Comedian and actor Russell Brand leaves Southwark Crown Court in London, Tuesday November 3, 2026.
Alastair/AP Scholarship
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Alastair/AP Scholarship
Comedian Russell Brand faces a “significant” prison sentence, which a London court judge is expected to hand down on Monday.
On Thursday, the former MTV host turned Christian and spiritual influencer was found guilty of three counts of sexual assault and one of rape, after a four-week trial that attracted massive media attention.
Brand had denied all accusations and said he never had sex without consent.
After the jury returned the verdict, Judge Joel Bennathan told Brand, 51, he faced “significant prison time.”
Danny Shaw, crime commentator and former BBC correspondent, job on
The trial examined seven historical accusations against Brand, made by six different women. He was convicted on four of the charges: for raping a woman who attended one of his comedy shows in 2009 and for sexually assaulting three other people between 2004 and 2009. The locations of the sexual assaults were a bar, a radio station and a television studio. Brand was also found not guilty of two counts of rape and one count of attempted indecent assault.
Brand’s lawyer asked the judge Thursday to grant his client bail so he could spend the weekend with his three children, which the judge refused. Instead, the former celebrity darling spent her first weekend in a London prison cell.
He showed little emotion as the verdict was delivered, although his wife Laura – who supported him throughout – quickly left the courtroom.
Many called the verdict a milestone in the #MeToo movement, which has seen influential men held accountable for using their power to abuse women.
Brand has also faced allegations of crimes in the United States. In 2023, a woman, named only “Jane Doe”, accused Brand for sexually assaulting her while she was working as an extra during the filming of the 2010 comedy “Arthur.” That year, Brand married pop star Katy Perry, although the union lasted just over a year before they divorced.
Speaking to the media last week, London police detective Andy Furphy said Brand had “used his influence, status and fame to prey on women – as his notoriety grew, so did his sense of entitlement”.
Camilla Long, journalist for Sunday time — one of the first newspapers to investigate abuse allegations against Brand — wrote in a column this weekend, “Sitting in Court 3 at Southwark Crown Court, hearing how Brand grabbed, pushed, groped and degraded his victims, was one of the most disgusting experiences of my life.”
Long questioned how Brand was able to escape his behavior for so long, saying, “Never has a predator declared himself so loudly and yet been so bluntly ignored.”
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