If nothing else, Russell Brand’s sentencing may deliver some measure of justice to his victims.
The judge at Southwark Crown Court called Brand “arrogant”, someone who heaped “humiliation” on women, and a “predator”, which is about as far as someone in his position could go, as he condemned him to 10 years and six months in total, having been found guilty on one charge each of rape and three sexual assaults.
In praising all the women who appeared in court, he also underlined Brand’s final act of callousness before justice was served: “All those women had to face being confronted and being told they lied, or twisted the truth, or they’d agreed to your sexual demands. That was all done because of you, and your instructions.” As the judge also indicated, those in Brand’s entourage who sometimes witnessed things and yet did nothing should also reflect on their experiences.
More broadly, the case stands as proof that a promiscuous lifestyle, practised by someone well-known or otherwise, doesn’t constitute a legal defence. That Brand publicly bragged about his behaviour and acted licentiously when in front of a camera or microphone – what some might term “hiding in plain sight”, although we should more accurately call it “parading” – was an equally inadequate excuse.
It is a quite staggering fact that Russell Brand is the first real “celebrity” to have been convicted in the UK of an adult rape. Staggering and shaming, because it is not plausible to believe that Brand was the first one to commit such a crime, nor be accused of it.
The sexual crimes of Russell Brand, as well as a series of many others involving famous individuals, from Jimmy Savile to Rolf Harris to Max Clifford to Mohamed al-Fayed, raise a series of wider issues about how such crimes are treated, no matter whether the victims are adults or children, or both.
The culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, suspects that such abuse of power and position is taking place up to the present day, everywhere from the entertainment industry to the media, the City, big business, politics, the NHS and even the legal profession itself. Instances are not difficult to find.
The successful pursuit and conviction of a rapist has always been an intractable problem. This is because of the nature of the offence. It has always been unusually difficult to prove, and this results in the police being reluctant to put the effort into something they don’t believe will be brought to court. It is thus distressing for the claimant three times over: from the moment the crime is committed, to the police examination, to the ordeal of giving evidence in court. The tortuous, protracted process exacerbates a lifelong trauma.
Many victims drop charges during the long and unpredictable wait for a hearing. Misogyny infects the system, resulting in shamefully low conviction rates. It is no coincidence that until fairly recently, the entire system has been dominated by men, from first responders to an examining doctor to the crown court judge passing sentence.
Of course matters have improved. Judges no longer tell juries that if a woman doesn’t fight back violently, that constitutes consent, nor that dressing in a certain manner constitutes contributory negligence. But none of these historical advances is much use to a woman being bullied by someone with access to the most expensive counsel in the land into a gagging “non-disclosure agreement” or equivalent court injunction, especially without a lawyer.
That is something that clearly needs to be addressed by the Ministry of Justice, and by the legal profession, as part of a more general drive to even up the huge imbalance of power that can occur when the rich and famous are involved. For the sake of public confidence, the way judges sum up in these cases, avoiding well-known rape tropes, should be periodically reviewed. Jurors have to understand why victims may be unable to resist, that they may take time to report an assault, that sexual histories are irrelevant, and that “no” means “no”.
Guilty parties should also be prevented from protecting their assets against justified claims for compensation. Those who die before justice is done should not necessarily be able to transfer their estates intact.
It is fair to add that the present government is not negligent. It does have a strategy to halve violence against women and girls by around 2036, and it is reforming the criminal justice system accordingly. There are to be specialist rape and sexual offence courtrooms, more experts in the field, and the system will become faster at processing defendants, so waits are shorter and finite. Victims are to be allowed an independent review before a decision not to proceed with a rape prosecution becomes final.
The Crown Prosecution Service is constantly updating its guidelines such that, for example, someone is unable to give consent because they are drunk, drugged or unconscious, it is rape. But the job of changing the societal attitudes that condition the behaviour of individuals and the effectiveness of the criminal justice system requires a broader cross-government approach. That means educating schoolchildren at an appropriate age, making companies and professional bodies adopt statutory codes of conduct, and making it easier for journalists to investigate allegations that come to them before the authorities. Regrettably, Brand will not be the last miscreant of his type, but his incarceration should serve as a warning to other predators.
