Russell Brand 🤢🤮 in the Docky Wock

[U53rName]

Credit to @thebrowncatisback for the title. Original thread is here: www.mumsnet.com/talk/in_the_news/5589048-russell-brand?callback=in&code=YTEWYJJJMZQTMJFHNS0ZNDI5LTK3N2QTZWJHYWNHZJGXNZA2&page=39&state=aa7521b41da5458084d85ced7c73c27d

I agree about his barrister and use of the word “beastly”. It was an odd choice of word and sounds like something out of an Enid Blyton novel. I doubt it would have landed v well with the jury.

I dunno. I’m a lawyer but haven’t done any criminal work for a long time. If I were on the jury I would quietly disregard LB’s evidence (but that is lawyer me); she wasn’t there, her evidence now is not really evidence of anything. We don’t even know if she believes what she is saying. Even if she does, even if it’s true and he is a changed man, so what? It’s not a defence to offences he committed.

I have dipped in and out of the coverage of the trial. I find the allegations and evidence around the alleged anal rape reasonably persuasive. Not sure about the rest.

It wouldn’t surprise me if he is found not guilty tbh.

Alleged victim's name saved as 'T AP **' in Brand's phone, court toldThe defence is now concluding its case with a few "agreed facts", which are being presented to the court by barrister Polly Dyer.
We are told that during investigations, Brand gave his iPhone 5 to the police, and it was sent to a forensic telephone company, where "thousands" of contacts were found.
In March 2026, within the contacts on the phone, a match was found for complainant five, saved under: "T [name of complainant] AP **". The number was confirmed to be complainant five's mobile number.
The court heard yesterday that T stood for "tart" to signify that it was a casual sexual encounter, AP stood for "anal play" and ** meant it was an interaction Brand didn't want to forget.

If he now lives in Florida I wonder why he didn’t wait to be extradited, particularly as he has right wing support and perhaps it would never have happened.

I agree on that. And I am not sure a jury will lend much weight to LB's testimony either. People aren't daft - it's quite clear from the fact that he has been married for 9 years and has 3 kids that he has "settled down" quite considerably. But that has no relevance to the incidents in question.

I would be highly doubtful of a clean sweep of "guiltys". But am hopeful of at least one of the rape charges sticking.

@KidsDoBetter yep, I think this is where I’ve landed with it today too!

I guess - twofold - he would be committing himself and his family to not being able to return to the UK for however many years it took for the extradition process to take. Secondly - it looks quite dodgy. If you have nothing to hide - come and let justice take its course. He has been at pains to highlight that approach in comments outside the court and on his Youtube.

@idontknowhowtodreamyourdreamsyep: that’s exactly what I thought - “beastly” is like something from Mallory Towers.

I also suspect he’ll be found not guilty, partly due to the allegations being historic and so much time having passed, partly because of the demographic of the jury and their not understanding why the complainants didn’t come forward at the time. People (men in particular) are pretty ignorant about the reasons for that and I am not sure they’ll find them compelling.

All of which is a shame, as I also believe much of the complainants’ testimony.

Were I a jury member, I would also completely disregard LB’s evidence as irrelevant to whether he’s guilty of historic charges.

@KidsDoBetterI would love to know how IW ended up being selected as leading counsel for the defence.

I suppose it's a truth but the lack of other convictions must stick in mouth of the complinants. It's a nod to the fact that historically Brand has never faced formal allegations of sexual misconduct.

@Piglet89 yes! Lashings of ginger beer and let’s not be beastly!

It would have irritated me but a sizeable proportion of the uk public want to be “led” by a posh man (David Cameron, Boris etc), so I guess it’s hard to predict how that dynamic will play out. Barristers are viewed as “experts” (which of course they are in many ways) and people on the jury may feel out of their own worlds and social locations and find an authoritative sounding posh man reassuring.

Unlike me …. I feel like I have had enough of posh men to last me a lifetime.

Me too! I don't know who his instructing solicitors are.

Interested in opinions on the direction to few each case independently?.To me the cases have more merit because as a collective you have a cumulative weight of testimony and the simple fact that you are much less likely to get multiple false allegations occurring independently.

I could see how you could put up a stronger defence to say just the anal rape case as there was no independent witness to lack of consent for a particular activity (despite the same telling numerous people after the event) as you can single the woman out as failing to correctly recall or having ulterior motivation for setting the scene for a rape allegation (revenge for rubbish behavioir). Together though there is a competing narrative of you consider the cases together.

@KidsDoBetter such a bizarre choice of counsel. I seem to recall instructing solicitors are BCL llp?

The pub may not have been built with a toilet. Certainly when flushing plumbing was introduced in pubs it was likely there would have been none for women.

Russell Brand said he was ‘inviting her’ to the ‘lavatory’. He wasn’t.

The lavatory ‘lavatoire’ is technically the area for washing - that is the wash basin area. Not many people are aware of that but that’s may be why the language feels more sanitary and genteel.

What she says he pushed/pulled her into was a locked private enclosed toilet compartment within the communal lavatory. The walls are from floor to ceiling.

Despite the privacy, she said one man did knock on the door and ask if she was ok. She was shaking so bad she couldn’t open the lock.

I study toilet safety. Private compartments in public spaces are not great for safeguarding. Even within U.K. school buildings it is estimated there is 3-5 rapes reported per week (I have tried to get a figure from the DfE but they ‘do not keep records in their department’ or where they happen within a school). These figures were gained from police FoIs by Panorama ten years ago. As an exteacher I was horrified at that figure. From Everyone’s Invited many children suffer and never tell anyone. Ofsted ‘recommends that schools, colleges and multi-agency partners act as though sexual harassment and online sexual abuse are happening, even when there are no specific reports’. Bluntly, if you have teenagers at school, ask where pupils go to have sex. Note the design.

We need separate sex toilet washrooms with multiple cubicles, for health and safety. There should be a 15cm gap below the door and partitions and space above. This is written (in many building manuals) to be for ventilation, easier cleaning/mopping therefore better hygiene, prevention of misuse and supervision in emergencies such as assault or collapse (11% of cardiac arrests are in a toilet). That’s the standard set up in modern buildings for health and safety reasons.

I really feel that the anal rape case is very believable and I would hope he is convicted. I believe all the others tbh, although I don’t think the attempted indecent assault case is strong. The toilet one - maybe she sat on the loo, I haven’t heard any evidence he stood on the loo seat. Didn’t the prosecution suggest AP could be after party? Vile to categorise people like that anyway. It’s like the Jonny depp case - underlying attitudes were revealed whatever the outcome.

I don't know how Laura Brand can stay with him even if she thinks he's innocent.

Quite honestly hearing my dh's sex life discussed like this in public would give me the ick.

Even if I thought him innocent, I'd think what kind of idiot doesn't make sure that he leaves the people he has sex with on a good note.
I'm sick of hearing what a stud he is. He's a fecking fool.

Is this unfair of me? Probably but there's no arguing with the ick.

First, a person who has no significant previous convictions is more likely to be truthful, so when you examine the defendant's account in evidence you should keep that in mind.
"Second, you should bear in mind that someone who has never been in serious trouble is less likely to commit a serious offence than someone who has been in trouble before."

Surely this is nonsense. Rolf ' Animal Hospital' Harris had a good character. Surely its on a case by case basis. He just was never caught.

Ah yes - its not widely publicised but that may explain choice of counsel. They do mostly white collar crime and thus would have an existing relationship with Winter. Which is the deciding factor in most counsel instructions I guess.

I had lots of dealings with BCLP when they were simply BL, and then BLP - which shows how long ago that was😂

That is 100% correct in law. I'd flagged that that would be judge's direction in the case quite a few pages ago.

Some schools have installed smart alarms in their floor-ceiling toilet compartment designs. The alarms listen out all the time for pre-set phrases. If the alarm hears the phrase ‘stop it’ or ‘help me’ it will push a message to staff.

The toilet cases are very believable.

If she’s kept quiet through all of this, I’m inclined to think she’ll take it to her grave. (Or at menopause, when she has 0 fucks left to give.)

Thank you. What you’ve said us interesting but it doesn’t detract from or answer the point I raised

@KidsDoBetter yes, though I wonder at the choice of them as a firm too …. Maybe there’s a particular partner there that they wanted to instruct. But they’re not specialists in violent crime, including sexual offences. Interesting.

Judge is maybe suggesting Brand may be seriously disadvantaged due to the delay in reporting reaching decades and reminding the jury memories fade and evidence retrieval becomes more difficult. Could it be suggested that if you suffer a severe trauma memories don't necessarily fade.

Interesting point in law that Brand is of good character (no previous convictions). Is this maybe unfortunate legal parlance? I also this although there are no previous legal convictions on these matters you are ignoring contemporaneous complaints to HR and the police etc.

yeah it really is. Maybe they thought that having a firm and counsel with no connections to famous criminal cases would play better in the media / reporting?