Russell Brand fears he could face criminal charges in the US after UK rape probe: court docs
Russell Brand fears he will face criminal charges in the US as well as those recently filed in the UK, according to a court filing seeking to delay the lawsuit accusing him of sexually assaulting an extra on a film set
The 49-year-old comedian-turned-wellness guru’s lawyers made the argument in New York Supreme Court last week — just days before British police charged him with a string of rapes and sexual assaults.
His lawyers were seeking to delay the civil suit, which was filed against him in 2023 by a woman only identified as Jane Doe, amid concerns it could “overlap” with the ongoing criminal probe in the UK, according to the court documents.
“The fact that Mr Brand is already facing a criminal investigation in the United Kingdom — coupled with highly publicized allegations that have been made (both by this Plaintiff and others) that Mr Brand committed similar sexual assaults in the United States — is more than sufficient to support a ‘reasonable belief’ that he could face prosecution here,” his attorneys wrote in the April 1 filing.
His US lawyers argued that the “Get Him To The Greek” star didn’t want to say anything that could potentially incriminate him in the British proceedings.
Brand hasn’t been charged over the allegations tied to the lawsuit, which accuses him of sexually assaulting the extra on the set of “Arthur” in 2010 while a crew member allegedly “guarded the door from outside.”
The New York judge ended up denying Brand’s push to delay the civil suit.
It comes as the scandal-scarred actor was charged in the UK last week for allegedly sexually assaulting four separate women between 1999 and 2005 in an unrelated case, authorities said.
The British actor, who was once married to pop star Katy Perry, quickly denied charges leveled against him by British cops, insisting he “never” was a rapist.
“I was a fool before I lived in the light of the Lord. I was a drug addict, a sex addict and an imbecile, but what I never was was a rapist,” he said in a video statement on Instagram.
Cops opened a sex crimes investigation into Brand back in September 2023 – just weeks after The Sunday Times and Channel 4 TV’s documentary show “Dispatches” reported that four women had accused Brand of sexual assault – including one rape that allegedly occurred at his Los Angeles home in 2012 at the height of his Hollywood fame.
It wasn’t immediately clear if the latest charges were tied to any of the allegations detailed in the documentary. Police on Friday said they had received a flurry of complaints from women after the report aired.
Brand has long denied the claims, saying his relationships were “always consensual.”
“These allegations pertain to the time when I was working in the mainstream, when I was in the newspapers all the time, when I was in the movies. And as I’ve written about extensively in my books, I was very, very promiscuous,” he said at the time.
“Now, during that time of promiscuity, the relationships I had were absolutely always consensual.”
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