Court hears Russell Brand told rape victim, “I want to push you further.”

Russell Brand denies the seven charges against him. At his rape trial, the court heard allegations that Brand treated a woman “like a piece of meat” as he raped her, later telling her, “I want to push you further.” The 51-year-old denies seven charges, including rape and sexual assault, involving six different women between 1999 and 2009. He is accused of raping the woman at his London townhouse in 2009, after meeting her at one of his stand-up shows at the Hammersmith Apollo.

She told Metropolitan Police she was a fan of the comedian and said he picked her out in the foyer to join him backstage after the performance. She claimed that there, she consensually had a threesome with Brand and another woman. A few days later, the woman, who was in her early twenties at the time, agreed to meet Brand at his £2.3 million Hampstead home, aware they would have sex.

But she alleged that the consensual encounter turned into rape when Brand forced her into anal sex, as she described in a video-recorded interview played to Southwark Crown Court. She said the experience left her feeling “degraded,” and months later she told Brand he had made her feel “like a piece of meat.” The woman told the court she later encountered Brand at the Edinburgh Festival and then received a “random” text from him. Describing that exchange, she said she challenged him by asking, “Why are you even messaging me?” She claimed he replied: “Because you are dirty and I want to push you further.” The woman told the Metropolitan Police the message upset her, and later said to Brand, “I think you’ve pushed me far enough.

You treated me like an animal.” She said he then apologised. She told the court: “His response was horrible – the second one. I feel how I felt at his house was that I felt completely degraded and like I’d been treated like an animal, like a piece of meat.” The court also heard details about Brand’s Victorian townhouse, which the woman described as having “quite a gothic feel,” with black, white and grey décor, a stag’s skull on the living room wall and a black-framed full-length mirror in the bedroom.

Asked by a police officer if anything was distinctive about the bed, she said it was “huge.” Recounting the lead-up to the alleged rape, she said: “He told me to brush my teeth. We went into the bedroom and went on the bed. We kissed and started having normal penetrative sex after some foreplay.” When asked how she felt during the consensual sex, she said: “I don’t think I enjoyed it, not because I didn’t feel I had consented to it.

I felt really uncomfortable and from having to take the shower, to brush [my teeth]… I didn’t feel the way he had made it sound in the messages.” Describing the alleged rape, she said Brand removed the condom and began anal sex without asking for consent. She said she struggled to breathe and kept telling him, “Can you stop, can you stop, can you stop?” The woman said Brand “looked horrified” after the alleged rape, but instead of apologising, he allegedly told her to “clear up the mess that you’ve made,” which she said she did while he watched Quantum Leap on TV. “He put the TV on, he took a phone call, and I would say within five – not long – he left the room,” she said.

She added that she then left, and Brand’s driver told her, “He’s on in Hammersmith tonight and he needs to get ready.” The trial continues.