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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.
Would you? I would expect a false accusation to come up later than a true one. Someone who cares about getting justice would have DNA evidence logged immediately and start the process while the incident is fresh in mind, while someone who was making a malicious accusation might wait until there's something in it for them, or for favourable conditions for success (say, a global movement valourising and promoting the infallibility of self-identified victims?) and until the memory of what exactly went on that night has likely faded from their target's mind somewhat. It's unlikely someone will be able to recall where exactly they were and what they were doing all day on a specific day many years ago, let alone have held onto any evidence of that.
Accusers can also build up what happened in their own minds over time, embellishing the actual events through faulty or motivated-faulty recall. I think we all saw this with the Kavanaugh circus.
Did you read the article? Do you think that this is what happened in this specific case?
I know that the Kavanagh hearing was an utter travesty, but simply pattern matching between those accusations and these accusations isn't going to get us closer to the truth about Russell Brand.
It’s surely different than BK. But…apparently the investigative reporter was doing this for a very long time and gave Brand 8 days and anonymized the alleged victims? Seems like that isn’t really truth seeking.
The victims are only anonymous for us. Brand obviously knows who these women are. One was 16 years old, one has provided text exchanges between herself and Brand, one met him at an AA meeting, and the fourth lived with him for several months. The accusations are extremely specific. If he wanted to rebut them specifically, he could do so easily.
UK libel law isn't like the US, it's much stricter. If a civil court found any of these accusations to be false (on the balance of probability) Brand could sue the Times for millions. Whether they are false or not, the editor at the Times clearly believes they are and is willing to risk his career on it.
This is worlds away from Kavanagh, which was a show trial based on constantly changing, ludicrous testimony from decades ago.
The article stated that the alleged victims were anonymized when provided to Brand. So it isn’t clear what exactly he has been provided
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