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20th September 2023
09:05am BST
Ahead of being accused of multiple sexual abuse charges, Russell Brand issued a statement suggesting that there might be a wider agenda to the "coordinated attack" against him.
The 48-year-old, who has denied all criminal allegations put forward in a joint The Sunday Times and Channel 4 Dispatches report, said Friday that there had been "a serious and concerted agenda to control these kind of spaces and these kind of voices."
"Now, I don't wanna get into this any further because of the serious nature of the allegations, but I feel like I'm being attacked and plainly they're working very closely together. We are obviously going to look into this matter 'cause it's very, very serious. In the meantime, I want you to stay close, stay awake, but more important than any of that, if you can, please stay free," the comedian-turned-YouTuber said.
Brand's dad, Ron, who paid for his son to lose his virginity to a prostitute in Hong Kong, took that suggestion further earlier this week, saying a "vendetta" was at play. Andrew Tate, who is also accused of rape and often suggests he is being silenced, also lent Brand his support, as has GB News presenter Beverly Turner, amid a host of other people.
As the story has evolved and every interaction Brand has had in the last few decades has been unpicked, one social media user decided to see how easy it would be to trick people, using lines the actor said in a movie - Forgetting Sarah Marshall - that has also featured in a few reports in recent days.
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Setting up the gag, the social media user mazemoore, wrote: "I wasn't sure Russell Brand was guilty of the allegations against him until I saw this video on the BBC showing definitive proof. That guy is a sicko."
The video under the post contained a BBC video purported to feature audio from one of Brand's accusers saying his response to the accusations was "insulting". Instead, it contained audio from an exchange between Brand and another character in the 2008 comedy, Forgetting Sarah Marshall.
The clip has been viewed almost 100,000 times and has caught a number of people out, so much so that the poster felt the need to explain his joke to a number of them in the comments.
In the Times and Dispatches reports, four women have accused Brand of sexual assaults between 2006 and 2013, one of whom was 16 at the time and led to other alleged victims coming forward. The Met has since announced that it is investigating an alleged incident involving Brand from 2003.
In the documentary aired Saturday, 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 a statement on Friday ahead of the report, 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 there is witnesses whose evidence “directly contradicts the narrative that these two mainstream media outlets are trying to construct.”
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