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

Prosecutors in the United Kingdom charged actor Russell Brand with multiple counts of rape and sexual assault on Friday, nearly two years after multiple women accused Brand of assault, rape and abuse spanning nearly a decade.

The actor, who has turned to conspiracy theories against “globalization” to wave off the allegations in the past, will face a first hearing next month, officials say.

“We carefully reviewed the evidence after a police investigation into allegations made following the broadcast of a Channel 4, Sunday Times and Times investigation in September 2023,” Crown Prosecutor Jaswant Narwal said in a statement. “We have concluded that Russell Brand should be charged with offenses including rape, sexual assault and indecent assault.”

Brand faced career backlash in 2023 after four people, including a woman who was 16 at the time of the alleged assault, spoke out about alleged misconduct. The offenses named in the charging statement occurred between 1999 and 2005, prosecutors said, not the allegations of abuse from 2006 and 2013 that were reported by the Sunday Times, the Times and Channel 4 Dispatches.

Brand denied those allegations and maintained they were part of a coordinated smear campaign against him in an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson last year.

“I deny any allegations of the kind that have been advanced - and what I have seen is the significance of family and the importance of beliefs that are transcendent of this, the importance of God,” Brand told Carlson, suggesting there was a deeper conspiracy against him at play. “Unless you're willing to be a participant in these systems of compliance and distraction then you pose some kind of evident threat.”

Law enforcement noted that the investigation “remains open” and urged any other alleged victims to come forward.