OAN’s Brooke Mallory
12:19 PM – Monday, September 25, 2023
Following media reports that four women have accused actor and comedian Russell Brand of a succession of sexual assaults, the British authorities said on Monday that they have officially opened an inquiry into the number of complaints of non-recent sexual offenses.
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The women accused Brand, 48, of alleged sex offenses, including rape, between 2006 and 2013, according to the Sunday Times newspaper and the documentary “Dispatches” on Channel 4 TV.
The “very serious criminal allegations” have been denied by Brand, who asserted on his social media accounts that he has never engaged in non-consensual sex.
“Following an investigation by Channel 4’s Dispatches and The Sunday Times, the Met has received a number of allegations of sexual offences in London,” London’s Metropolitan Police said in a statement.
“We have also received a number of allegations of sexual offences committed elsewhere in the country and will investigate these.”
The police refused to provide the dates, the number of events, or the specifics of the offenses that are the subject of their investigation.
However, authorities did reveal this week that they had received a claim of a sexual assault that allegedly occurred in central London’s Soho in 2003 in response to the claims.
“We continue to encourage anyone who believes they may have been a victim of a sexual offence, no matter how long ago it was, to contact us,” said Detective Superintendent Andy Furphy, who is leading the investigation.
The British media has reported on additional claims by a number of women alleging improper behavior by Brand, the ex-husband of American singer Katy Perry and previously one of the most well-known comedians and broadcasters in the U.K., since the charges were initially published and broadcast.
As a result, Brand’s promoters announced the cancellation of the last dates of his current stand-up tour, and YouTube declared last Tuesday that Brand was no longer able to monetize his video channel.
When Brand began his weekly show on the Canadian online video platform Rumble on Monday, where he has 1.6 million followers, he said that “big tech,” the authorities, and the mainstream media were attempting to silence alternative viewpoints.
In the last few years, Brand has flipped from his previous left-leaning, comedic talking points that the mainstream media is used to covering to a more conservative, anti-government position, explaining his skepticism with the COVID-19 vaccines, calling out Democrat politicians, condemning globalism, and his belief that the federal reserve is pushing towards a dystopian “cashless society” supported by digital currency.
Many online users have speculated that the only reason these big tech companies and the alleged victims of sexual misconduct are now coming forward after a decade is because they are trying to silence him and his “controversial” public views.
Brand’s YouTube page currently has 6.65 million subscribers.
“I now, in particular, have a new experience on the way that the media and the state can cooperate and corroborate one another’s narratives and stories,” he said.
“I am beginning to sense that if you publicly question important stories that are agenda-led like, for example, the war in Ukraine or the response to the COVID pandemic then it appears there is some significant heft behind controlling those narrative spaces,” Brand continued.
Unlike YouTube, Rumble has denied requests from U.K. legislators to prevent Brand, who has also starred in a number of Hollywood movies like Forgetting Sarah Marshall, from generating money from the site.
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