A woman filed a report on Sunday with London’s Metropolitan Police claiming comedian Russell Brand sexually assaulted her in 2003, the agency said Monday, days after four women leveled harrowing allegations against him in a TV documentary.
The Metropolitan Police told The Daily Beast in a statement that it was aware of the bombshell reporting from The Sunday Times and Channel 4, which featured four women who claimed the comedian sexually assaulted them between 2006 and 2013. Channel 4’s Dispatches documentary aired the tearful accounts, including one from a woman who said she was 16 when Brand made advances on her.
But Brand has strenuously denied allegations of sexual assault. On the eve of the documentary’s release, he tried to get ahead of the allegations, calling all his relationships consensual.
In their Monday statement, Scotland Yard confirmed a woman had come forward on Sunday to allege Brand sexually assaulted her in Soho in central London in 2003. Officers were in contact with the woman and “providing her with support,” the statement said.
Authorities first spoke to The Sunday Times on Saturday and have “since made further approaches” to the newspaper and Channel 4 “to ensure that anyone who believes they have been the victim of a sexual offence is aware of how to report this to the police,” the statement continued.
“We continue to encourage anyone who believes they may have been a victim of a sexual offence, no matter how long ago it was, to contact us.”
The identity of the woman who reported the incident remains unclear.
Since the documentary aired, others have publicly shared their experiences with Brand, with British stand-up comedian London Hughes revealing on Twitter that the alleged behavior was an open secret in the industry.
“I was newly signed with Russell’s agent at the height of his career, I was a HUGE fan of the man… So excited to meet him! But my first day at the agency i was told unprovoked that I shouldn’t sleep with him under any circumstances, as he likes to pursue women, have sex with them,” Hughes tweeted.
“But as soon as he had sex with them, they’d made him feel sick and he didn’t want to be around them anymore, so he would have them fired, or dropped from the agency… it had happened several times in the past. I was 22 at the time, did what I was told and completely avoided him,” she wrote.
Hughes claimed “there’s not a single comedian in the uk that wasn’t aware of his behaviour” and “we’ve all heard the rumours,” adding that she always understood Brand to be “dodgy.” She said she was not “not shocked by the documentary at all” and believed everything the “brave women” alleged.
