Lucy Powell criticises questioning of victims at Russell Brand trial

Labour deputy leader and education secretary Lucy Powell has criticised the questioning of Russell Brand’s victims during his rape and sexual assault trial, saying it reflected a courtroom culture she had believed was in the past. Her comments followed Brand’s sentencing on Monday to 10 and a half years in prison for raping one woman and sexually assaulting three others, including at their workplaces.

Speaking to LBC, Powell was asked about arguments made by Brand’s barrister, Ian Winter KC. He had suggested that the absence of resistance, screaming or attempts to leave showed Brand was innocent. Winter also characterised Brand’s anal rape of a 21-year-old woman as a “short and momentary failure” in which he had disregarded her consent.

Asked whether those arguments recalled attitudes from the 1950s, Powell said parts of the courtroom proceedings had shocked her. She described reading about them as depressing and said she had thought courts had moved beyond that culture. She praised the judge’s sentencing remarks for emphasising that a person’s clothing, behaviour or level of intoxication did not remove their right to decide whether to consent.

Powell said the government had used guidance to address misconceptions about rape and the blaming of victims. However, she said the proceedings showed that further work was necessary. At sentencing, Mr Justice Bennathan said the women had suffered further because of courtroom conduct carried out on Brand’s instructions. He stressed that women retained both the right to refuse consent and the right to seek justice through criminal courts.

Powell also addressed Miliband’s decision to interview Brand in 2015, when she was Labour’s campaign chief. She said both she and the former party leader regretted the encounter, which took place amid attention surrounding Brand’s political book Revolution. By then, Brand had resigned from his BBC Radio 2 programme after leaving lewd messages on actor Andrew Sachs’ answerphone about Sachs’ granddaughter.

In an interview with Sky News, Powell said that anyone involved in promoting Brand would regret doing so in light of what was now known. She said neither she nor Miliband had understood at the time that he was a sexual predator involved in such crimes.

Questioned about her part in arranging the interview, Powell said she had not grasped the full extent of sexual conduct already described publicly, including in Brand’s autobiography. She said the interview would not have happened had there been any indication they were dealing with a known sexual predator. Powell also pointed to the powerful platform Brand had received as a prominent public figure from Hollywood, the BBC and others.