The crimes of Russell Brand

0:00This is The Guardian. Today, the crimes of Russell Brand. A quick warning before we start, this episode does contain explicit language and graphic description of sexual abuse. We'll be right back. We've seen many iterations of Russell Brand. Camp Camden goth. Outrageous stand-up and TV host. Hi, how are you? I'm very well. Do you need assistance walking in your spectacular outfit? Hollywood star. I'm presenting an Oscar with Helen Mirren. Political anarchist and reborn Christian conspiracy theorist. I'm telling you that I love Jesus. Jesus. That unless people are following Christ, they will fail you and they will let you down.

1:30Russell Brand always wanted to be famous. And when he arrived into celebrity in the 2000s, he was seen as a breath of fresh air. Hyper camp, hyper sexual, hyper articulate. Brand was considered edgy by TV and radio commissioners and funnier than anyone else by his fans. A Guardian columnist and the sun's shagger of the year, Brand was supposed to be ironic, a pop culture provocateur. In the last decade, it's become harder to remember why he was so celebrated. For the last three weeks, Brand has stood trial on six charges of serious sexual offences. On Thursday 5th November, he arrived in court with his wife. After over a day of deliberations, a jury of 12, eight men and four women, delivered their verdict.

2:28Brown was found guilty of rape and sexual assault. Russell Brand has been found guilty of one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault. He was also found not guilty of two counts of rape and one of attempted indecent assault. He's been remanded in custody and will be sentenced on Monday. The judge has warned that he's now facing a significant custodial term. So Russell Brand is a predator. He preys on women and commits serious sexual offences against them. He's in a position of power, celebrity, he's wealthy. The more famous he gets, the more emboldened he gets, I suppose. Less likely to be challenged, less likely to be held accountable. He's been held accountable now. From The Guardian, I'm Noshi Nick Barle.

3:21Today in Focus, the case against Russell Brand and how it led to his conviction. Sophie Hayward, thanks so much for joining us. Hi, Narsheen. You're a journalist and author, and you've interviewed and profiled dozens of celebrities, including Russell Brand. Now, a lot was made in the trial of his fame. And I think a lot of people might have forgotten just how big he actually was. You've been following him since the early 2000s, back when he was an MTV presenter. What made him distinctive and appealing? Well, I think many of us remember the look. He had this long, dark, wavy hair. He had black sort of leather trousers. Yeah, he was this cross between a Camden goth and a dandy highwayman and some Dickensian character like Fagin.

4:15Are those trousers, are they ladies' trousers? They are ladies' trousers. They're not ever so restrictive, I must say. Well, because they're not cut for a gentleman's pants. No, that's right. As a matter of fact, I have to live my life. His use of the English language was possibly the most charismatic thing because he was very, very pleased with his vocabulary. He was very verbose. He'd never use a sort of simple English word where a Latinate, one with many syllables, would do. But then he'd chuck in this kind of Essex estuary grammar at the same time. So he'd be, you know, he wouldn't talk about somebody being thrown out of a window. He'd say they were defenestrated. And then it'd be, wasn't they? With this, like this mix of sort of high and low use of vernacular.

4:54The Neptunian underworld king unleashed the barrage of eels from his abdomen, and each of the eels was carrying a Zippo lighter. And of course, he was mainstream on zippo lighter and of course he was mainstream on telly he was on channel four he had huge sold-out shows at edinburgh comedy fringe festival the biggest in the world he had stand-up shows he was on xfm six music that was a young fella by the name of Elvis Presley. I've got a feeling we're going to be seeing a little more of that guy. You're listening to Russell Brand on Six Music. So he did always attract scandal, but he always seemed to get away with it. Yeah, well, it's funny, he kept almost failing upwards. He'd get these jobs, whether they were in TV presenting or in radio,

5:43he'd get sacked for doing something shocking. So whether it's dressing up as Osama bin Laden, then he had a radio gig at XFM where he got sacked for reading out pornographic material live on air. And these scandals excited people. Even the way he talked about sex, it was like the rules didn't apply to him in a way that they maybe applied to us lesser mortals. Them blowjobs, what you get sometimes, never suggest it. You know, if a girl does it, they ain't suggested it. I like them blowjobs, right, where it goes in their neck a little bit. I would never suggest it. There was also something in the way that he presented himself. It was sort of post-lad and he was super camp, you know, he was a lover of poetry.

6:23Like, as you said said he was these opposing things at the same time and he sort of had this cheeky subversive source about him and as you say got away with it we totally and i think the laddish behavior which was very you know leering at some women's boobs and making all those comments about it he also was a man who wore eyeliner and had long hair and might be wearing a silk blouse sort of open at the neck and would quote poetry and would talk about these sort of feminine areas of life, almost. So it was like the 90s laddism had been sort of hidden in plain sight. And she said the eyeliner opener was the worst chat-up line she'd ever heard. Oh, really? Well, stick around, because I've got worse. The worst

7:07of all being simply, get in the van. He was always sexually explicit. He liked to stand on stage at the end of a live show and say, if there's anyone here with a vagina and a heartbeat, come and meet me backstage. He would write about his desire for constant sex. He got treatment for sex addiction in a clinic. He was very, very hypersexual in that way. At the same time, he would sometimes do these really caring things, such as there was a housing estate in London where the residents were threatened with a corporation sort of buying up there. It was a housing estate in London where the residents were threatened with a corporation sort of buying up. It was a housing association. And he went in and stood there with them to, you know, to save their housing estate.

7:52So you couldn't quite put him anywhere. Has he become a rich millionaire? Is he still an Essex boy? He danced around the whole spectrum and it was like shape-shifting. You couldn't quite pin one thing on him. I prefer celebrity to poverty very much, you know, given the options. Having now had a sample of both. Right. You think you weighed both carefully, poverty and anonymity, to fame and celebrity. Yes. And you're choosing fame. Conan, in conclusion, the sexual opportunities are far greater in celebrity. They are. There's barely any comparison. He was such a vacuum of energy in some ways, and everyone gravitated towards him. He had this sort of hyper-appeal, despite being, you know, sleazy, grimy,

8:43talking about his horniness relentlessly winning shag over the year three times and I guess what I'm saying is that it's easy in hindsight to look at all that now and be completely grossed out but lots of us I include myself thought he was quite sexy and trailed him around if you went to one of those parties where people like you or I would perhaps catch a glimpse of him you wanted to go to that corner and see what was going on he He did have that Pied Piper quality, but also just to stand in front of him, this huge sort of energetic feel. I mean, it sounds ridiculous, but the word X Factor is used to describe what some people have. It is that star quality. And when you meet it face to face, you do feel something.

9:21And he absolutely had it. And of course, you did actually meet him to interview him in 2011 for Stylist magazine. Sophie, what were your impressions of him? I listened back to the tape recording of that interview this morning, 15 years later. And I am mortified because it's him and Helen Mirren promoting a film they've made together, the remake of Arthur. And I'm saying things like, so Helen, how did it feel to have a whole chapter of Russell's new book dedicated to you where he talks about Mummy Helen and the things he'd like to do to you with your Oscar? Now, how does it feel having a whole chapter in Russell's book devoted to... I didn't know that I did. I read you some of it Helen it's called Mummy Helen and she's like yeah I've not read it and he goes Helen I read chapters

10:11actually on set and she was like yeah whatever and I'm going oh but you know he's such a fan of yours and he and I are enjoying it and she's a bit like moving on lads it's degrading what he said about her and I'm there going along with this joke to get a quote. It's quite shocking. Don't read it, because he mentions what he'd like to do to you with your Oscar. Oh, that's all right. It's only an implication. I don't know. It's not like he's going to say it's true. Emane Sinmaz, you're a senior reporter at The Guardian and you've been in court for much of the last month. We've just heard about Russell Brand's heyday, but I think for many people he probably slipped off their radar until this shocking joint investigation

11:06published by the Sunday Times and the Channel 4 Dispatches team. I've never, ever spoken publicly about this before. Russell seems untouchable. In it, several women from different countries alleged incidents including grooming, emotional abuse and rape. He's grabbing at my underwear, pulling it to the side. I'm telling him to get off me and he won't get off. All of which Russell Brand denied. But it did lead to new women coming forward to the police with allegations. And the following year, in 2024, Russell Brand was charged with multiple sexual crimes. He pleaded not guilty to all the charges, which brings us to the trial that began on the 12th of October. Much of it was composed of women giving testimony.

11:50Let's start with the first to give evidence. We're calling her Woman A because of her legal right to anonymity. Russell Brand had been charged with raping her in 1999 in Bournemouth during the Labour Party conference, and this was before he was really famous and anyone really knew him. What did Woman A say happened? She gave a very detailed account of what she said happened. She said that she was very excited to be at the Labour Party conference and she met Russell Brand after he performed in a fringe cabaret. And he was playful and, you know, tugged on her ponytail. But then they struck up a really interesting conversation and she found him, I think she used words like funny and intellectual. And I think she believed that they shared some of

12:38the same passions. So after that initial meeting, she invited him back to her hotel room to continue their conversation. But she made it very, very clear several times in her evidence that she thought he was gay. She found him effeminate. And she said several times, I didn't see him as a sexual threat. I thought he was gay. We just had a very nice conversation. And then as soon as they get into the hotel room, what she says is that things changed. She went to the toilet. She came out and he'd taken off his top. And she said, in her words, he was prancing about like an ostrich. And then he asked her to take photographs of him. So photographs of Russell Brand in his trousers, topless. And it was pretty much soon after that, she said he pushed her on the bed and raped her.

13:22I mean, she used words like his tongue was like a lizard. She described his body as sort of snake-like and disgusting. And she said that he penetrated her without condom. She could feel the weight of him. She couldn't get him off. She also said that he was kind of talking and saying things like, are you enjoying it? And she said several times that she'd said no. And she said she was terrified. Brand has been found not guilty of that charge of rape. How did the cross-examination go for woman A? Ian Winter, King's Council, began his cross-examination by pointing out the fact that this woman was slightly older than Brand, not much. And I think one of the first questions he asked was, he was a very good-looking boy, wasn't he?

14:10And he used the word boy. And she said, well, he wasn't a boy, he was a man, which he obviously was. I guess he was setting up the scene that these people were equals, Russell Bran wasn't famous then. But we also heard that she was much smaller in stature than him. She was a petite woman. He's six foot two and she was not six foot two. And at one point when they were discussing, it was issues around consent and she was being questioned about this. She said at one point, how could I have said no when he was putting his fingers in my mouth? That's another thing that she alleged. And then this line of questioning continued for a while, so much so that the judge actually intervened and said, shush, I'm the judge.

14:49Right. Yeah. So it's quite a dramatic moment in court. M&A, Russell Brand was found not guilty of indecently assaulting a woman in 2001, woman B who said he tried to drag her into a male toilet. He was found guilty of sexually assaulting another woman, woman C, who accused him of grabbing her breasts in a Soho bar in 2004, although he was found not guilty of orally raping her in the toilet. He was also found guilty of sexual assault of a woman who worked at a radio station and the prosecution proved that he met her, instantly grabbed her by the face with both hands, pushed her up against a wall where, to quote, he kissed her sloppily and aggressively. He also grabbed at her body, her breasts,

15:38her sides and buttocks. Then there was the fifth woman, woman E, who is actually a Russell Brand fan. She says she met him for the first time going to one of his shows at the Hammersmith Apollo. The jury found him guilty of raping her, which is the most serious crime he was convicted of. M&A, what did she say happened? She was so excited to go and see him perform. Her dad had actually bought her the tickets and she went with a friend and she said she was quite starstruck when he picked her out of a crowd and invited her backstage. She had a drink with him, with her friend and also another young fan. And then they went up to his dressing room where she says, I gave him a blowjob. She said she didn't want to

16:19have penetrative sex because she had a boyfriend at the time. And after this encounter, she talks about her feelings of guilt and she kind of confesses to her boyfriend shortly after that this is what happened. At the end of the gig, Russell Brand had taken her number. And in the following days, he invites her to his house and she agrees. She said that one of his associates opened the door and she was made to wait for Bran downstairs. And then he came down and kissed her and said something like, you've made such a great decision. And then they went up to the bedroom where things kind of turned a bit sour. He said that her hair smelled funny and he made her have a shower. And after that, he also wanted her to brush her teeth.

17:05And then they had consensual sex. And she was very open about that. But it wasn't nice, she said. It felt like he could have been fucking a hole. Then without warning, he flipped her over and anally raped her. And she said she was saying no. And afterwards, she was left bleeding and in pain for days. She gave a lot of detail about Russell's conduct afterwards, that he was cold and told her to clean up the mess he'd made because there was blood on the sheets. And after that, he kind of acted like nothing had happened. He put the TV on and left the room. And I think one of the things she said was that looking back she finds it you know very upsetting because she did clean up she went and got some toilet paper and he had some distinctive

17:50black toilet paper in his bathroom and she was trying to clean up this mess while obviously in a lot of pain and kind of in shock about what had happened right also in court there were 24 other people who gave evidence in support of this woman 24 yeah it was quite an extraordinary number so people she told at the time or exactly people she told at the time people she told in the years that followed there was a colleague who said that it was just a couple of days after what she said had happened and she describes her as being ashen and sick and she looked really unwell and she was crying and saying he really fucking hurt me and then there was another friend who gave evidence who said that she was in so much

18:31pain that she had to sit on ice packs afterwards and what did brand's defense say i mean obviously this woman was so open with her testimony like she had agreed to consensual sex. She'd gone over. She had a boyfriend. Lots of things that could have made it feel tricky for her to be open about. And yet, you know, how did that cross-examination go? Mr. Winter said that she went along with what Brand wanted because she was such a huge fan. She was young and she was impressionable. And he said that she had consented to what happened. And she was very forthright in her responses. She said she hadn't consented. And at one point, she actually said, we're not here to discuss my morality. It's criminality. Mr. Winter made a great deal in

19:19his cross-examination that the woman must have known about Bran's reputation, that the comedy show itself was extremely explicit, that there were women in the crowd throwing their bras at him. And when Mr Winter was talking about, you must have known about his reputation, she answered, well, I didn't know that he'd raped anyone. Emily, what did the prosecution have to say about how this woman fell after the event? I think in her closing speech, Miss Carami Jones said that she was probably the woman that was most affected by what happened. She'd spent years blaming herself for what happened because she had gone to his house willingly and she was very open about that. And she'd gone to his house knowing that she was going to have sex with him.

20:03And it did really affect her. I think she was described as having become very anxious and unwell after the encounter, not only because she worried that she'd contracted HIV. We heard evidence in court that she told her mum and dad what happened shortly afterwards. She went to a clinic to be tested for STIs. The way she would describe it to people was that it was a very traumatic episode in her life. Emily, the final woman to give evidence was working at Channel 4 in 2009 when she said Bran placed his head in her groin area during a massage that he forced her to give him. She told her manager about it. It's taken two decades, but he has been found guilty of that sexual assault. A lot of the women in the case have spoken about how

20:51they didn't want to report what happened to them at the time because Brown was such a big star. He was an A-lister. Nobody would believe them. The woman that was working at the radio station said if she had told her line manager about what happened, the response would have just been, oh, lucky you. Sophie, the rape and sexual assaults brand has been found guilty of occurred in the 2000s. The latest one was in 2009, which was arguably at the height of his fame. He'd gone to Hollywood, starred in massive films. He'd had this whirlwind tabloid magnet marriage with Katy Perry. He was then one of the biggest pop stars in the world. So what did your parents think of him? They loved him. They didn't really know too much about, you know,

21:47Russell Brand and his prior reputation, and I didn't even really know about that so much. That ended, famously he dumped her over text. Then came this surprising shift into politics. I'm not voting out of absolute indifference and weariness and exhaustion from the lies, treachery, deceit of the political class that has been going on for generations now and which has now reached fever pitch where we have a disenfranchised, disillusioned, despondent underclass that are not being represented by that political system. He started out as a man of the people who wanted a more left-wing country. He had grown up with not much money, working class Essex. So he's roughly seen as a Labour Party supporter. In terms of his actual politics, I mean, I think he just used a lot of

22:31long words. Right, fair, which he did throughout his career. Yeah. Sophie, he sets up his own YouTube channel, The Trues. He marries Laura Gallico, who's a sister of the sports presenter Kirstie Gallico, I think in around 2017. They settle into a country mansion, eventually have three children. How would you characterise this era of Russell Brand? So by this era, he has slightly moved out of the spotlight. And it wasn't totally clear at the time whether that was by choice or whether he wasn't getting booked for the gigs anymore. But it did seem that rumours about him were starting to be muttered, you know, perhaps not the level of newspapers, we hadn't got to exposés yet, but people were starting to suggest

23:13that his sexual behaviour wasn't all fun and games. Then he starts going into his own media, where, you know, he runs the YouTube channel, he's in control of it. He starts building a world where he's not cancelable, which I see as very, very intentional. He was starting to rebuild his image once again as this family man, this spiritual man, and he definitely wanted to own the means of production. I suspect he knew that trouble was brewing. I suspect he knew that court cases might well come or that the court of public opinion at least was going to come. So he started making videos which very much fed into the sort of conspiracy theory that says, you know, you can't trust the MSM, the mainstream media.

23:54You can't trust the governments. You can't trust big pharma. You can't trust big food. If the military industrial complex benefit from war, you will have war. If the pharmaceutical complex benefit from ill health, you will have the perpetuation of ill health. He sometimes suggests you can't trust Silicon Valley, but he's quite clever with that. So he's sort of hedging his bets with Silicon Valley and the Trump law, I think. So in 2023, the joint Sunday Times and Channel 4 Dispatch's investigation comes out. It details allegations of sexual misconduct by multiple women, which Russell Brand denies. I think I remember that he doesn't cancel his gig that night and he's on stage when the programme

24:37actually airs. Sophie, he also undergoes something of a particular spiritual conversion at this point. What happens? Well, he starts talking about Christianity. He says he's found God. He starts tallying up to places with the Bible, especially when the pressure is building with these allegations of sexual misconduct. He eventually goes down to the River Thames with his new best friend, Bear Grylls, and some kind of Christian minister. He gets baptised, sort of three men, shirts off, tattoos blazing, hugging each other in the water. He's baptised. He then starts making videos on his own channel. I believe in God. I believe God to be the limitless consciousness of which my own tiny little consciousness is but a part.

25:24The videos he's posting about Christianity, you realise watching them, oh, he's not just trying to align himself with Christianity to show that he's moral and a man of God and a man who deserves forgiveness and has reformed. He's suggesting that he is God. Right, OK. And he is Jesus because he takes, you know, there are so many different Bible stories you could take. He always picks the one where somebody, an innocent man is accused by the public of wrongdoing and only God knows the truth, which is that this man is good. I know that even though I would prefer, you know, that we're not going to these hospital appointments for our kid or that we're facing this challenge or the other. But God loves me and that God will use this to his end.

26:11So he's very much aligning himself with the path of Jesus. He is not going to Christianity to suggest that he's good. He's going to Christianity to suggest that he's God. Coming up, how Russell Brand tried to defend himself in court. You've got big plans for your money. You invest, you track, you plan ahead. But does your financial app actually help you decide what to do next? Quicken helps you go beyond balances and basic reports, project your cash flow, dig into your investments, and use Quicken AI to understand what matters across your finances. With Quicken, you can make sense of your options and decide what to do next. Quicken, know what to do next. See how at Quicken.com. Still waiting in line? Again? That's time you'll never get back. Save time and money with Stamps.com.

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28:06As a work of cinema, it is exemplary. New York Magazine has called it one of the most important films of our time. NASA, the most critically acclaimed documentary of this year, is available in cinemas now. A lot has been made of the fact that Russell Brand has turned quite hard into Christianity since 2023, since, you know, his intense personal crisis with the investigation by dispatches and the Sunday Times, and, you know, since his son had open heart surgery. Was any more of that sort of religiosity on show? He was seen carrying this Bible into court. And in an earlier hearing, in a pre-trial hearing, he'd actually brought that Bible into the dock. It was quite bizarre. He entered the dock in a kind of, in a hat, sunglasses,

28:59Bible. And I get the sense that quite a few of the people who have sat in the public gallery in support of him have been people that he knows through the church or religion. I mean, Russell Brand and his wife, Laura, have a podcast called Sunday Service. It's sort of religiously themed and they've been podcasting, sort of sermonising throughout the trial. Isn't that quite unusual? It's very unusual and I think it's something that the Met Police are obviously very aware of and have been keeping an eye on. There was a podcast he did with his wife, Laura, and in it he's wearing a sort of, you know, very Russell Brand animal print dressing gown. It's kind of slightly looking dishevelled and they're just talking about the media.

29:47He calls it empire media, evil media. You know, he's got all sorts of words for it. And then just talking about their love of God and Jesus. We're, of course, in the middle of a very, very unusual time in our marriage. And for legal reasons, which you'll be aware of if you follow what I would call old media, traditional media. At some points I would call it corrupt media, hypocritical media. Sitting in court every day, what was your impression of how Brand conducted himself throughout the trial? How did he look and seem? So in courtroom three of Southwark Crown Court, the press benches are immediately behind where the dock is, so where Russell Brand sits. So we can just see the back of him usually. And he has this incredible

30:29still composure. And he, yeah, doesn't flinch. You know, while these women are saying stuff about him, like he was a maniac, he was a monster, one said he wasn't very well endowed. But we did see a different side of him when he was giving evidence. He began his testimony with, I'd describe as a sort of confidence. His barrister went through each of the counts on the indictment and said, are you guilty of this charge? And he said very loudly, no. But the cross-examination came round with the prosecutor. There was lots of really awkward silences. I think it was the opening question she asked where she said, you blame this all on the dispatcher's documentary. And you'd think that he'd have like a very clear answer to that,

31:16given that that was his sort of defence. But he just didn't say anything. He just stared at her. And then she repeated the question and then there was more staring. But how did he respond to each of those when the cross-examination of him is asking about the incidents? What would he say about them? So part of what the prosecutor was saying was that in Brand's police interviews he'd only given prepared statements and he hadn't responded to any further questions from the police. But once he got into the witness box at Southwark Crown Court, suddenly he was giving lots more details about these encounters. So she accused him of kind of making up his evidence as he was going along. And he just denied that. He agreed that there'd been some inconsistency in his account,

32:01but explained it away as saying that since these events started there's been escalating recollection so what he was saying was that he'd remembered more details about these events and i mean he claimed to remember some very vivid details for example with the woman who he anally raped he said that there was foreplay and sex toys and he got her consent beforehand. So he didn't say he didn't remember any of them. He didn't remember these incidents. So what he's saying is that some of them he doesn't remember and they didn't happen. And the ones that he does remember were consensual. During his evidence, he told us that he had saved the telephone number of the woman who he anally raped as T, her name, AP, and then asterisk, asterisk.

32:50And he was asked, what did that mean? And he said it meant tart. And he said the T meant tart. And he said that he would use that to denote a sort of casual hookup. And AP, he said, meant anal play. And the asterisk, as he he said meant this was a memorable encounter that you shouldn't forget. He also spoke about I guess some of his regrets he said that he had misused his fame and success to facilitate sex with women. Russell Brand said that he'd been persuasive, seductive, begging and flirting and dedicate a lot of his life to what seems now beyond reckless philandering and idiocy. But he denied all the allegations several times. Emine, how did the defence sum up this case? It was quite uncomfortable at times. Ian Winter questioned why out of all of the women

33:47that Russell Brand had slept with, why only three of them had made rape allegations against him. This was an extraordinary detail in your reporting to be able to stand there and your defence being, if only three women have accused him of rape, I mean. Yeah, he was saying, why these three? You know, there have been so many women. Why have these three come forward? This was the really uncomfortable bit. He basically said, why didn't they fight back? And he kind of went through each count. And he said that the first woman, so the Labour Party woman, you know, she was no wilting flower and that she'd willingly invited him back to her hotel room. And why hadn't she fought back? He said of the woman who said that Russell Brand raped her in a toilet, why hadn't she slapped him

34:32in the face? And the woman who said that Russell Brand anally raped her, he said, why didn't she just roll over and kick out? After the verdict, the Met Police revealed that Russell Brand is under investigation for other allegations of rape made by two more women. What could happen next? I guess we don't know. I actually interviewed the lead investigator on the Brand case and Detective Superintendent Andy Furphy said he believed there could be more victims. If you get a conviction then it tends to encourage other people to come forward because they see the courage and the bravery and the resilience that these women have had to go through this criminal justice process and they feel their own strength as a result of that.

35:11They want to come forward and have their story told. So yes, there may be more victims of Russell Brand out there. The message it sends is, for me, primarily around the victims. Their bravery, their courage, their resilience is the reason why the conviction is there. These women came forward after seeing the accounts of other women making allegations about Brand in a documentary, and maybe other people now watching the criminal trial unfold might also be inspired to come forward if they've experienced a similar thing. That was senior reporter at The Guardian, Emineh Simmaz, and journalist and author Sophie Haywood. My thanks to both of them. You can follow our coverage of the case and all of Emineh's reporting at theguardian.com. If you have found this episode upsetting

36:05and want to talk to independent experts about anything that has happened to you, different options are available. Victim support in the UK provides round-the-clock confidential counselling. And in the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on free phone 116 123. And that's it for today. This episode was presented by me, Noshin Iqbal. It was produced by Saskia Collette and May Robson. Sound design is by Breen McNamara and the executive producer was Huma Khalili. We'll be back in your feeds for the latest. This is The Guardian. sustainability to market volatility. There's always more than one side to a story. Explore different perspectives on today's most important business and economic issues

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