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Notes -
Russell Brand Accusations
Russell Brand has been accused of sexual misconduct and/or rape by four women in a large exposé by the Sunday Times [2]. The mainstream consensus online is that the testimony of these women is absolutely correct. I wonder, though, how many false accusers we should expect given the context of Russell Brand.
Russell Brand is not just some guy, he was at one point a party icon in the UK. As such, he has slept with 1000 women. And these are not just some women, just like Brand is not just some guy. This is not a sample size of the median woman in the UK. The women he slept with would differ psychologically from the average woman: more likely to make poor choices, more likely to be partying, more likely to be doing things for clout (like Russell Brand), more likely to be involved with drugs and mental illness. A study on the lives of “groupies” in the heavy metal scene found that groupies were more likely to use sex for leverage, to come from broken homes, and to have issues with drugs and alcohol. (This is not a one-to-one comparison; heavy metal is different than the rock n roll persona of Brand).
Scott has written that up to 20% of all rape allegations are false. But with Brand, we have a more complicated metric to consider: how many false accusers will you have sex with if you’ve had sex with one thousand women who make poor choices? Scott goes on in the above article to note that 3% of men will likely be falsely accused (including outside of court) in their life. If this is true, we might try multiplying that by 125 to arrive at how many accusers Brand should have. That would bring us to four, rounding up — but again, this would totally ignore the unique psychological profile of the women he screwed.
There’s yet more to consider. Brand is wealthy, famous, and controversial. His wealth and stature would lead a mentally unwell woman to feel spite, and his controversy would lead a clout-chasing woman to seek attention through accusation. What’s more, (most of) these allegations only came about because of an expensive and time-consuming journalistic investigation, which would have lead to pointed questioning.
All in all, it seems unfair to target a famous person and set out your journalists to hound down every woman he had sex with. It’s a man’s right to have consensual sex with mentally unwell and “damaged” women, which would be a large chunk of the women Brand bedded. Of course, this cohort appears more apt to make false accusations. Quoting Scott,
False rape accusations certainly happen. A schoolfriend of mine had one made against him before the judge threw it out of court, as the accuser kept changing her story.
But you don't need to have a strong opinion on whether false accusations are common or rare to examine the merits of this case. We can just look at the specifics. And based on the Times article linked, I think that most or all of the accusations are true. Specifically, the woman who attended a rape crisis centre immediately after the alleged assault (which can be verified). If her accusation was false, you would have expected her to make the accusation at the time, rather than only revealing it when interviewed by a journalist years later.
Brand is a (self-confessed) sex addict, and has slept with a lot of women. It's easy to imagine him getting so used to women saying yes that he crosses the line into sexual assault.
In regards to the rape crisis centre, we have to ask whether it’s normative for a promiscuous woman (in the UK, in that era) to use those services to screen for STDs. That center would do free screenings, right? If this is the same woman as in the texts about sex without a condom, it seems the contention was that he did not use a condom when she requested he do so (like in the previous time they had sex). Which is bad! But probably not what the reader has in mind when they hear about forceful rape. At least, I think rape conjures up something much more significant than taking a condom off with a woman you recently had consensual sex with on a different occasion.
I'd suggest reading the archived article. That particular accusation ('Nadia') happened in LA, not the UK, and the various corroborating elements (the records from the centre, the evidence she provided to the police, records from her therapy at the centre afterwards, the text messages between her and Brand) suggest that her version of the story is correct, although I admit that the text messages could support either the 'he raped her against the wall' version or the 'he took off the condom without her knowing' version.
As an aside, STD testing is freely available in the UK from the NHS. You can get test kits sent to your house or visit a sexual health clinic (which are very common, the medium-sized town I grew up in had one). Going to a rape crisis centre would be a very unusual way to get an STD test.
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It does count as rape according to UK law though, and a quick google tells me that in 2019 a man was sentenced to 12 years for doing it.
So it may not be rape rape (to paraphrase Whoopi Goldberg), but that will be cold comfort for Brand if the claim can be proven in court.
EDIT: Never mind, just saw that the act occurred in LA, not the UK. Stealthing is not a criminal act there.
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