Source : Perth Now news
Being “disrespectful or rude or acting like a crazy idiot” towards women during sex is not a crime if there is consent, Russell Brand’s lawyer has told a jury in the comedian’s trial.
Ian Winter KC’s remarks came as he concluded his closing speech at Southwark Crown Court on Monday, where he urged the jury to separate Brand’s sexual behaviour and treatment of women from the question of whether he committed crimes.
Brand, 51, denies three charges of rape, three counts of sexual assault and one count of attempted indecent assault against six women, in allegations spanning 10 years from 1999.
“It is not criminal to treat women unkindly before, during or after sex,” Winter told jurors.
“It is not, I am afraid, criminal to be disrespectful or rude or to act like a crazy idiot.
“If there is consent, it is lawful.”
Winter said reporting in a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary and by The Times and The Sunday Times prompted the complainants to come forward but had created a “fundamentally compromised” case against Brand.
Opening his speech, the barrister quoted 19th-century philosopher John Henry Newman and his description of an attempt to “poison the wells”.
He told jurors that journalists had “poisoned the well of justice” in Brand’s case, saying the women had been “drawn forth” by the 2023 allegations rather than independently deciding to report their own.
“They all came forward for reasons connected to the TV program, not for reasons personable to themselves,” he said.
Winter said the women were “not random, not independent,” adding that they had each been “thoroughly contaminated” by the documentary.
Of the allegations, he said that the women may “think it now” but this does not “reflect what they were actually thinking back then”.
He added: “That is the precise consequence of the poisoning of the well”.
The lawyer said that their allegations came “very, very many years” later, adding that they “only did so once the well of justice had been corrupted and contaminated” and until the “ground had been cut from under his feet and the public mind poisoned against him”.
He questioned why none of the women came forward during the MeToo movement.
“Many women were questioning whether they had a bad experience sexually at the hands of a famous person. It could not have been more publicised,” he said.
“How is it that not one of them thought what happened to them involved a crime during the MeToo movement?”
Winter also argued that the passage of time had created another problem for the case, describing the delay between the alleged offences and reports to police as “monstrous”.
He said delay “does something particularly savage in a case where it’s one person’s word against another person’s word”.
He told jurors they were dealing with a “quagmire of doubt and inaccurate recollection”.
Winter also told jurors: “What matters is he (Brand) had an immense amount of sex and none of it was unlawful.”
He added: “Disgusting, distasteful, immoral, who cares?
“It’s irrelevant to your consideration.”
The barrister also pointed to the evidence of Brand’s wife, adding: “She fell in love with that man in full knowledge of what he was doing.
“She married him, she bore him three children.”
He added that she would not have done so if Brand was “guilty as charged”.
Brand sat upright and looked straight ahead in the dock during his barrister’s closing speech.
He had arrived at court on Monday accompanied by his wife Laura Gallacher and her father, golfer Bernard Gallacher.
The trial continues.
