Sallyann Marshall

Justice Joel Bennathan, "Whatever women wear, wherever they go, indeed whatever they drink, they retain the right to say no" "And to demand justice from the criminal courts, when sexual predators such as you, Russel Brand, act without their consent" My view: Russell Brand told the jury that consent was fundamental to him. He understood the principle well enough to explain it in court. He chose to ignore it when he raped one woman and sexually assaulted three others. The woman he raped explained why she didn’t report him at the time. Brand was rich, famous and influential. She feared that if she told the police what he’d done, nobody would believe her. That was the power Brand held over her even after the rape. Another woman told the court she had spent more than 20 years wondering what she could have done differently. That’s the cruelty of victim-blaming. A woman can spend decades questioning her own choices when the person who should have answered for his was Russell Brand.