Russell Brand appears in a London court on rape and sexual assault charges

British comedian and actor Russell Brand appeared in a London court Friday after he was charged last month with rape and multiple counts of sex assault.

Brand has always denied having non-consensual sex since the allegations about him were first aired two years ago.

On April 4, London police charged the 49-year-old right-wing wellness influencer with rape, oral rape, indecent assault and two counts of sexual assault in cases related to four separate women between 1999 and 2005.

Court documents detailing the charges stated Brand indecently assaulted a woman in 2001 by “grabbing her arm and dragging her towards a male toilet.” In another instance in 2004, he was accused of sexually assaulting another woman in Westminster by touching her breasts without her consent.

Brand’s appearance Friday came ahead of the first hearing of the case at Westminster magistrates’ court.

He was seen arriving at the courts in a black shirt unbuttoned down to his chest, black jeans, and dark sunglasses. Making his way through the main entrance, he was flanked by journalists and photographers on both sides, to whom he did not give any interviews or comments.

After he was charged, Brand in a video on X stated, “I have never engaged in non-consensual activity,” adding, “I am now going to have the opportunity to defend these charges in court and I’m incredibly grateful for that.”

The charges came after detectives began investigating in September 2023 after The Sunday Times newspaper and British broadcaster Channel 4 reported allegations that Brand had sexually and emotionally abused four women. 

Brand was accused of rape, sexual assault and emotional abuse by four women. One of them said she was 16 (the age of consent in the U.K.) and Brand was 30 when they began a relationship that included abuse and sexual assault.

Born in Essex, Brand rose to fame in British television in the early 2000s, including a stint as a broadcaster on the BBC, from which he resigned in 2008 after he and his co-presenter made prank calls to British actor Andrew Sachs, which resulted in more than 42,000 complaints.

He later moved to Hollywood and starred in numerous films, including “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” in 2008 and “Get Him to the Greek” in 2010.

He married pop star Katy Perry in 2010, but the couple divorced 14 months later. In 2017, he married Laura Gallacher, with whom he has three children. Last year, he said he had become a Christian.

Brand, who has since faded from mainstream culture, is an outspoken critic of American politics and free speech and regularly posts his views on his YouTube channel.

“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,” he said in another video on X posted in September 2023. “And as I’ve written about extensively in my books, I was very, very promiscuous,” he said.

“The relationships I had were very absolutely, always consensual,” he added, before suggesting that the mainstream media may have an agenda against him.