In connection to recent sexual assault allegations made against him, English comedian and actor Russell Brand has been questioned by UK police.
According to The Times, last Thursday, the 48-year-old was taken into a South London police station for an interview "in relation to three non-recent sexual offences."
An investigation for the allegations was launched in September after five women accused Brand of rape and sexual assault in addition to physical and emotional abuse, per The Times. One of the women, identified as 'Alice' claimed that in 2006 she was 16 when she first encountered Brand, who was 30 at the time. When they met, the woman alleges that Brand told her “I don’t give a fuck if you’re 12... I need to know where I stand legally.”
The woman also alleges that Brand removed his condom without her consent during a sexual encounter and that after his 31st birthday, Brand forced the woman into oral sex.
“It was just choking me and I couldn’t breathe, and I was pushing him away and he wasn’t backing off at all,” the woman told the outlet. “I ended up having to punch him really hard in the stomach to get him off. I was crying and he said, ‘Oh I only wanted to see your mascara run anyway.’”
Brand refuted the claims, calling them a "coordinated attack." "These allegations pertain to the time when I was working in the mainstream, when I was in the newspapers all the time, when I was in the movies and, as I have written about extensively in my books, I was very, very promiscuous," he said in an Instagram video from September.
"Now during that time of promiscuity the relationships I had were absolutely always consensual. I was always transparent about that then, almost too transparent, and I am being transparent about it now as well," he added.
Brand also alleged that the news was calculated, with the woman allegedly coordinating to discredit him.
"Also, it's worth mentioning that there are witnesses who's evidence directly contradicts the narratives that these two mainstream media outlets are trying to construct, apparently, in what seems to me to be a coordinated attack."
