LONDON – A senior British baby-kisser on Monday urged police to investigate sexual assault allegations against Russell Brand, as leisure business figures confronted questions on whether or not the comedian’s dangerous habits went unchallenged on account of his status.
Brand denies allegations of sexual assault made by way of 4 girls in a Channel 4 tv documentary and The Times and Sunday Times newspapers. The accusers, who’ve no longer been named, come with person who stated she was once sexually assaulted right through a dating with him when she was once 16. Another lady says Brand raped her in Los Angeles in 2012.
Brand, 48, has rejected all of the claims, pronouncing in a video commentary that his relationships had been “always consensual.”
The Times stated Monday that extra girls had contacted the newspaper with allegations against Brand and they might be “rigorously checked.”
Conservative legislator Caroline Nokes, who chairs the House of Commons Women and Equalities Committee, urged police in each Britain and the United States to investigate the “incredibly shocking” allegations.
“This merits and needs a criminal investigation, because for too long we have seen men — and the perpetrators of these sorts of crimes are almost invariably men — not being held to account for their behaviors and their actions,” she advised BBC radio.
London’s Metropolitan Police pressure stated it might talk to the Sunday Times and Channel 4 to make sure that “any victims of crime who they have spoken with are aware of how they may report any criminal allegations to police.”
The claims have renewed debate concerning the “lad culture” that flourished in Britain within the Nineteen Nineties and early 2000s, and the misogyny that also percolates on the net.
The allegations reported by way of the newspapers and Channel 4 quilt the length between 2006 and 2013, when Brand was once a big megastar in Britain with a rising U.S. profile.
Known for his unbridled and risqué standup routines, he hosted displays on radio and tv, wrote memoirs charting his battles with medication and alcohol, seemed in different Hollywood motion pictures and was once in brief married to pop megastar Katy Perry between 2010 and 2012.
Brand was once suspended by way of the BBC in 2008 for making lewd prank calls to “Fawlty Towers” actor Andrew Sachs during which he boasted about having sex with Sachs’ granddaughter. He give up his radio display within the wake of the incident, which drew hundreds of proceedings to the publicly funded broadcaster.
The BBC, Channel 4 and the manufacturing corporate at the back of the “Big Brother” fact sequence – spinoffs of which have been hosted by way of Brand — all say they have got introduced investigations into Brand’s habits and the way proceedings had been treated.
In contemporary years Brand has in large part disappeared from mainstream media however has constructed up a big following on-line with movies blending wellness and conspiracy theories. His YouTube channel, which has greater than 6 million subscribers, comprises COVID-19 conspiracies, vaccine incorrect information and interviews with right-wing broadcasters together with Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan.
He additionally continues to excursion as a comedian, acting to masses of other people in a London venue on Saturday night because the Channel 4 documentary was once broadcast.