Russell Brand Found Guilty As ‘Only Three Rapes’ Defense Fails

Russell Brand has been found guilty of rape and sexual assault, three days after his barrister asked jurors, “Why is it that only three rapes in 10 years?”

The 51-year-old comedian was convicted at Southwark Crown Court on Thursday of one count of rape and three of sexual assault, the Telegraph reported. The rape conviction relates to a young fan Brand met after one of his Hammersmith Apollo shows in 2009, and one of the sexual assaults to a woman at a Soho bar in 2004, according to GB News.

Brand had faced seven counts involving six women between 1999 and 2009, and pleaded not guilty to all of them. Reports did not immediately say whether the jury cleared him of the remaining three counts – two of rape and one of attempted indecent assault – or is still considering them.

Brand, who was accompanied to court by his wife Laura Gallacher, is expected to face a lengthy prison sentence.

As we reported on Wednesday, Brand’s barrister, Ian Winter KC, closed the defense on Monday by turning his client’s sex life into an argument for acquittal. “What matters is he had an immense amount of sex and none of it was unlawful,” Winter told the jury of eight men and four women, which began deliberating on Tuesday.

Megyn Kelly, recapping the closing on her show, put the argument more bluntly: “He had a goal of 5,000, three women, three say he didn’t consent out of 5,000. If this guy’s running around just randomly raping women orally, vaginally, anally, wouldn’t there be more?”

The 5,000 was never a count of partners. A former friend, Mark Pinheiro, testified that Brand once told him of an ambition to sleep with 5,000 women, which Brand denied on the stand: “No, not a goal.”

Winter also told jurors the women “all came forward for reasons connected to the TV programme,” arguing that the 2023 Channel 4 Dispatches investigation had “poisoned the well of justice.” Scotland Yard opened its investigation in September 2023 after that program and the Sunday Times aired allegations from several women, and Brand was charged in April 2025 with five offenses against four women, all between 1999 and 2005.

The rape he was convicted of was not among those original charges. More women came forward after the publicity, and on Dec. 23 prosecutors added one count of rape and one of sexual assault, both from 2009, involving two more women.

Brand presented on BBC Radio 2 from 2006 until 2008, when he quit over his prank calls to actor Andrew Sachs, and the Telegraph noted the verdict adds to pressure on the BBC over how it policed its stars, after the Huw Edwards scandal and the Jimmy Savile affair.

Since leaving mainstream TV, Brand converted to Christianity, reinvented himself as an anti-establishment commentator and insisted the charges were politically motivated. Elon Musk publicly backed him when the allegations surfaced in 2023, and last year Tucker Carlson called on the Trump administration to “rescue” Brand from charges he described as “political and absurd,” Variety reported.

Kelly broke with that camp from the start. When the allegations first aired, she told her listeners: “Could you please for a second stay open minded to the possibility that the women are telling the truth?”