Prosecutors have told a London jury that Russell Brand raped and sexually assaulted women while viewing them as a “disposable commodity” — people to be used as a “means to an end” in pursuit of his sexual ambitions.
Mr Brand, 51, is on trial at Southwark Crown Court facing allegations that he attacked women in a hotel room, at his luxury London home, in their workplaces, and in a toilet at a Soho bar.
In her closing speech, prosecutor Riel Karmy-Jones KC said Mr Brand sought “control” over the women and held “disdain” for them, as he chased what she described as his goal of sleeping with 5,000 women.
She directed jurors to passages from his 2007 book, in which he wrote about his “birthright orgasm”, and to a 2017 interview where he referred to women as “amusements” in what he called a “playground of orgasms”.
Ms Karmy-Jones suggested the attitude underpinning Mr Brand’s response to the allegations was: “why on earth are they complaining about things that were plainly so trivial?”.
And she told the court: “Women as a whole were disposable who didn’t matter to him.
“He didn’t even need to know their names. They were just a means to an end.
“As he said in a 2017 interview, they were the amusements in what he described as his playground of orgasms.
“We suggest you will be satisfied so you are sure that the six complainants told you the truth, not an invented truth, not a reimagined truth, but the real truth of what happened to them.
“We invite you to find him guilty on all counts.”
Mr Brand faces three counts of rape, three counts of sexual assault, and one allegation of attempted indecent assault.
One complainant, the court heard, was a 21-year-old fan when she met Mr Brand after watching his stand-up show at the Hammersmith Apollo in 2009.
She told jurors she willingly took part in a threesome with Mr Brand backstage after the performance, and then went to his Hampstead home a few days later intending to have sex.
However, she alleged that once there, Mr Brand made her shower and brush her teeth before sex, and that while they were in bed he forced her into anal sex.
Ms Karmy-Jones told the jury on Friday that Mr Brand had been “getting off on the control” when he required the young woman to strip and shower while he watched.
“She had showered before, she had put her make-up on, she had just tried to make herself pretty and he just shoved her in the shower,” she said.
“He stood and stared at her while she stripped down and went in.
“It was like he was administering her – was it the control of the situation that he was getting off on?”
The woman accepted in evidence that she had not “painted myself in a good light”, describing cheating on her boyfriend during the backstage encounter at the Apollo and later going to Mr Brand’s house knowing sex was likely.
But Ms Karmy-Jones said the jury could see her as “completely honest”, noting she had been “fair” to Mr Brand by making clear their sex initially — while she said it “wasn’t nice and wasn’t done to pleasure her” — was consensual.
The prosecutor added: “She said it felt like he could have been f****** a hole.
“In effect, she said it could have been anyone or anything.
“But she doesn’t suggest it wasn’t consensual.”
According to the woman’s account, Ms Karmy-Jones said, Mr Brand then “flipped her over” and began painful anal sex without consent and without a condom.
He was focused only on his “birthright orgasm” and ignored her pleas to stop, the prosecutor told the jury, describing the complainant as “just another number to add to his 5,000 notches which he was marking up”.
Ms Karmy-Jones said: “She did say no, she did say stop, but he did not.”
Mr Brand told the court during his evidence on Wednesday that consent in sex is “fundamental”, and said he regarded it as “more important that the sex itself”.
But in her closing address, Ms Karmy-Jones asked jurors: “Members of the jury, taking into account what you have heard in this trial, does that ring true as something Mr Brand believed during this period of time?”
She also quoted Mr Brand’s 2007 book, My Booky Wook, in which he wrote: “If I want something – whether it’s a job or a woman – I will determinedly, resolutely, remove anything that’s in the way, until I possess the object of my desire.”
Ms Karmy-Jones said: “A lack of consent, no problem for Mr Brand, just an obstacle he would have to remove, or perhaps ignore.”
Turning to another allegation, Ms Karmy-Jones referred to claims that Mr Brand thrust his head into the lap of a female Channel 4 worker in 2009, after she had been made to give him a massage. She reminded jurors that Mr Brand had said he was “staggeringly famous” at the time.
She told the court: “The defendant was rampant in his desire to have sexual contact whenever he wanted, whenever he pleased.”
Asking jurors to imagine the experience of being pressured into massaging a powerful man in the workplace, she added: “Women, particularly subservient women, were simply a disposable commodity to him.”
Earlier, Ms Karmy-Jones accused Mr Brand of gaslighting the women — alleging that after attacks he would hand over an email address or phone number and behave as though nothing had happened.
She said the six complainants, who do not know each other, have been “haunted for years” by what they say occurred, with one slipping into alcoholism and several saying they blamed themselves and feared speaking out.
Describing Mr Brand’s alleged demeanour, she said: “His eyes changed, he snapped, from charming to frightening to nasty.”
She described the complainants as “six women who have nothing to gain, who have not sought the limelight, who have not looked out for some form of publicity, who have not taken part in a documentary, not made claims for compensation”.
She added: “There is no benefit to them, apart from perhaps some closure by coming before you and telling you their accounts of what happened to them so long ago.”
Mr Brand is accused of attempting to indecently assault an MTV worker by pulling her into a toilet in 2001, forcing himself on another MTV worker in a toilet at a Soho bar during a party in 2004, kissing and groping a radio worker in a corridor in 2005, and raping a woman in a hotel room during the 1999 Labour Party conference.
