Warning: The following includes descriptions of rape, sexual assault and abuse that some readers may find distressing.
In 2010, the comedian Russell Brand was interviewed for ELLE magazine. During the interview, which almost glamourises the lad culture that was so defining of the time, Brand was asked what the biggest lie he had ever told a woman was. “Honesty has always been an integral part of my operation,” Brand replied. The interviewer pressed him: “But you’ve said that an extraordinary number of women have thrown your belongings onto the street in trash bags. Getting caught in lies didn’t precede this?”
Brand replied with the sort of linguistic slippage which allowed for innuendo and suggestion that came to define his comedy, his writing and, later, his forays into podcasting and YouTubing: “People don’t throw your bags out of windows because of lies; they throw them out because of the truth,” he said.
It was not an answer. But not not an answer, either.
Well, here we are. Brand’s metaphorical belongings – his reputation and his career – have been thrown onto the street in trash bags by the women who have accused him of rape, sexual assault and emotional abuse.
The allegations have been made by a number of women in a joint investigation carried out by journalists at The Times, The Sunday Times and Channel 4’s Dispatches. Four women have alleged sexual assaults between 2006 and 2013, while he was a presenter for BBC Radio 2 and Channel 4 and acting in Hollywood. Others have made a range of accusations about Brand’s controlling, abusive and predatory behaviour.
One of them says that Brand started a sexual relationship with her when she was just 16-years-old and that it lasted for seven years. The woman in question also says that Brand sent a BBC car to pick her up from school. The BBC has pledged full transparency in their internal review.
Since the investigation was published and Channel 4’s 90-minute documentary aired on Saturday 16 September, London’s Metropolitan Police have received an additional report of an alleged sexual assault which took place in 2003. The comedian denies all allegations against him and says all of his relationships have been consensual.
But, still, here we are. Surveying the bags as they burst open next to the overflowing refuse bins behind the imposing buildings of powerful institutions.
Abusers often hide in plain sight. Our society makes it easy for them to, even now, over five years after the Me Too movement made it feel like things would change.
Abusers often hide in plain sight. Our society makes it easy for them to, even now, over five years after the Me Too movement made it feel like things would change.
Survivors fear not being believed as so many of us aren’t, so they stay quiet. Survivors know that they are statistically unlikely to get justice, so they don’t report abuse. And, even if they are, even if they do, sending an abuser to prison doesn’t bring back the years lost to abuse, to trauma, to self-loathing. It also doesn’t seem to stop abusers abusing.
The allegations against Brand are being made at a time when we have the benefit of hindsight. Before Me Too, like a modern day Lord Byron known for his polysyllabic musings and sexual misadventure, Brand rose to fame during the indie sleaze years. It was a time when addicts were valorized and turned into icons with no regard for their wellbeing or the harm they could cause others, when feminism was in the toilet with the Ladettes pressing the flush, and “metrosexual” men wore skinny jeans just like the girls while they bragged about how many women they’d slept with. Brand’s well-documented sex and substance addiction issues were commodified, they became part of his appeal.
The rampant misogyny of it all was enabled by the media who slut shamed women in public life from Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan to Britney Spears, normalised publishing upskirting photos of drunk women and asked people like Brand questions about their sex lives.
Much has been made of how the hostile context of the 2000s provided a perfect petri-dish for Brand and for the behaviour that has been alleged to not only take place but be seamlessly absorbed into an already putrid culture. One particular moment stands out and proves how women’s lives have been upended by his behaviour whether he’s convicted or not.
In 2008, while prerecording his Radio 2 show with another comedian, Jonathan Ross, Brand left a message on the voicemail of the actor Andrew Sachs – Manuel from the TV show Fawlty Towers – detailing how he “fucked” (in the words of Ross) Sachs’ granddaughter – but it was “was consensual and she wasn’t menstrual.” It is well-documented that Ross wanted Brand to cut the calls from the version of the show that broadcast. The BBC let it go out.
I remember a lot about that time but, until I Googled the event this week in the wake of the allegations against Brand, I didn’t remember Sachs’ granddaughter’s name: Georgina Bailie.
Bailie, who is now 38, gave an interview to the Daily Mirror after the documentary aired in which she said that her relationship with Brand was consensual. But she also reflected on the vulnerability of her youth and how the attention of the entire affair with Brand plunged her into the depths of addiction herself while Brand made hay from the same sort of misogynistic jokes that put her there.
“I thought I was just a 20-year-old girl at a party but looking back on it years later I was already in the throes of addiction myself. I was really lost back then,” she said. “After Sachsgate, Russell made millions of pounds doing a stand-up routine about it and that was very hard and painful for me – I was the butt of the joke, I was young and didn’t know how to process it and I turned to drink and drugs.”
“After Sachsgate, Russell made millions of pounds doing a stand-up routine about it and that was very hard and painful for me – I was the butt of the joke, I was young and didn’t know how to process it and I turned to drink and drugs.”
Now you know what happened to Bailie. You know that she spent years thinking that perhaps she was the one “in the wrong” and not the man who talked about having sex with her on the radio. But, I bet, like me, you still know more about Weinstein than you know about his victims. I bet you can’t name any of Savile’s victims.
And these are some of the abusers of power who have been exposed. Those who are never convicted or exposed, whose behaviour is not of interest to journalists across the world because they are not public figures, walk amongst us all, unaccountable, hiding in plain sight.
You know their names. Perhaps you or your partner are in a WhatsApp group with one who talks about the women he has slept with in a derogatory way. Maybe you heard a rumour about them doing something that wasn’t “consensual” and you decided to “stay out of it”. “None of your business,” you thought, “there’s no smoke without fire but saying something feels too much like drama”.
It’s not so different, really, to the TV executives who reportedly moved women producers and runners off of Brand’s shows because they had heard rumours about his behaviour, is it?
2023 vision is, as far as I can see, little clearer than the noughties. Perhaps it’s less beer-goggled, not quite so drug fuelled but it’s still fuzzy. Nobody wants to bring it into focus because we still enable abusers – we don’t connect the dots between misogynistic language and physical or emotional abuse. The noughties may have provided a playground for this type of behaviour, but let’s be clear: every decade since the dawn of time has enabled men to abuse women. We still don’t know how to support victims and survivors. Our society fails them just as our justice system fails them.
The noughties may have provided a playground for this type of behaviour, but let’s be clear: every decade since the dawn of time has enabled men to abuse women.
Don’t believe me? Google rape conviction statistics. The number of rape accusations increase but convictions do not. Still not convinced? Look at the comments underneath articles about the misogynistic influencer Andrew Tate, a man charged with rape and human trafficking. His followers think he is the victim of a feminist conspiracy.
Brand has not yet been charged with anything but, nonetheless, he and his followers believe similar theories.
Truth is lies. Lies are truth.
It doesn’t stop with the allegations against Brand. In the last week alone, a Hollywood’s golden couple – Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis – quit the board of a charity which Kutcher founded to tackle child sexual abuse after providing a character statement for a man convicted of rape and urging for leniency in his sentencing.
It’s not the noughties anymore.
But, don’t be fooled. When the cameras stop rolling, those who tell their stories still live in a world where too many people look the other way, skim past the grotesque story in the group chat or pretend not to have heard the rumours because they’re not sure if they are true.
Well, that brings us back to what Brand said himself, “People don’t throw your bags out of windows because of lies; they throw them out because of the truth.”
Until everyone – absolutely everyone – is prepared to take out the trash, to step up, step in and call out misogyny, people who want to abuse their power physically and emotionally, will continue to hide in plain sight.
If you have experienced sexual violence of any kind and need help or support, please visit Rape Crisis or call 0808 802 9999.
Like what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here?
Billie Eilish Talks About The Isolation Of Abuse