The management company that represented comedian and influencer Russell Brand has dropped him as several accusations of sexual abuse were revealed in a yearslong joint investigation by multiple U.K. news outlets.
The Sunday Times, The Times and Channel 4 Dispatches reported this weekend that at least four women have accused Brand, 48, of rape and sexual assault in incidents that allegedly occurred between 2006 and 2013. One of the accusers was 16 years old at the time of the alleged encounter, when Brand would have been nearly twice her age. The investigation also cites several women who accuse Brand of being threatening or trying to control them.
The woman who says Brand sexually abused her when she was 16 has accused the comedian of grooming her and forcefully shoving his penis down her throat. She says she approached Brand’s agent at Tavistock Wood Management in 2020. It wasn’t until this weekend, when the results of the investigation were published, that the company removed Brand from its website.
“Russell Brand categorically and vehemently denied the allegation made in 2020, but we now believe we were horribly misled by him. TW has terminated all professional ties to Brand,” the management company said in a statement to Deadline on Saturday, after the outlet noticed that Brand’s profile had disappeared from the company’s website.
A women’s charity based in the U.K. also announced that it has ended its relationship with the comedian and his organization, the Stay Free Foundation, which aims to help people dealing with addiction issues.
“We have ended our association with Russell Brand and the Stay Free Foundation,” the charity, Trevi Women, said in a statement posted to Instagram on Saturday, following a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary special that expanded on the claims against Brand.
Brand denied the allegations on Friday, a day before the full investigation was published, in a video posted to social media.
“As I’ve written about extensively in my books, I was very, very promiscuous,” Brand says in the video, referring to the period “when I was working in the mainstream, when I was in the newspapers all the time, when I was in the movies.”
“During that time of promiscuity, the relationships I had were absolutely always consensual,” Brand says in the video.
The new investigation cites Brand’s ex-girlfriend Jordan Martin, who wrote a book accusing him of sexual abuse and controlling behavior during their relationship in 2007.
As part of the investigation published this weekend, one woman accuses Brand of raping her against a wall in his home in 2012. She says Brand apologized twice via text the next day.
A different woman who worked with Brand in 2013 accuses him of sexually assaulting her in his home as she screamed. She alleges that Brand threatened to take legal action if she reported the attack.
Brand, who has appeared as a Channel 4 TV host and a BBC radio presenter in addition to his stand-up and acting work, now has more than 6 million followers on YouTube, where he posts videos discussing wellness, conspiracy theories, spirituality, addiction and more.
While he was once widely viewed as a progressive, critics have accused Brand of shifting his stances to the right over the years. Right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has vouched for Brand, saying they’ve become friends.
Brand is in the middle of a tour of his “Bipolarisation” show, with engagements scheduled for Tuesday and Friday in England.
Tavistock Wood Management and a legal representative for Brand did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s requests for comment.
Need help? Visit RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Online Hotline or the National Sexual Violence Resource Center’s website.
