Jemima Goldsmith accuses Russell Brand of violence and coercive control

The TV producer says she called police to remove the entertainer from her home in 2014, as Brand begins a sentence of ten and a half years for rape and sexual assault.

Within hours of Russell Brand being sent to prison, his former partner Jemima Goldsmith publicly accused him of abusing her during their relationship, saying she once had to summon police to get him out of her home.

The 52-year-old film and television producer made the claims in a long post on X on Monday evening, the same day a judge jailed Brand for ten and a half years. She wrote, "I am in awe of the courageous women who came forward at Brand’s trial, told their stories, testified and ensured justice was done. I have had my own personal experience of his violence, coercive control and abuse."

The sentencing

Brand, 51, was convicted after a four-week trial at Southwark Crown Court of offences against four women between 2004 and 2009. The jury found him guilty of raping a woman at his home in 2009 and of sexually assaulting three other women. He was cleared of two further counts of rape and one of attempted indecent assault.

In passing sentence, the judge said Brand had shown a dismissive, arrogant indifference to women’s right to refuse him, and that his celebrity had led him to believe he could behave however and whenever he chose.

Victims addressed the court before sentence was passed. One said she had spent years traumatised after what happened to her, losing her self-respect and coming to see herself as “damaged goods.” The woman he raped told the court the trauma stays with her daily.

A van thought to be transporting Brand was later seen entering HMP Wandsworth in south London. Under sentencing rules for certain serious violent and sexual offences, prisoners serving four years or more are released at the two-thirds mark, meaning Brand could be freed after seven years. He would then serve the remainder on licence, subject to conditions that may include electronic tagging.

Goldsmith’s allegations

Goldsmith, who was in a relationship with Brand for about a year around 2014, accused him of violence, coercive control and abuse. She said a violent incident that year ended with her calling police to have him removed from her house.

She wrote, "I had to call the police to have him removed from my house in 2014 during a violent incident. I chose not to press charges at the time and not to go public with this, as I was worried about the impact of the press attention on my then teenage children."

Goldsmith said she has had no contact with Brand since 2014. She added that she had helped the journalists who first exposed allegations against him and had been prepared to give evidence of his abusive behaviour if they faced legal action.

Praising the women who testified at his trial as courageous, she said she felt relief that he had at last been held to account.

The 2015 injunction

Goldsmith also responded to recent reports about a 2015 injunction she and Brand jointly obtained against a woman named Szilvia Berki, which barred Berki from harassing them, including by repeating claims that Brand had assaulted her at Goldsmith’s home in 2014. “I was present the whole time he was with her, and I did not see anything untoward, despite the fact that he was later found guilty of sexually assaulting other women and he later physically assaulted me. If I saw any man abuse any woman under any circumstances, I would do my utmost to stop them, without hesitation. The background to this is that [the woman] came to my house for roughly 30 minutes in June 2014, after I booked her to give a massage to Brand. By the time she arrived he had decided he didn’t want a massage and asked her to leave. She was clearly offended."

She said Berki then sent her a stream of threatening messages and spread false claims about her online, and that she pursued the injunction on the advice of Brand’s lawyer. Coverage of that order in recent weeks, she said, had exposed her to a wave of online abuse.

Journalist’s support

Rosamund Urwin, chief news correspondent at the Sunday Times and part of the 2023 investigation into Brand, told the BBC that Goldsmith had been a significant help to her reporting. Urwin said she had tried to point out that the injunction story was more complicated than many assumed, and described Goldsmith’s decision to speak out as an act of real bravery.

Background

Goldsmith is the daughter of the late financier Sir James Goldsmith, the sister of former Conservative minister Zac Goldsmith, and the former wife of Imran Khan, the ex-cricketer and former prime minister of Pakistan.