Disgraced comedian and actor Russell Brand has been formally charged with rape and sexual assault.
The U.K.’s Crown Prosecution Service said on Friday that it has authorized London’s Metropolitan Police to charge a man, identified as 49-year-old Brand, following an investigation by detectives.
Brand has been charged with one count of rape, one count of indecent assault, one count of oral rape and two counts of sexual assault, the Met said. He will appear in court on Friday, May 2.
The crimes he has been charged with relate to a 1999 rape in the Bournemouth area of the U.K.; a 2001 indecent assault of a woman in Westminster, London; the 2004 oral rape and sexual assault of a woman in Westminster, London; and between 2004 and 2005, the sexual assault of a woman in Westminster, London, the force said.
“The women who have made reports continue to receive support from specially trained officers,” said the Met Police’s detective superintendent Andy Furphy, leading the investigation. “The investigation remains open and detectives ask anyone who has been affected by this case, or anyone who has any information, to come forward and speak with police.”
Detectives began investigating in September 2023 after receiving a number of allegations, which followed reporting by Channel 4’s Dispatches and The Sunday Times.
The program aired extensive allegations against Brand. One of the women told Dispatches that Brand entered a relationship with her when he was 31 and she was 16. Their relationship lasted three months, she had said, and Brand had been “emotionally abusive and controlling.” Another claimed that Brand raped her in 2012 in his L.A. home, according to the Sunday Times.
The Briton denied all claims made against him, which date between 2006 and 2013 when Brand was at the height of his fame working on Big Brother’s Big Mouth, Kings of Comedy and Big Brother’s Celebrity Hijack. A Banijay U.K.-commissioned investigation later found informal complaints concerning Brand were made over 20 years ago on set.
Another review into Brand’s behavior at the BBC, in particular between 2006 and 2008 when he worked for 6 Music and Radio 2, found that fellow employees believed he “would always get his way, and therefore stayed slient”. The corporation apologized to its staff after the report revealed an allegation, among others, that Brand exposed himself to a woman in the bathroom of L.A.’s BBC bureau.
The ex-husband of singer Katy Perry no longer lives in the U.K. He was recently baptized and now devotes much of his platform to his new-found Christian faith. Brand maintains all of his relationships were consensual.
