Russell Brand is Going to Prison

After being found guilty on one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault, Russell Brand was sentenced to prison for ten years and six months today.

Brand was sentenced to nine years for rape, with an additional 18 months, nine months and eight months for three counts of sexual assault. He will serve two thirds of his sentence in prison before being released on licence, and will be liable to be recalled to custody if he breaches its terms, the judge said. He could potentially serve more, as the Metropolitan Police said on Friday 6th November that Brand was being investigated over rape allegations made by two more women.

Judge Joel Bennathan described Brand as a “sexual predator” who harboured a “casual arrogant disregard to any woman’s right to say no to you”, while his fame meant he believed “you could act when you liked and how you liked.”

The court heard victim statements from the women he abused. One of the women, who spoke from behind a screen, said she had been in “shock and turmoil for years […] I didn’t have any respect for myself. I was thinking I was damaged goods - scared of giving off signals that could be taken the wrong way.” Said another, “Russell Brand is a sexual predator who has no remorse… I just hope he is not allowed to hurt any more women.”

Brand’s barrister Ian Winter KC tried to defend Brand and lay the ground for a lighter sentence by saying that his client is “a fundamentally different person today” and pointed out the rape took place 17 years ago, in 2009. He also claimed that the rape occurred after “fully consensual vaginal intercourse” and “was quite a short… momentary total failure to respect her consent.” Winter also said that Brand’s children will suffer without their father. Said the sentencing judge, “I am very conscious that your imprisonment will deprive your children of the presence of their father. That sad loss to them, however, is caused by your serious offending.”

Russell Brand is a convicted rapist. That’s a sentence I’m not sure I ever thought I’d hear. I, like many in Britain with a vague adjacency to the entertainment business, had heard the stories about Brand. I’d heard he was a sex offender, that women in the comedy scene were warned to never be alone with him, and that other comedians had called him out to his face. He wasn’t the only one I’d heard such stories about, but the sheer number of whispers surrounding him was notable.

It’s easy to forget now but in the 2000s, Brand was massive. His cheeky chap libertine act, all big hair and tight trousers, was a money-maker that turned him into one of the most-watched men in the UK. His entire shtick was being a sex addict who used lots of big words, and for some reason, people couldn’t get enough of it. In the culture of lad’s mags, indie sleaze, and the burgeoning reality TV genre, Russell Brand was its mascot. The more he joked about seducing teenage girls or choking women with his penis, the more people laughed, but at what? His promiscuity was something to be proud of. The Sun named him “Shagger of the Year” three years in a row. Men like him were studs. The women they bragged about sleeping with were the sluts. When Brand and Jonathan Ross left voicemail messages for the actor Andrew Sachs wherein they gloated about Brand having had sex with his granddaughter, they faced some professional repercussions but not for long. Brand just went to America and sold himself as an exotic animal. His predatory linger seemed quaint, somehow.

Nowadays, Brand is a grifter who cloaks himself in the piety of Christianity while shilling gambling apps and hanging out with anti-vaxxer politicians like RFK Jr. He calls himself anti-establishment but he was always an insider cloistered by the privilege of such a position. His misogyny in the early 2000s is no different from the 2026 version. Both Brands — the free-wheeling party boy and the cross-kissing rabble-rouser — are two sides of the same coin of toxic masculinity.

We need to clean house. We should have done it more thoroughly when #MeToo opened the doors but the swift and highly monied backlash left us in the dust. There are so many more Russell Brands out there who used the post-#MeToo backlash to empower themselves as “truth tellers” or “anti-woke” warriors. They’re all just garden variety bigots, petulant little boys who don’t like to be told “no.” Brand’s prison sentence will not be enough to undo what he did to those women, but embarrassing the guilty and leaving them scared is always a worthwhile pursuit.