Today’s 14-minute appearance was largely procedural, NYT reports. During the brief hearing, Brand reportedly stood inside a plexiglass box within the courtroom wearing “a shirt opened to show his chest and holding a pair of gold-rimmed sunglasses” as Suki Dhadda, the lead lawyer for the prosecution, read out his charges. Brand stands accused of raping one woman in a hotel room during a British Labour Party conference in 1999, forcing a woman to give him oral sex in a bathroom stall at a party, kissing a woman and groping her without her consent, and attempting to pull a different woman into a bathroom. Brand was reportedly emotionless as he listened to these charges. He was eventually granted bail before leaving the courtroom.
Brand previously denied the allegations in a video posted to social media in which he claimed, “I’ve never engaged in nonconsensual activity, I pray that you can see that by looking in my eyes.” He also stated that he was “incredibly grateful” to have the “opportunity to defend these charges in court.”
That opportunity may not come for a while. Today, the judge, Paul Goldspring, referred the case to a higher court known as the crown court, which deals with more serious charges. Brand’s next appearance is currently scheduled for May 30, although NYT reports that any trial might not begin for at least a year due to a backlog of cases in the British system.
