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Australian News

Brand's accuser denies being 'giddy schoolgirl'

PerthNow ·
Brand's accuser denies being 'giddy schoolgirl'

A woman told police that actor and comedian Russell Brand had grabbed her breasts before dragging her into a toilet at a bar and orally raping her, a London court has been told.

Brand, once one of Britain's most high-profile broadcasters and the former husband of US singer Katy Perry, is on trial accused of three counts of rape, three of sexual assault and one of indecent assault against six women between 1999 and 2009.

The 51-year-old denies the allegations, and told police after his arrest that he had never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity and the accusers might have re-imagined events.

The third of the six complainants to give evidence alleged Brand had assaulted her after she met him at a party in a London bar in 2004.

In a tearful police interview played to jurors at Southwark Crown Court, the woman, who worked for MTV, said she had wanted to meet Brand because she had seen him on television and thought he was really funny.

But less than a minute after talking to him at the bar, she said, he assaulted her.

"He literally just grabbed my boobs in the middle of the conversation," she said, adding that he had a weird maniacal grin on his face as he did it.

Immediately afterwards while she was in shock and disbelief, she said he grabbed her arm and pulled her to the toilets that were nearby.

"He said 'come on, come on, don't be a spoilsport'," she recounted, saying he was holding her forcibly by her head and hair.

She said while his words were not threatening, the force of the encounter and the look in his eye had been.

She rejected Brand's lawyer Ian Winter's suggestion that she had been very excited to meet him, saying she "wasn't starstruck ... I wasn't a giddy schoolgirl".

Winter put it to her that had she been groped at the bar or dragged into the toilets, people would have seen.

"Let's be clear he did not do that to you," he said of the alleged sexual assault.

"You happily accompanied Mr Brand into the lavatory," he added, a suggestion she rejected.

Read the full article on PerthNow ›

5News aggregated this summary from the outlet’s public feed. The full article, with all the context, is on www.perthnow.com.au — the content belongs to PerthNow.

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