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18th September 2023
11:52am BST
Russell Brand's dad, Ron Brand, has come to his son's defence and questioned who is "driving this vendetta?" against him.
Four women have accused Brand of sexual assaults between 2006 and 2013, one of whom was 16 at the time, and the Met Police has urged any alleged victims to contact them. Brand denies all of the allegations which were revealed over the weekend in a joint The Sunday Times and Channel 4 Dispatches report.
Ron, who the comedian has credited with igniting his sex addiction after he lost his virginity to a prostitute his dad paid for, has made a series of Facebook posts defending the 48-year-old.
The 80-year-old said the allegations levelled at his son are "unproven" and suggested that dark forces, including the BBC, are pursuing a "vendetta" against him, MailOnline reported. Brand, in his own defence on Friday, suggested a wider agenda was behind the claims.
Ron wrote: "Is this seriously the most important thing happening in this world? Immigrants? Cost of living? 10s of thousands killed in Ukraine? Who is prioritising at BBC News. Who is really driving this vendetta?'.
He added: "With many struggling to pay bills. The unproven accusations of 15 years ago take lead on BBC News?".
In another Facebook post he later wrote: 'The Russell Brand Vendetta. Like a man who owns an orchard being accused of Stealing an Apple?'
Writing in his 2007 autobiography, My Booky Wook, Brand wrote how his dad paid for him to sleep with a sex worker on a trip to Hong Kong when he was 17.
Brand described received oral sex while his dad was on the adjacent bed with two other women.
"In the course of the rest of that holiday, I had sex with loads more prostitutes; always got a hard on, never wore a condom, and never fell in love," brand wrote.
"In Bangkok, when bar girls in Patpong left their posts to follow me down the street, cooing and touching my hair, I felt that I had my dad's unequivocal approval."
The BBC has joined Channel 4 in investigating the claims made against Brand in the documentary. Brand worked for two years as a presenter on BBC's 6 Music and Radio 2 during the period in which some of his alleged assaults took place. He also hosted Big Brother's Big Mouth, which aired on Channel 4's sister station E4.
In the documentary, one of Brand’s accusers alleged he raped her against a wall in his LA home and that she sought treatment at a rape crisis centre the same day. Another alleged he assaulted her when she was aged 16 during an emotionally abusive and controlling relationship. A third claims Brand sexually assaulted her in Los Angeles and later threatened to take legal action if she spoke about the allegation to anyone else. And a fourth described being sexually assaulted by Brand and also claimed he was both physically and emotionally abusive towards her.
In his statement on Friday, Brand said the allegations against him “pertain to the time when I was working in the mainstream, when I was in the newspapers all the time, when I was in the movies, and as I have written about extensively in my books, I was very, very promiscuous.”
He continued: “Now during that time of promiscuity the relationships I had were absolutely, always consensual. I was always transparent about that then, almost too transparent, and I am being transparent about it now as well.
“To see that transparency metastasised into something criminal, that I absolutely deny, makes me question – is there another agenda at play?”
Brand has claimed that their is witnesses whose evidence “directly contradicts the narrative that these two mainstream media outlets are trying to construct.”
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