Channel 4 worker ‘repulsed’ after forced massage with Russell Brand, court told
The star denies seven charges, including three counts of rape.
A Channel 4 worker said she was “repulsed” after she was forced to massage Russell Brand and the comedian thrust his head into her lap.
The woman said members of Brand’s entourage shrugged and laughed when he carried out the sexual assault during a recording for a Channel 4 project in 2009.
She told Southwark Crown Court that Brand had been “really lovely” at the start of the recording session, but he grew annoyed as the day wore on.
His associates Jack Bayles and Gareth Roy said Brand would only continue if she gave him a massage, she told the court.
It became “clear that he was quite unhappy about things” and the “atmosphere changed” in the studio, she told the jury.
“They said Russell won’t carry on … unless you give him a massage”.
Asked how she responded, she said: “I didn’t want to give him a massage, I actually laughed.
“I thought they were joking because I didn’t expect somebody to say that.
“Then I saw by their faces that they weren’t joking.”
The woman said Brand “leaned into my lap – my groin area”, and she told the court: “I could feel his breath against me.”
She said she looked to Mr Bayles and Mr Roy, “hoping someone was going to help me”, but she added: “They just, arms up, as if to say: ‘Come on.’ They were shrugging and gesticulating, to say: ‘Are you going to do it?’”
The woman said she thought: “Oh my god, I have got to do this”, and she placed her fingers on Brand’s shoulders.
She added: “I was so repulsed by the situation and my automatic reaction was: ‘Urgh, you’re so bony.'”
The woman said that Mr Bayles and My Roy “laughed”, but then she added in a quieter voice: “Russell didn’t laugh.”
She said Brand made a series of offensive comments, suggesting that he and Mr Roy had been “wanting to know: is it a girl or a boy?”
The woman said Brand then walked to the other side of the room and started to make a joke about a calculator drinking from a glass of water.
“It was just a bit of a charade, just a change of tune, and then he said: ‘Right, are we going to get on with this… or not?’” she told the court.
The woman said she reported the incident the following day to her line manager at Channel 4, and she believes it was passed on to the head of her department.
Earlier, another woman gave evidence that Brand sexually assaulted her in a radio station corridor, pressing her against a wall and planting “sloppy” kisses.
She tearfully told the court that she had nothing to gain from giving evidence against Brand, and recalls pleading with people with Brand to intervene but getting no help.
“There was a culture of fear,” she said, recalling the atmosphere at the time as “people-pleasing”.
“Russell Brand was an A-lister star, it was Big Brother, people were watching it, we all watched it.”
She also criticised the workplace “banter” from the 2000s, telling the court: “Women were rated by colleagues on what we were wearing, how we looked.
“It wasn’t an environment where management were coming to talk to us about workplace behaviour, that didn’t exist.”
She added that if she had reported the incident to a manager, she thought the response would have been: “Oh, you’re lucky.”
Brand denies three counts of rape, three counts of sexual assault, and one allegation of indecent assault.
The trial continues.