Tom Lee provides an excellent account of Russell Brand’s trial. Alongside the details—including Brand’s bizarre entourage and the defence’s unusual approach to the disturbing allegations—he describes his personal experience of the courtroom atmosphere. Lee follows the trial through to its conclusion: Brand was convicted of rape against one complainant and three other sexual assaults, and acquitted of two other rape charges.
In particular, she returned to the humiliation of being told to clear up after the rape – and her shame that she did so. Although, over the years, as she suffered from anxiety and later developed an alcohol problem, she told people she trusted what had happened to her, she could not bring herself to go to the police. She blamed herself, because she had gone to Brand’s house willingly, and did not want to become known and defined by what he had done to her.
When the last of these witness statements had been read, and the judge sent the jury out for the day, the argument that this accuser only decided she had been raped once the wider allegations had emerged seemed fatally undermined. The journalist next to me murmured: “He’s cooked.”
More picks on criminal trials
You Should’ve Said Something
“I had to do everything the jurors did—sit in every court session, examine each piece of evidence, look out from the jury box every day at a man accused of murder—but I wouldn’t participate in the deliberation unless two jurors dropped out.”
The Anatomy of a Journalism Scandal
“The first time ‘The New York Times’ had lost a defamation case in over half a century.”
He’d Waited Decades to Argue His Innocence. Nobody Knew She Suffered from Alzheimer’s.
“Nelson Cruz’s family was so sure Judge ShawnDya Simpson would free him, they brought a change of clothes to his hearing. Then everything took an unexpected turn. Can justice ever be sorted out?”
