Russell Brand Pleads Not Guilty To Rape, Indecent Assault & Sexual Assault; Trial Set For June 2026
Russell Brand has pleaded not guilty to charges of rape, indecent assault and sexual assault. His trial will begin on June 3 2026.
The TV presenter-turned MAGA outrider appeared in London's Southwark Crown Court earlier Friday morning and plead not guilty to all charges, according to the BBC. He faces one allegation of rape, one of indecent assault, one of oral rape and two further counts of sexual assault. The offenses are alleged to have taken place between 1999 and 2005, and relate to four women.
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Brand faces allegations including that he raped a woman at the Labour Party conference in Bournemouth in 1999, dragged a TV worker into a toilet and sexually assaulted a woman when he was a presenter on Big Brother's Big Mouth.
He was charged in April by London's Metropolitan Police and was granted bail a month later. Today was the second time he's been seen in a UK court since returning from the U.S.
The BBC reported that 49-year-old Brand did not speak to reporters and looked straight ahead as he entered the court building wearing a dark suit and unbuttoned shirt. He will now wait more than a year for his trial; a pre-trial review has been scheduled for May 20 2026.
Upon the charges being announced, the one-time Forgetting Sarah Marshall star, whose resident address is in Oxfordshire, said he was a 'drug addict, sex addict and an imbecile' during his youth, but he was never a rapist. 'I've never engaged in non-consensual activity. I pray that you can see that by looking in my eyes,' he told his social media followers last month.
He had spent many months in the U.S. and was pictured several times at Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
The 2023 revelations about Brand led to much anger and entertainment industry introspection. Since then, the BBC, Channel 4 and Big Brother producer Banijay have all led internal probes, having worked with Brand on shows up until late last decade. All these probes have led to apologies and further revelations.
The most recent report from the BBC found that staff at the UK broadcaster's L.A. bureau had 'joked about' an incident in which the star was alleged to have exposed himself to a woman in a bathroom. Channel 4's report, published almost exactly a year ago, unearthed 'two new worrying allegations' against Brand, who had worked on Celebrity Bake Off as recently as 2018.
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