Will Russell Brand be the last predatory celeb to hide in the open? Depends on us, not him

OpinionColumnist and senior journalistNovember 6, 2026 — 3:30pmNovember 6, 2026 — 3:30pm“What kind of man was I? Treating women in this way?” wrote Russell Brand in his 2007 memoir. “If this is what I’m telling you, can you imagine what’s being left out?”Following Brand’s conviction for rape and three counts of sexual assault in London on Thursday, yes, we now have some idea.Russell brand leaves Southwark Crown Court in London on Monday. AP Photo/Alberto PezzaliBut only some. It is wearyingly certain that he will never be brought to justice for the full extent of his predation and possible other crimes. Brand was found not guilty of several other charges. He is now being investigated for two further rape allegations, according to police.Brand’s considerable appeal – to women, to his star-struck public and to commercially minded media executives – was his supposed singularity. With his low-slung jeans and his bouffant hair, he curated an aesthetic that was a mashup of preening rocker, Charles Manson and Jesus, with a strong ironic streak. “Can’t you see it’s just a joke?” is the bully’s best defence, and all sexual abusers are bullies at heart.He rose to prominence as a comedian at the Edinburgh Festival in the early noughties and started touring in 2006. His genre of comedy was confessional and shocking, laced with a vulnerability and faux-self-awareness that now looks to be what it always was – the manipulations of a predator.He was eagerly embraced by the British media, appearing on huge-rating shows on MTV and Channel 4, as well as radio. He performed for Queen Elizabeth. In about 2008, he crossed the Atlantic to make his fortune in Hollywood, even marrying a pop star, Katy Perry. Their union was short.Brand’s charisma was powerful, and he had a pseudo-intellectualism which endeared him to the progressive press. He had a column in The Guardian and guest-edited The New Statesmen.His evident intelligence amounted, mostly, to an ability to read people well and beguile them, often with a view to exploiting them. It was not surprising that he turned to YouTube Christian shamanery after the entertainment world had largely dumped him.A friend of mine, Jo Robb, is part of a group called the Henley Mermaids, which agitates against sewage pollution in the Thames. She had dealings with Brand when he took up their cause, as a member of the local community. Before he moved to Florida, Brand, his wife and their children lived in a house at Henley-on-Thames.Robb told me Brand paraded before her and her fellow middle-aged-women-activists in his home in low-slung jeans which showed his pubic hair, his shirt open. She initially thought he would be useful in drawing attention to their cause, before realising “he was using us”.Russell Brand and Helen Mirren at the 83rd Academy Awards in Los Angeles in 2011.AP Photo/Chris Carlson“He latched onto this campaign … it provided him with cover ahead of what I think he knew was coming out,” she told me on Friday. Brand’s public involvement with the Mermaids was in late 2022, by which time he would have known journalists were investigating him.Despite his sui generis brand, in terms of serial predators, Brand was completely standard. Like all practised, powerful sex pests, from Harvey Weinstein to Jeffrey Epstein, to Rolf Harris, Don Burke and Jimmy Saville (I could go on, but I won’t go on), Brand operated with increasing impunity but retained a reptilian instinct for picking his marks.He was comfortably enabled by powerful systems and by the people he made money for. His business model was to hide in the open.His entire comedic brand was about his sexual incontinence and compulsive need to sexually dominate women, with a sideline in edgy past heroin use. He was named “shagger of the year” three times by The Sun newspaper.Brand, with co-stars Jason Segel, Mila Kunis and Kristen Bell in the 2008 film Forgetting Sarah Marshall.His career in exploitation followed the same trajectory as other famous sex pests. His behaviour was notorious, and an open secret within his industry. Women warned other women about it. The powerful men (and occasional women) in a position to intervene, did nothing. And so he carried on.In 2017, the same year the first #metoo story was published in The New York Times about film producer Harvey Weinstein, comedian Katherine Ryan confronted Brand about his sexual predation on camera, as they both participated in a Comedy Central show called “Roast Battle”.Her remarks were not broadcast, but in 2018 Ryan spoke to broadcaster Louis Theroux about the comedian she had called out to his face. They didn’t name Brand – it was too risky.“It’s very dangerous to have this conversation,” Ryan told Theroux. “It is a litigious minefield, ’cause lots of people have tried to nail this person down for their alleged crimes and this person has very good lawyers, so am I going to put my mortgage on the line by saying who this person is?”She said the man’s behaviour was an “open secret”. “Every time these things are eventually proven … everybody knew, and they go ‘Well everybody knew’.”In 2019, British journalists began to look into the rumours about Brand. Around the same time, he segued from mainstream TV work into cult-leaderish YouTube content.Eventually, in September 2023, reporters from The Sunday Times, The Times and Channel 4’s Dispatches program published and broadcast a joint investigation into his alleged crimes. They had spoken to hundreds of sources over four years.Three years later again, Brand appeared in court before a jury.The long, slow span of that justice arc is as good as most victims will ever get. Yet for some people, the phantom anxiety of men being falsely accused is still the greater threat to justice.Is this the last of the great male entertainers who will be allowed to get away with criminal activity over decades while hiding in plain sight? The answer depends on how eagerly we choose to enable them.Jacqueline Maley is a senior writer and columnist.More:CourtsOpinionFor subscribersRolf HarrisKaty PerryHarvey WeinsteinJeffrey EpsteinFrom our partners