Brand inquiry widens as barrister reports himself over courtroom clash
The Metropolitan Police are investigating two further rape allegations against Russell Brand and will begin sifting reports about other potential victims next week, with detectives reported to fear the eventual number could reach double figures. Sir Mark Rowley said: “I wouldn’t be surprised if many, many more come forward.” Brand’s barrister, Ian Winter KC, has referred himself to the Bar Standards Board after telling a Sunday Times journalist outside court: “Well, it wasn’t. You fucked it.”
Brand, 51, was convicted on Thursday of raping a 21-year-old fan at his London home in 2009 and sexually assaulting three women between 2004 and 2009; he is remanded until sentencing on Monday. The exchange with Rosamund Urwin took place outside the courtroom after she said she was “pleased justice has been done”. Mr Winter said on Friday that his “professional duty requires me to self-report those allegations to the Bar Standards Board, so the matter can be subject to proper scrutiny”. One of the two new complainants is understood to have been 16 at the time. The commissioner, who said the defence’s line that complainants had not “resisted or screamed” came “very close to victim-blaming”, would not confirm the double-figures estimate. Downing Street said Andy Burnham believes a legal duty on judges to warn juries about rape myths “should be examined”; pressed on his supportive 2014 tweet about Brand, he said he “had no idea of the full extent of what he was doing”. Lisa Nandy called the verdict “a wake-up call” for media and entertainment, where “the power imbalances are huge”. Watch Monday’s sentence and whether prosecutors revisit two allegations that earlier failed the evidential test.