The comedian has just been sentenced to more than 10 years in jail. But a massage therapist who accused him of assaulting her is still banned from repeating her claims
Every woman who made formal rape or sexual assault allegations against Russell Brand had a part in his conviction, whether or not her charges were upheld; and every woman who claims to have been raped or assaulted by him, but never pressed charges, will have her reasons. Anyone familiar with the data on rape convictions, or the sheer number of investigations that are closed because the victim loses faith in the process, will know immediately what those reasons are.
But the legal realities of sexual violence, and sexual violence by a celebrity in particular, have never been better illustrated than by two women: the massage therapist against whom Brand successfully sought an anti-harassment injunction; and the woman known only as “complainant six”.
8:28Will Russell Brand’s 10-year jail term be a tipping point? - The LatestThe name of the first woman is in the public domain. I prefer not to use it, though, since the terms of that injunction make it impossible for her to talk about what happened for the rest of her life. One lawyer, the tax expert and investigative journalist Dan Neidle, reading the summary judgment handed down in 2015, came to the extraordinary conclusion that not only does it bar the woman from approaching the police again with her allegations; even if the police were to call her – as well they might, given Brand’s convictions – she would be prohibited from answering their questions.
The background is that, in 2014, the woman was hired by Brand’s then girlfriend, Jemima Khan, to give him a massage for his birthday. She then made a complaint of assault to the police, saying later in court that she had been treated “like a prostitute”. The police dismissed the allegation, closed the investigation and informed the comedian that he had no case to answer.
Undeterred, the massage therapist approached newspapers and her MP and attempted to reach the prime minister. You can infer from that chain of events her belief that Brand was being protected by his fame and influence. Having got nowhere through regular channels, she tried to go right to the top.
It is vanishingly unlikely that she would have got any satisfaction from that route, even if the top hadn’t been David Cameron, but what happened next was jaw-dropping. Brand and Khan jointly applied for an anti-harassment order, which, when granted, amounted to something (according to Neidle) more like a libel injunction: the massage therapist was allowed to discuss events with a small group of medical professionals and no one else. Brand and Khan were represented by lawyers; she was not. It was explicitly accepted that she didn’t have any money, yet she was still ordered to pay their costs and asked to supply £50,000 “on account” by 4pm two weeks later.
In a statement on X on 9 November, Khan wrote: “I was present the whole time he was with [the massage therapist], and I did not see anything untoward, despite the fact that he was later found guilty of sexually assaulting other women and he later physically assaulted me. If I saw any man abuse any woman under any circumstances, I would do my utmost to stop them, without hesitation … I engaged a lawyer of my own when I was made aware that [the massage therapist] was applying to the court to vary the terms of the injunction. And I instructed my lawyer in December last year to approach [her] barrister to say that I agreed to vary the injunction so that she could speak to the police again if she wanted to. I also instructed my lawyer to engage on her other requests.”
If we can all understand how daunting it would be to take on someone with Brand’s profile with an allegation like this, the injunction makes plain what that asymmetry can mean in practical terms: not only, in a “his word against hers” case, did her word carry infinitely less weight, but he also had the ability to silence her permanently and bankrupt her.
Russell Brand sentenced to more than 10 years in prison for rape and sexual assaultRead moreClaimant six, meanwhile, worked at Channel 4 on a project with Brand. He asked her for a massage, then put his head in her lap. She says straightforwardly that she suffered no lasting damage from the event and gave evidence only to support the testimony of others: she is brave, but not untypical. This is a constant drum beat from rape survivors and rape charities – that people who can’t face making a formal allegation on their own account will gladly come forward in support of others.
It is an ordeal to be in an active investigation at all – 40% of victims withdraw before a decision is reached about whether or not to bring it to court. People describe a lack of faith in the police and the exhaustion of having their credibility questioned. If the case comes to court, victims can expect to be routinely undermined and derided, which is part of the adversarial theatre, but that doesn’t make it any less devastating. Putting yourself through hell for your own satisfaction is hard to justify – only other victims, or the prevention of future victimisation, make sense of it.
So we have a choice: either we make the prosecution of sexual violence a better process, or we accept that the only convictions we will see are those in which there is one perpetrator and several victims. This is to accept Vera Baird’s stark analysis of seven years ago – that rape has been effectively decriminalised.
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