RUSSELL BRAND SENTENCED TO OVER 10 YEARS IN PRISON FOR RAPE, SEXUAL ASSAULT OF FOUR WOMEN:
British actor Russell Brand was emotionless as he was sentenced to 10 years and six months in prison Monday, after a jury last week convicted him of raping one woman and sexually assaulting three more.
Judge Joel Bennathan handed down the sentence in Southwark Crown Court after the 51-year-old “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” actor was convicted Thursday on one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault. He had faced a maximum of up to life in prison.
Brand was cleared on two other rape charges and one charge of attempted indecent assault tied to the claims of three other women.
In his sentencing remarks, the judge blasted the disgraced comedian’s “casual, arrogant disregard of any woman’s right to say no to you.”
He was slapped with nine years for the count of rape plus 18 months for the three sexual assault charges, which will run consecutively.
What happens next for Brand will be very different to his time in Hollywood: Inside Russell Brand’s Hollywood bubble, where nobody could say no.
When Jimmy Zona started working as Russell Brand’s assistant in about 2011, his first task was to wake his boss up.
Zona recalled walking uncertainly up to the front door of the house in Hollywood that Brand shared with the chart-topping singer Katy Perry, then his wife, before knocking on the door.
“He gets out of bed in his underwear, was like, who the f*** are you?” Zona said. Brand then told him: “From now on, you’re going to come over to my bedside and you’re going to whisper in my ear, ‘Russell, it’s time to start your day’.”
“And I did that until I quit,” Zona said.
He gently broached the possibility of Brand using an alarm on an iPad to wake him up instead. “He was like, ‘No. I need you to do this’.”
This was Brand in Hollywood, where his marriage to Perry had catapulted his fame to dizzying heights.
Brand’s next few years, possibly his next decade, will not be as cosseted: What prison life will be like for Russell Brand.