the prosecution as evidence of previous behaviour. I think the only problem could be proving what he wrote as “truth”.

I was talking more of the thread sea lions tbh

We need to start a new thread

Sea lions?

Thanks for this clarification.

Agree. The apology and the admission to his flat mate

How can he have “believed” woman 4 consented to anal sex? Its not something you try and hope she’s up for it. It’s not a standard sex activity for women . She would have wanted lube plus assurance he would stop at any time if she asked. It’s not even a question

Brand in the Docky Wock

Glad that you agree.

I can't help but think that a man who truly believed everything was consensual would ask, 'what on earth are you talking about?! Everything we did was consensual?!' to the animal comment or similar.

Most men-if innocent- would be deeply affronted and scared by what she implied. It would be like, WTF?!

Not 'I'm sorry.'

That flatmate' s evidence is also damning.

Thanks for the legal clarification.

The question is what does the complainant need to do to ensure the defendant can be in no doubt be seen as not having a reasonable belief in consent?

Would silence be seen as acquiesence? It does appear the woman stated that she asked him to stop but the defence would argue can you prove this?

Can you tell me, and this is a genuine question, is it likely that the judge will be aware of RB urinating in the street, masturbating other men in public toilets and having non stop sex with women?
Is a judge formally made aware of his contributing characteristics and previous behaviours? Or is it a responsibility of a judge to separate any other facts from the actual case in front of them, in order to avoid possible bias?
I can't imagine someone as intelligent as a judge reading through red top tabloids, which is where RB was reported on for his behaviour. So unless they are informed as part of the case, I don't know that they would be aware.
I also imagine that a judge must surely be trained and instructed to ignore any other information they may hear about an individual other than specifically what the defendant is standing in court for.
I'd be interested to hear more of an explanation on this from anyone who knows more than I do.
As an aside, yesterday I posted a clip of RB fumbling through his bible during an interview with Piers Morgan. Last night I decided to watch the entire very long interview, and he most certainly can't cope well with being challenged in any way. I could easily see he has a very short fuse if he doesn't like what the other person is saying. And I concluded that he appears within that interview to have an emotionally unstable personality. I would love for the judge to see this for themselves as it is big indicator of his character, but of course the challenges in court put to RB will be answered by his lawyer who will be expertly trained in answering challenges, and RB himself won't show what a short fuse he has. Or am I wrong? Will RB himself be answering challenging questions?
As another aside, learnt from the interview, Bear Grylls is supporting and backing him?!?! How could anyone in the public eye support and back this man when he is accused of multiple rapes of women?

I don't know. Anal may be standard in some women's sex lives (though as you say a minority). I suppose it's not the acts that are up for debate but consent.

I think the jury will have to consider what it means to give consent for conventional sex but then to withdraw it for a type of sexthat was both uncalled for and painful.

I believe the woman by the way but I can see how from an evidential point of view this is not a slam dunk conviction.

God the cross examination is brutal if anyone looks at a live report. The cross examination won't make headlines but I can really see why women would not want to be a claimant in a rape trial. It seems horrible to in reality be accused of lying and having your testimony pulled apart to such an extent you break down emotionally. I guess everyone is entitled to a defence so maybe I am just moaning.

It's like Schofield being the monumental victim and "Everyone be nice to me because I'm gay" after getting caught shagging young men who he'd known since they were 6 behind his wife's back.

I bet his wife hated his guts at that point.

The judge may be aware of all this - but the judge won’t decide whether RB is guilty of the charges on the indictment. The jury will decide that. OFC the jury may be aware of all this stuff too but the judge will give directions after the jury’s heard all the evidence, which will likely include directing them to decide whether he is guilty according to the evidence they’ve heard and whether they think he is guilty of the charges on the indictment. The judge will also explain the burden of proof, what the prosecution must prove beyond reasonable doubt for the jury to find RB guilty. I think it’s inevitable those directions will include directing the jury to disregard anything they already know about RB that isn’t evidence they’ve heard during the trial. There’ll be template/precedent directions giving wording as to how the judge should direct, to deal with the situation where a defendant is a celebrity and therefore there’ll be other information about things he’s done, which is already in the public domain.

It seems all the things on this thread about women not being judged and rape is rape independent of context of surrounding events in the evening are being thrown out of the window by the defence. Not a lawyer but would anyone expect the prosecution to start objecting?

@mids2019can you give an example of a defence line of questioning you’d have expected the prosecution to challenge? I haven’t followed the reporting of the trial.

ETA: I’m a lawyer but don’t practise crime.

I think his previous scandalous and revolting behaviour plays a big part in who he is standing in the court room.

A lot of people in courts are assessed by prior behaviours not just "juicy" headlines.

My opinion of him isnt just being on this court case. I thought he was a bit of a creep and horrible x years ago. My friend actually said to me theres something sexy about him. Im like hes prancing about on stage like a lanky Larry with a horrific hair do, slimey looking probably rather smelly, hes not funny or witty and the fact he says " ladies just because im a celebrity doesnt mean you cannot sleep with me, so form an orderly queue and wait your turn" just made me shudder. And then after his gigs there were women literally lined up one by one outside his dressing room awaiting their go whilst listening in to the carry on inside or having an idle chat with the lady whose due to go in before you. Gross.

I definitely think the judges should take everything into account, his character, his demeanour, his history, how he perceives women, his conversations with Jimmy Saville, the lot. Hes utterly vile. A real sleaze ball.

Still looking at the cross examination and while I perfectly understand the need for free reporting in trials the verbatim reporting ofthe defence at work I can see as being a reason in itself as being a reason not to report. Isn't the woman who was accusing anal rape being retraimatised. She is obviously crying in the dock and yet she has somehow got to bravely stand there and continue to field questions that are carefully crafted to allow the jury to judge her character and portray her as lying.

Judges in England and Wales generally start from the proposition that jurors can follow directions. That sometimes surprises non-lawyers. Many people instinctively think, "Once you've heard something, you can't un-hear it." But the Court of Appeal has repeatedly taken the view that:

jurors aren’t fools
publicity alone rarely makes a fair trial impossible; and
careful directions, juror screening, and judicial control of the evidence are usually sufficient.

However, there’s also a compelling counterargument.
Many lawyers, academics and commentators have questioned whether jurors can truly disregard years of publicity about a famous defendant. Human beings inevitably bring background knowledge and assumptions into the jury box. So while the legal system regards a fair trial as achievable, it would be unrealistic to pretend that extensive pre-trial publicity creates no difficulty at all.

I think the key question is not whether every juror arrived completely ignorant of RB. In a celebrity case that may be impossible. The real question is whether the jury can put aside what they may have heard previously and decide whether the prosecution has proved each count beyond reasonable doubt on the evidence presented in court. That is the standard the system is designed to achieve.

Arguably a more pertinent question is how much this trial is costing in terms of time and resources (and pressure on a criminal justice system already stretched to breaking point) when it could all have been avoided, had a privileged and wealthy man just wised up and behaved himself.

I don't know (as a non lawyer) but the case seems to be about consent for anal sex after vaginal sex and the focus should be the events around the crime itself. The defence has brought up the lewd behaviour of women at a show, the fact that the complaint lusted after Brand as a celebratory, the fact that RB had in public said he liked anal sex (maybe in a show?) and the suggestion the defendent went to Brands house fully knowing it was for sex. There just seems to be lot of questioning away from the central allegations with the aim of degrading the woman's character. Is the fact everyone knew Brand liked anal sex meant to be a defence?

I was appalled when Fifty Shades of Grey topped best-seller lists round the world, too, and was the fastest-selling paperback in the UK since records started. My revulsion was not just because it was badly-written, but because the content was difficult to stomach – even my SM friends thought it was bad, mostly because there was never any safe word in the wretched thing and they found that abhorrent. (No, I haven't read it to check that; I took their word for it. In general they were badly disappointed by it.)

This. There is no way to prove that consent was given—only proof of sexual contact can be obtained by a rape exam, but there is literally no way to prove consent. It’s depressing. It feels like we’ve gone backwards 50 years.