Woman describes alleged assault by Russell Brand as ‘frenzied’ and ‘violent’

Former comedian and actor Russell Brand laughed after pinning a woman against a wall and kissing her “sloppily” at a radio station, a court has heard.Brand, now 51, is accused of sexually assaulting the woman in the mid-2000s after encountering her at the Choice FM studios in central London.She told Southwark Crown Court on Tuesday that Brand appeared to find it funny after grabbing her breasts and forcefully kissing her.She told jurors that three men and a woman with Brand witnessed the incident and “did nothing”, other than to laugh afterwards to “break the silence”.When faced with questions about her account, the woman said: “This was a situation I did not want to be in.“I wanted it to go away. I don’t gain a single thing by saying ‘Russell Brand did that to me’.“I have nothing to gain at all.”Describing the alleged assault, she said Brand was a “perfect stranger” to her and she recalled him saying “aye, aye” before grabbing her face.She said: “He was kissing me and he was pushing his body against me.“It was hard, I would say it was sloppy.“He was kissing me all down my neck. His hands at that time were all over me.“He touched my bum, touched my breasts, hands on my waist, his other hands were pinning me so his body was pressed up against me.”She added: “It was rough, it was very, very rough. It was hard, I would say that his whole body was pressed against me, the kisses were hard and sloppy, going down my neck.“The reason I used the word frenzied is because it was just ... violent.“It was hard and he just wasn’t stopping.”She told the court she was “stunned” and “in a haze”, she said she pushed Brand away and told him to “f*** off”, and added: “He kind of stumbled back, then it was just still.”She said: “I remember he made like a sound, that was like funny – ha ha – like that.”She recalled a man who “started laughing, almost like it was to break the tension”.She told the court she looked to a woman who witnessed the assault, but she “didn’t say anything”.She said the three men also did nothing to intervene.Brand denies three counts of rape, three charges of sexual assault and one allegation of indecent assault.Jurors have heard he says sexual encounters were consensual and some of his interactions with women have been “reimagined” in recent years.Among the allegations, he is accused of raping a woman in a hotel room in 1999 and forcing an MTV worker into a sex act in a Soho bar.A Channel 4 worker also told the court that she was “repulsed” after she was forced to massage Brand and the comedian thrust his head into her lap.The woman said members of Brand’s entourage shrugged and laughed when he carried out the sexual assault during a recording for a Channel 4 project in 2009.She told Southwark Crown Court that Brand had been “really lovely” at the start of the recording session, but he grew annoyed as the day wore on.His associates Jack Bayles and Gareth Roy said Brand would only continue if she gave him a massage, she told the court.It became “clear that he was quite unhappy about things” and the “atmosphere changed” in the studio, she told the jury.“They said Russell won’t carry on ... unless you give him a massage”.Asked how she responded, she said: “I didn’t want to give him a massage, I actually laughed.“I thought they were joking because I didn’t expect somebody to say that.“Then I saw by their faces that they weren’t joking.”The woman said Brand “leaned into my lap – my groin area”, and she told the court: “I could feel his breath against me.”She said she looked to Bayles and Roy, “hoping someone was going to help me”, but she added: “They just, arms up, as if to say: ‘Come on.’ They were shrugging and gesticulating, to say: ‘Are you going to do it?’”The woman said she thought: “Oh my god, I have got to do this”, and she placed her fingers on Brand’s shoulders.She added: “I was so repulsed by the situation and my automatic reaction was: ‘Urgh, you’re so bony.’”The woman said that Bayles and Roy “laughed”, but then she added in a quieter voice: “Russell didn’t laugh.”She said Brand made a series of offensive comments, suggesting that he and Roy had been “wanting to know: is it a girl or a boy?”The woman said Brand then walked to the other side of the room and started to make a joke about a calculator drinking from a glass of water.“It was just a bit of a charade, just a change of tune, and then he said: ‘Right, are we going to get on with this ... or not?’” she told the court.The woman said she reported the incident the following day to her line manager at Channel 4, and she believes it was passed on to the head of her department.Earlier, another woman gave evidence that Brand sexually assaulted her in a radio station corridor, pressing her against a wall and planting “sloppy” kisses.She tearfully told the court that she had nothing to gain from giving evidence against Brand, and recalls pleading with people with Brand to intervene but getting no help.“There was a culture of fear,” she said, recalling the atmosphere at the time as “people-pleasing”.“Russell Brand was an A-lister star, it was Big Brother, people were watching it, we all watched it.”She also criticised the workplace “banter” from the 2000s, telling the court: “Women were rated by colleagues on what we were wearing, how we looked.“It wasn’t an environment where management were coming to talk to us about workplace behaviour, that didn’t exist.”She added that if she had reported the incident to a manager, she thought the response would have been: “Oh, you’re lucky.”Brand denies three counts of rape, three counts of sexual assault, and one allegation of indecent assault.The trial continues. - PA