Russell Brand and Our Culture of Sexual Abuse

My parasocial bond with Russell Brand is a thin one, but it was created at an important and narrowly defined moment; for both of us. This was in 2017. I was one year divorced, and I was allowing myself to explore beyond the confines of my usual personality and beliefs. I stumbled on his then podcast Under the Skin.

At that time Brand was positioning himself as a thoughtful person who used to be an out-of-control sex and drug addict. As I recall, he enjoyed using the 2010 film Get Him to the Greek, in which he starred, as a narrative backbone. This film featured a relapsed rock star who had to be shepherded from London to an important concert at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles. The character was basically built around Brand’s larger-than-life persona. And the evidence for Brand’s change? He was now doing longform interviews on religion, spirituality, and culture, and even working on a master’s degree (he never finished it). This was edgy territory for an evangelical such as myself because Brand was into religion in general, not into doctrinaire, literalistic conservative Christianity.

I can’t deny that Brand is an intriguing individual: loud-living, intelligent, garrulous, famous for his large vocabulary. In a word: charismatic. And he has also very publicly crashed and burned and rebuilt himself. In fact, multiple times.

The Accusations

But there’s a much darker strain to Brand’s story, one that goes beyond self-inflicted excesses into sexual crimes. Or at least accusations. At the moment of writing Brand is on trial for seven counts of sexual abuse and rape, related to six women. I suppose it doesn’t come as a surprise that a man who has boasted of bedding 1000 women and won the “Shagger of the year” award from the British tabloid The Sun three years in a row, would leave behind him some dissatisfaction. The problem is that a high number of sexual partners, especially in the context of parties, drugs, and fame, does not lend itself to subtlety regarding consent. The excitement of the moment and lack of mental clarity can create a blur. Was the insistence of a famous, charismatic person itself a violation of consent, even if the woman did not technically say the word “Stop”? An interesting detail was provided by his one-time secretary, Helen Berger, who said that Brand would often work with her in his underwear, in his flat. No shirt either. This raises the question of how Brand understood consent. In a work context, most people would consider it radically inappropriate for a boss to walk around in his underwear in the presence of a subordinate. In the area of sexuality, consent is something that can be both completely obvious and also subject to quite a bit of interpretation.

Here are the accusations from the trial, along with Brand’s responses.

If you dare, listen to the blow-by-blow descriptions of these incidents on any of the news channels that have covered them. They are harrowing. Particularly count 6, of a woman who had consented to vaginal sex but had not consented to anal sex, and repeatedly asked Brand to stop–but he ignored her. When it was over the woman turned around to find the sheets soiled with blood and feces, and Brand, looking horrified, told her to clean up the mess she had made, as if it was her fault. The victim also described ongoing bleeding and pain for over a week. Under questioning at the trial, Brand recalled the incident (he had previously said he did not remember), and claimed it had all been consensual. Months after the encounter he texted her, saying that she was dirty and he wanted to push her further. One wonders where there was left to go! When she responded with hostility and told him he had treated her like an animal, he simply responded, “Sorry.” What was he sorry for? Making her feel bad? “Pushing” her? Ignoring her cries to stop? It’s an ambiguous response, so you can’t make any clear deductions from it.

The #HimToo Era

I have to confess that I have trouble holding on to my objectivity after listening to these accounts and in my head I have several times lashed out at Brand with some choice words. Wasn’t it just a few years ago that we experienced the #MeToo movement? Has it already passed? The fact is that you could have blinked, historically speaking, and missed it. But how can the insight that there is much more sexual abuse happening than we realized, once discovered, be lost again?

There is more going on here than just this one trial. This is the era of Epstein when, if you are wealthy and famous, “they let you do it.” Why does it take years for people like the Tate brothers, who were bragging about sexual crimes online, to be held accountable? Andrew Tate faces multiple accusations of choking women and then having sex with them while they were unconscious. Former Prince Andrew allegedly enjoyed Epstein’s services for many years, including the famous case of Virginia Guiffre who, she claimed, was only 17 when Andrew enjoyed her company in both London and New York. Andrew lost his royal titles and it appears that the police are investigating him, but there are no criminal charges to date.

Our commander in chief himself bragged on tape about grabbing women by their genitals. And in the case of E. Jean Carroll, Trump was found liable for doing more than just grabbing a pussy, but inserting his fingers. Trump was also buddies with the world’s most notorious child rapist and can be seen next to him in an infamous video checking out women at a party. His lewd birthday message to Epstein (which Trump denies writing) spoke of shared secrets. And now the Trump administration has created a convenient quagmire out the release of the Epstein files: overly redacted and under released, perhaps to the tune of 2.5 million pages. Only they know. It seems very likely that there is too much information about Trump himself in these files. Why else would this be a problem? Or is it because of other powerful people mentioned in them? That doesn’t help either. While we must add that we don’t know for sure what these unreleased files say, politics is about impressions, and in spite of all these impressions, Trump still enjoys the happy support of the republican voting bloc and a white evangelicals in the US.

Sexual Abuse in Authoritarian Cultures

Christians don’t seem to have sorted out how to address the problem of a despicable human being who is helping them politically. And that itself is a damning realization. After all, the problem does come up from time to time. Maybe put some thought into it? The one answer they seem to have come up with feels more like a justification than a policy: as Jerry Falwell Jr. said of Trump in 2016, “We are not electing a pastor.” Along similar lines, Evangelicals have also deployed the precedent of Cyrus, the king of Persia, who, according to the Bible, was used by God to help the Jews politically. He was a Persian potentate, so they definitely let him do it. But that didn’t stop God from doing his will! The problem with this example is that sixth century BC Jews were not faced with a political choice like today’s Christians, who are living in a modern democracy.  Forgotten under the pile of partisan rhetoric is the fact that liars, sexual abusers, and authoritarians, can’t be trusted with anything. That includes your pet religious values. And knowing that the guy in charge is getting away with a storied history of affairs and abuses sets a low bar for some; for others, it provides license.

The evangelical movement’s ambivalence towards Trump’s sexual sins is deeper than political expediency, though. As one study¹  (and naked eye observation) suggests, conservative authoritarian religion and conservative authoritarian political movements are, pardon the metaphor, bedfellows when it comes to issues surrounding sexual consent, victim blaming in rape, and leader consequences (or lack thereof). The reason probably has something to do with common views of gender roles, tradition, and deference to established authority.

A little voice in my head representing all my past experiences with evangelicalism whispers to me, “She consented to sex with a known ‘shagger’ and she’s surprised that he raped her? Just having sex outside of marriage is consenting to everything, honey.” In this accounting, the woman’s bad decision becomes the entire explanation of the event. This would be like me walking through a bad part of town and getting mugged. Maybe my excursion was a bad idea, but the mugger still gets to go to jail, right? Or is he just there to teach people to not be naive?

The tendency of evangelical leaders to minimize sexual abuse and doubt accusations from women is easily documented. For example, in 2017 notorious conservative Christian judge Roy Moore was running for Alabama’s U.S. Senate, but it was discovered that Moore was accused of sexually touching 14-year-old girl when he was 32 years old. Several other women made similar accusations. This act would have been prosecutable but for the statute of limitation. Predictably, conservative religious leaders rose to Moore’s defense in ways that cover the gamut:²

• Jerry Falwell Jr. declared by fiat that the judge was innocent.
• Moore himself construed the accusation as spiritual warfare that was aimed at silencing his message.
• Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association, stated that since Moore had denied it, it was unlikely to change Christian support for him.
• Sean Hannity suggested that the accusers might have broken the ninth commandment–the one about lying (Roy Moore was famous for promoting the display of the commandments).
• Alabama State Auditor Jim Zeigler presented the audacious theory that this was just like Mary and Joseph who, according to some scholars might have had a similar age gap. “There’s just nothing immoral or illegal here,” he said. “Maybe just a little bit unusual.”

The psychological baseline shared by religious and political authoritarianism is that the more power a leader has, the more meaning his followers attach to that individual’s presence at the helm. And so, all effort is made to keep him there. This becomes a softening bias, one that leaves female victims sidelined and powerless and leaders free to continue their predations, if they are so inclined.

The final reBrand?

In Brand’s revolving identity swap machine, he has now, almost predictably, turned Christian. He shows up in court carrying a Bible (one that he hilariously can’t seem to navigate, as seen on a Piers Morgan interview), or a Puritan prayer book, and sporting crosses around his neck. It’s hard not to interpret this as yet another spectacle. Was it because he found Jesus that he started reading the Puritans, of all things, or was it because he knew there was a storm brewing and this was a safe harbor? Not to prejudge–innocent until proven guilty and all–but if you are a rapist and a sexual abuser, what better place to land? You’ll have Trump on your side and a long line of Christian leaders ready to believe you and make outlandish excuses for you, like the late Charlie Kirk who, when Brand was indicted, immediately claimed it was political persecution. Kirk also maintained that whether Brand was a serial rapist is impossible to prove! Maybe in an evangelical context that’s true. Brand also gets a gaggle of adoring Christian fans who love nothing more than a good testimony. “The Lord has changed him!” But has the Lord visited Brand’s victims? Well, only if they trust Jesus.

The story of Brand’s transformation has its appeal. He’s famous so we like him, and one feels a connection of sorts. He is married and stable now, it appears, with three children. His wife stands beside him sincerely and supportively. At 51, Brand could be looking at a wide variety of consequences, even life in prison for the rape accusations. What about his family? Kids growing up without a dad? For things that happened 20 years ago? I wonder if juries are swayed by such things, even if they aren’t supposed to be. But while I feel that pull, that temptation, to go easy on the perpetrator, it’s a weakness. I’m going to harden my heart.

Someone needs to pay for what they have done.

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1. 1. Religiousness and Rape Myth Acceptance: Risk and Protective Effects, by Samantha Ensz. She shows that both religious fundamentalism and right-wing authoritarianism condition people to believe rape myths (beliefs that rationalize or justify sexual violence against women).
   2. Conservatives Defend Roy Moore — Invoking Joseph, Mary, and The Ten Commandments, by Emily McFarlan Miller, Sojourners (Religious News Service).