Met chief would not be surprised if more alleged victims of Brand came forward

Brand has spent his first night in a cell ahead of a potentially years-long imprisonment, after he was convicted of raping one of his fans and sexually assaulting three women during his showbiz heyday.Brand, now 51, preyed on women he encountered while becoming one of Britain’s best-known stand-up comedians, a lauded TV and radio host, and a Hollywood movie star.The Metropolitan Police Commissioner said high-profile cases did often lead to an “upsurge” in reporting because it gave victims confidence to speak up about attackers in their cases.He told BBC Breakfast: “It does make a difference because people see it is possible, and you will be believed.”Read MoreBrand’s victims came to court to reveal how he had forced them into sexual activity, sometimes within seconds of them first meeting, using his fame to determinedly pursue a goal of sex with 5,000 women.On Thursday at Southwark Crown Court, a jury found him guilty of one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault.He was cleared of two further charges of rape and one allegation of attempted indecent assault.The Met has confirmed investigations are ongoing into two allegations of rape made against Brand.At pre-trial court hearings, it was revealed one of the complaints comes from a woman who dated Brand when he was 30 and she was a 16-year-old schoolgirl.On Brand, Sir Mark said: “There’s two more cases we’re investigating at the moment. I clearly wouldn’t be surprised if many more came forward.”Meanwhile, Sir Mark said some of what he heard reported from Brand’s trial was “getting very close to victim blaming”.It was put to Sir Mark on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that Brand’s defence lawyer Ian Winter KC told jurors that “none of the complainants had, in his words, resisted or screamed or even tried to leave”.Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley (Yui Mok/PA)PA WireAsked if he would support Victims’ Commissioner Claire Waxman, who wants a legal duty in the Courts and Tribunals Bill that would require judges to issue directions to juries on rape myths and misconceptions in every rape trial, Sir Mark said: “I strongly support Claire.“I think what I’ve heard reported heads towards, it’s getting very close to victim blaming, which is something we’ve thought very hard about in policing and make sure we don’t do.“People fall into myths about (how) a rape victim must behave in a certain way, must react in a certain way.“The evidence is really clear. Some people will fight. Some people will freeze. Some people will tell people straight away. Some people bottle it up for years. There isn’t one way of reacting.“We understand that, it shouldn’t be possible for inaccurate statements to be made to a jury to suggest that because a rape victim didn’t behave in one way, that somehow that undermines their case, when the evidence is very clear, we’re all very different sort of psychological and personal make-up, and in the most extraordinary horrific moments, of course, people react very differently.”Sir Mark added on Times Radio: “The wider point I would make: this looks at one hand it’s a celebrity, but most sex offending is where someone of power exploits that with someone who is less powerful themselves.“It might be an uncle, it might be a teacher, it might be a vicar. Could be a whole range of different situations. And what cases like this show is, it doesn’t matter how powerful the person is, we will support you, and we will try and bring down the person who did something ghastly to you.”The shamed comedian-turned-conspiracy theorist will spend the weekend in custody before he returns to the same court on Monday to learn his prison sentence.His wife Laura Gallacher, who attended much of the trial, was seen to hunch over in the public gallery as Mr Justice Bennathan told Brand that he now faces an inevitable and lengthy jail term.A couple of months after he started hosting Big Brother’s Big Mouth in 2004, Brand sexually assaulted a woman in the Nordic bar in Soho, central London, by grabbing her breasts in the middle of the bar during a party of his former MTV colleagues.She accused him of dragging her to the men’s toilets and orally raping her, but the jury found Brand not guilty on that count.A worker at Capital Radio said Brand forced himself on to her during a visit to the station in 2005, pinning her to a wall while he groped and “sloppily” kissed her.Brand was found guilty of sexually assaulting her.Russell Brand’s wife Laura Gallacher outside Southwark Crown Court, London, after he was found guilty (James Manning/PA)PA WireThe victim told jurors that members of his entourage laughed as they saw the attack happen.He was also convicted of anally raping a 21-year-old superfan in his £2.3 million Hampstead townhouse in 2009, days after meeting her at one of his Hammersmith Apollo shows.The same year, during a recording session at Channel 4, Brand sexually assaulted another woman by thrusting his head into her groin after she was told to give him a massage.In September 2023, an investigation by journalists from The Sunday Times, The Times, and Channel 4 Dispatches published accusations from women who said they had been raped, sexual abused, and degraded by Brand.The revelations prompted four women to come forward to accuse Brand of criminal offences, while another two women came forward once Brand had been charged.