A former MTV employee has told jurors in Russell Brand’s sexual offenses trial that she stayed silent about her alleged rape for nearly two decades because she feared being “seen as trouble.” The woman, identified in court as Complainant 3, gave evidence at Southwark Crown Court in London. She said she did not report the alleged 2004 attack to MTV because Brand did not work for the network at the time.
She told police only in 2023, after learning of an investigation by The Sunday Times, The Times and Channel 4 into his conduct toward women. Brand’s barrister, Ian Winter KC, pressed her on the delay in cross-examination. She became audibly emotional while testifying and denied that the encounter was consensual.
Brand, 51, has pleaded not guilty to three counts of rape, three counts of sexual assault and one count of indecent assault, covering allegations from six women between 1999 and 2009. The trial is expected to last about six weeks. When prosecutors charged him last year, Brand said in a video that he was not a rapist and had never engaged in non-consensual sex.
Her account follows testimony from a second MTV worker, Complainant 2, who has never met her. That woman told jurors Brand grabbed her arm and tried to pull her into a toilet at the channel’s London offices in 2001. She said he wore a wild-eyed look. She also kept quiet at the time, and she told colleagues but not managers because she believed Brand was too valuable to the network to be challenged. Winter countered that Brand was seeking a consensual encounter and gave up when she showed no interest.
Another woman described an alleged rape at the 1999 Labour Party conference in Bournemouth, where Brand performed in a cabaret show. She testified from behind a privacy screen. A third complainant said Brand was a “wild-eyed” figure who tried to drag her into a toilet, a claim Winter rejected when he suggested she had accompanied him willingly. She replied that she was not star-struck. The Crown Prosecution Service charged Brand in April 2025, after police reviewed the allegations that emerged in the 2023 media investigation. The jury has yet to hear from the remaining complainants or from Brand.
