What the court has heard so far
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Russell Brand is in court facing three counts of rape, three counts of sexual assault and one count of indecent assault, in allegations dating between 1999 and 2009. He has pleaded not guilty to all the charges.
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Prosecutor Riel Karmy-Jones began the trial with her opening statement, telling the court the six alleged victims, all women, “did not know each other then and do not know each other now” and “came forward independently of each other”.
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Karmy-Jones said the allegations “punctuate” 10 years of Brand’s life when “his career was beginning to flourish”.
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The first alleged victim is a woman Brand allegedly raped in a hotel room during a Labour party conference in Bournemouth in 1999. The court heard the complainant, who was in her 20s at the time, said when she came out of the bathroom at her hotel room, Brand was topless and “prancing around the room – a bit like an ostrich, doing silly walks like Basil Fawlty”.
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The second alleged victim is a woman who worked at MTV at the time of the alleged indecent assault incident in 2001. Jurors were told Brand had allegedly tried to force her into a toilet and that she “resisted by struggling and pulling back”. The woman was felt “bewildered and shocked”, Karmy-Jones said.
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The third alleged victim is a woman who was also allegedly forced into a toilet by Brand during an incident at a bar in Soho in 2004. The court heard Brand “grabbed her arm and held her quite strongly and pulled her into the lavatory” where he allegedly orally raped her.
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The fourth alleged victim is a woman who was in her 20s and working at a radio station in 2004 or 2005 when Brand allegedly sexually assaulted her. Karmy-Jones said Brand “instantly grabbed her by the face with both hands” and “pushed her up against a wall, where he kissed her ‘sloppily and aggressively’”. The prosecutor added: “During this assault he also grabbed her body, at her breasts, sides and buttocks aggressively.”
Key events
Pinheiro repeatedly told Russell Brand’s defence barrister he would not have gone into “detail” in an initial phone call with police about the Bournemouth allegations.
Ian Winter KC said to the witness: “Let me be very clear, you do not recollect any of the things about Bournemouth in respect of what you have told us about Mr Brand?”
Pinheiro responded:
I have a fantastic memory of those events – I’m not sure why you think I haven’t.
He later added:
I probably would have spoken about it once allegations came to light but there is a good chance prior to that I would have been careful about what I said and not put myself in a situation where I could have been sued.
Mark Pinheiro came forward to police on 6 April 2025, two days after the rape allegation against Russell Brand during the party conference in Bournemouth was first publicised.
Asked by Brand’s counsel, Ian Winter KC, why he did not ask the Metropolitan Police for the date of the alleged offence, Pinheiro said:
For me there would only have been one night where it could have occurred. It was the night where Russell didn’t return home.
Under questioning about the reliability of his account, Pinheiro told jurors:
I haven’t alleged Russell did anything. I have merely described Russell’s behaviour and what words are ascribed to him, and his behaviour the morning after the night we didn’t see him.
All I have volunteered is information, I haven’t accused Russell of rape.
Pinheiro told the court he deliberately did not tell the reporter about the alleged incident in Bournemouth because their questions were “general about my relationship with Russell”.
Challenged by defence barrister Winter that he had made “specific” allegations about Brand, Pinheiro said he was being as “truthful as I possibly could”.
He added:
I have always remembered the situation that happened in Bournemouth.
Pinheiro said the alleged incident in the south coast town was “pivotal” how his relationship with Brand formed.
Pinheiro said he has spoken out about Russell Brand “factually”, suggesting he had also told the Times reporter about “pleasant memories” of his friend.
“Because of the nature of the conversation, and the questions I would have been asked were about his sexual behaviour and the worst cases I would have witnessed, that would have been the nature of the kind of answers I gave,” he said.
“I spoke factually about events. If the behaviour was unpleasant, the result would have sounded like an unpleasant comment.
“I didn’t go out of my way to say specifically unpleasant things.”
Under cross-examination, Pinheiro said the events of 1999 were “quite memorable”, adding:
That was quite a big event that occurred, and not something you easily forget.
He told the court he spoke to the Sunday Times about Russell Brand in September 2023 for just under an hour, but did not talk about the alleged incident in Bournemouth.
“I don’t think that was the interest, and I was also quite careful about what things I did speak to the press about,” he said.
“They were talking more generally about the relationship with him, without specifically talking about these particular events.”
In his cross-examination of Mark Pinheiro, Russell Brand’s barrister Ian Winter KC probed the witness on whether he had “on many occasions” described the comedian as a friend.
Pinheiro responded:
I wouldn’t say so, I wouldn’t say there are many occasions on social media at all.
One of the things we talked about with Russell was he didn’t want private material making its way on social media outside of his professional persona.
Pinheiro recalled being invited to a preview of Russell Brand’s show Messiah Complex, in 2013, and seeing women lined up against a wall in the theatre.
“Russell would be networking, schmoozing, talking with various people backstage”, he said.
“There would be a moment he would break away from the networking, walk along the queue of girls, and ask a girl to come out and join him.
“The girl would join him and go off to a quiet area of the theatre, usually the toilet, and we wouldn’t see them for about 10 minutes.
“When he returned, he returned back to the schmoozing, time passed, and he returned to the queue, walked along the queue, picked another girl from the queue and repeat the same thing, go off to somewhere quiet.”
Russell Brand would have around two women a week come back to his flat for sex, Pinheiro told the court.
He told the court he asked Brand to move out after they had lived together for around a year, but said they stayed in touch and met up on holidays.
“I had many situations and occasions where I saw Russell pick up women,” he said.
“Russell approached a girl with a huge amount of enthusiasm and interest in them, which was enough to stop them in their tracks and hear what he had to say.”
Pinheiro said Brand gave women compliments and cracked jokes, including ones aimed at himself. He added:
He had a self-deprecating side to himself. He was able to laugh at himself.
He would say all the terrible things he might be like, or what he might like to do to them.
Girls found that shocking and were very surprised to hear someone being so brutally open and honest about how they were sexually.
Witness tells court Brand said he had ‘gone a bit too far’ with woman at fringe event
Pinheiro told the court that Brand had urged everyone staying with him in a flat in Bournemouth to return to London, without initially explaining why.
“He made it clear we needed to leave immediately,” Pinheiro said.
Brand then told him that he needed to return to London for a “really big audition”, Pinheiro told jurors. When Pinheiro questioned this further, he said Brand “kicked out” at him in anger and was “cowering” in the back seat of the car.
Brand finally admitted he had been with a woman the night before they left Bournemouth, Pinheiro told the court.
Pinheiro continued:
I had Russell finally say he did meet a girl on the Friday night he did … have sex.
He said that things got a little bit heated and a little bit out of hand, and he thinks that maybe he did go a little bit too far.
Those were his words: ‘I think I may have gone a bit too far.’”
Pinheiro said he and Brand were performing at a cabaret show at the conference fringe. When their final show ended, Brand said he was “going to go and get laid”, Pinheiro told the court.
Pinheiro continued:
We didn’t see Russell until the following morning.
We all wondered where he was because he hadn’t returned home.
Close to midday, we got a knock on the door and Russell just arrived back home. We asked him where he was, what happened overnight and he was clearly ruffled, discombobulated, his manner was all over the place – really flustered.”
