Russell Brand Was Jailed for 10½ Years for Rape — Then His Father Walked Out of Court and Told Reporters Who the Real Victim Was

In the dock, he held what looked like prayer beads.

Before the hearing began on Monday, Russell Brand looked up at his wife in the public gallery at Southwark Crown Court and mouthed a promise: “It’ll be okay, I don’t know how, but it will.” Laura Gallacher said, “Oh God,” then, “I love you.” The 51-year-old prayed. He made the sign of the cross. Before the lunch break he winked and nodded at her and the entourage sitting behind her.

By mid-afternoon, a judge had called him a “sexual predator” to his face and sent him to prison for 10 and a half years.

But the most startling words of the day were not spoken in Court 1. They came on the pavement outside, from his own father.

“You Had Also Become a Sexual Predator”

Brand was convicted last Thursday of raping one woman and sexually assaulting three others between 2004 and 2009. The jury cleared him of two further rape charges and one count of attempted indecent assault. He denies all the charges.

Monday belonged first to the women. One delivered her statement in person, from behind screens and a drawn curtain so Brand could not see her. One said she had been left “in shock and turmoil.” Another called him “a sexual predator who has no remorse.” The woman he raped in 2009 described months of fearing she had contracted HIV.

His barrister, Ian Winter KC, asked for mercy, calling the rape “a short and momentary failure” and urging the judge not to sentence Brand as “the monster portrayed outside this courtroom.”

“About 20 years ago, Russell Brand, you were becoming famous,” Mr Justice Joel Bennathan replied. “You were clever and, in many people’s eyes, funny and charismatic. You had also become a sexual predator.”

He called Brand’s claim that he never touched a woman without consent “one of a series of lies,” and noted he had saved the 21-year-old fan’s number under “T” for “tart.” His companions, the judge said, no doubt thought it was “outrageous laddish behaviour that only you could get away with.”

“It was outrageous and possibly laddish, but also a criminal sexual offence,” he said, “and as it turns out you haven’t got away with it.”

The total: 10 years and six months — nine for the rape, 18 months for the assaults. Brand stood, looked straight ahead and showed nothing. As officers led him to the cells, he mouthed “I love you” to his wife and told her, “We’ll be OK.” She left in tears.

The Man in the Gallery

Among the supporters in the public gallery was Ronald “Ron” Brand, 82, the comedian’s father. When he stepped outside, reporters were waiting.

Did he have a message for the victims? Ron laughed, Page Six reported, citing video from Sky News.

“The victims, what? Russell?” he said. “The girls, you mean, who chased and harassed him?”

A reporter reminded him that his son had just been convicted.

“I don’t care,” he said.

He went further, pointing to social media. “It’s easy to find the right jury,” he said, according to the Daily Mail. Asked how his son would cope behind bars, he answered: “He’s strong, he’s strong.”

His father was not the only one in Brand’s corner on Monday. Before the sentence was even announced, Elon Musk reposted a graphic comparing Brand’s case with a far shorter sentence given to another rapist and added a single word: “Unjust.”

The Name Nobody Expected

The most surprising support had already been handed to the judge.

Among six character references the defence put forward was one from Georgina Baillie — the granddaughter of the late “Fawlty Towers” actor Andrew Sachs, and the woman at the centre of Sachsgate. In 2008, Brand and Jonathan Ross left lewd messages about her on her grandfather’s answerphone during a BBC radio show — a scandal that ended with Brand quitting the BBC.

“I still choose to support him as a person I know him to be,” Baillie wrote. Winter told the court she had “as good a reason as anyone” not to back the comedian, but that she “was an alcoholic and now has been sober for six years because Mr Brand both persuaded her, then paid for her to go through rehabilitation,” The Independent reported.

Yet even Baillie has not called him innocent. After last week’s verdict, she told the Daily Mail that “justice has been served” and that the women’s evidence was “compelling.”

“It’ll Be Okay”

Later that afternoon, a white prison van believed to be carrying Brand pulled into HMP Wandsworth, the BBC reported. Under the sentence, he will serve two-thirds of the term before release on licence, and he will be on the sex offenders’ register for life.

Winter had told the court that Brand’s wife was going through “total devastation,” and that the couple were “wrestling with how to exactly explain to a child who’s just turned 10 what has happened here.” The judge said he was “very conscious” prison would take Brand away from his three children. “That sad loss to them, however, is caused by your serious offending.”

Outside court, prosecutors put it plainly. “Today’s result shows that fame, status and the passage of time do not change the fundamental issue of consent,” said David Roberts of the Crown Prosecution Service.

And it may not be the end. The Met is investigating rape allegations from two more women, one of whom was 16 at the time, and has passed those files to prosecutors. Commissioner Mark Rowley has said he “clearly wouldn’t be surprised if many more came forward.”

On Monday morning, Russell Brand told his wife it would be okay — he just didn’t know how. By nightfall he was behind bars, his father had told the cameras he didn’t care — and the Metropolitan Police said its investigation “remains ongoing.”