Britify News

RUSSELL BRAND - My take on the aftermath.. A lot of the comments on the Brand verdict are treating the fact it wasn’t reported straight away as proof it didn’t happen, or that the women are just after money or attention. That’s not how these things usually go. I used to investigate rapes most days. That includes historic allegations. The process is long and invasive. You have to go over what happened in detail, more than once, knowing people are going to pick apart your memory and your motives. Plenty of people decide it isn’t worth it, especially if the other person is a celebrity. Yes there is more chance of being believed that there used to be, but these are historic offences which occurred in a very different time than we are living in now. Delayed reporting is common. People freeze, they fawn, they rarely scream or fight or leave the injuries everyone expects. It usually comes down to consent. What you think you’d do and what you actually do when it happens to you are often entirely different. With the 2009 rape the jury convicted him of, she did tell family and friends at the time. They later gave evidence about what she’d said to them — the pain, that she said he’d raped her. She just didn’t go to the police then because she didn’t think she’d be believed. That’s corroboration. And of course there isn’t forensic evidence years later if it wasn’t reported at the time. That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. None of this means every allegation is automatically true. But the idea that a delay by itself proves it’s a lie, or that these women must be chasing something, just doesn’t match how these cases actually look. The jury heard the accounts, the disclosures, and the reasons for the delay, and they convicted on four counts. Here is what I have read about the rape allegation. Rape (2009): A young fan (then 21) met him after a Hammersmith Apollo gig (she described being “selected”). There was a consensual encounter backstage; days later she went to his Hampstead home expecting vaginal sex. During that encounter he flipped her, removed a condom and anally raped her, continuing after she begged him to stop. She described intense pain, being unable to speak or breathe, and later bleeding; he reportedly told her to clean up. She had disclosed aspects to friends/family at the time but did not go to police then because she believed she would not be believed (she had gone to the house willingly) and felt guilt/self-blame. Please spare a thought for the women who have put theirselves through this process in order to seek justice.