17 September 2023 , 07:26
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Former Page 3 model Rhian Sugden has broken her silence about her relationship with Russell Brand following the allegations of rape and sexual assault made against the comedian, which he strongly denies.
Brand, who denied the 'criminal' claims in a video before the allegations came to light, has been accused of rape, sexual assault and emotional abuse in a joint investigation with The Times and Channel 4's Dispatches, which saw four women speak out. The alleged victims claim the comedian assaulted them between 2006 and 2013.
As the My Booky Wook writer and former Big Brother's Big Mouth presenter was the trending name on X – formerly known as Twitter – 37-year-old Rhian spoke out to share her account of her relationship with Brand. Former Big Brother contestant Rhian explained that she had been approached by reporters and Dispatches to discuss her relationship with the comedian after the pair 'briefly dated'.
She wrote: "I had reporters and Dispatches knocking on my parents door months back asking for information on Russell Brand as we briefly dated when I was younger. He was always very pleasant to me and treated me well. Despite him attempting to shag his way through other page 3 girls and getting declined he soon went full circle and joined a ‘No More Page 3 campaign’ to get us shut down. I can’t comment on the allegations that have been made against him, I’ve no scoop on the fella except his hair used to smell bad and he definitely wasn’t the one that got away."
It comes after four women made allegations against Brand in a joint investigation with The Times and Channel 4's Dispatches. The alleged incidents include allegations of rape, sexual assault and emotional abuse between 2006 and 2013, when Brand was at the height of his fame. Before the allegations came out, Brand shared a video on YouTube where he denied the 'criminal' allegations put to him and said his relationships had always been consensual.
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In the YouTube statement, which can be read in full here, he said: "These allegations pertain to the time when I was working in the mainstream, when I was in the newspapers all the time, when I was in the movies. And as I've written about extensively in my books, I was very, very promiscuous. Now, during that time of promiscuity, the relationships I had were absolutely always consensual. I was always transparent about that.
"Then almost too transparent, and I'm being transparent about it now as well. And to see that transparency metastasized into something criminal that I absolutely deny makes me question, is there another agenda at play? Particularly when we've seen coordinated media attacks before, like with Joe Rogan, when he dared to take a medicine that the mainstream media didn't approve of, and we saw a spate of headlines from media outlets across the world using the same language."
If you've been the victim of sexual assault, you can access help and resources via www.rapecrisis.org.uk or calling the national telephone helpline on 0808 802 9999