Jemima Goldsmith on Russell Brand: “Coercive Control and Abuse”

In the wake of his rape conviction, Russell Brand‘s ex-girlfriend has accused him of “coercive control and abuse” while they were together.

The disgraced presenter and comedian was sentenced to 10 years and six months in prison on Monday after being found guilty on one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault by a London jury.

The court heard harrowing witness impact statements before the sentencing. One victim said: “I’ve been in shock and turmoil for weeks. I was extremely upset and traumatised. I didn’t have any respect for myself… I was thinking I was damaged goods — scared of giving off signals that could be taken the wrong way.” She continued that there were many times she felt “physically sick” seeing Brand in the media. “I just want to say, a leopard may change its spots, but it’s still a leopard.”

The highly publicized trial and conviction have raised substantial questions across the industry over how Brand went unreported for so long. Just last week, a former associate of Brand’s accused of watching and laughing while the entertainer sexually assaulted a woman has been asked to “step back” from his producing role. Jack Bayles, the head of comedy at independent TV production company Various Artists Limited (VAL), has worked on Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You and Kat Sadler’s Such Brave Girls.

Now, TV producer Jemima Goldsmith, the ex-wife of former Pakistani prime minister and cricketer Imran Khan and the daughter of billionaire entrepreneur James Goldsmith, has taken to social media about her relationship with Brand. She said she was forced “to call the police to have him removed from my house in 2014 during a violent incident,” but did not end up pressing charges.

Goldsmith, who dated Brand for around a year in 2014, said the decision not to press charges or go public was down to her being worried about the impact of press attention on her then-teenage children. “I have neither seen nor spoken to Brand since that period in 2014,” she wrote in a widely shared post on X. “Whilst my pain in relation to this pales in comparison to what the women have testified in court have suffered, this was a difficult period in my life which has had a lasting impact.”

She says she “assisted” the journalists who sought to expose Brand’s behavior and was willing to “testify in court to his abusiveness” if those newspapers were then sued. “I have spent much of my professional career trying to support unfairly demonised and silenced women,” Goldsmith wrote.

The post also addresses recent reports about a woman named Szilvia Berki, who in October 2015 is said to have received an injunction from Brand and Goldsmith that banned Berki from harassing them. Berki had also accused Brand of assault at Goldsmith’s home around that time.

“The commentary and media reporting this week has presented an untrue narrative, which has opened me up to vile hatred and abuse online,” Goldsmith wrote. She explained that Berki was at Goldsmith’s house on June 7, 2014 to give Brand a massage. “By the time she arrived, [Brand] had decided he didn’t want a massage and asked her to leave. She was clearly offended. I was present the whole time he was with her, and I did not see anything untoward, despite the fact that he was later found guilty of sexually assaulting other women and he later physically assaulted me,” she continued.

“If I saw any man abuse any woman under any circumstances, I would do my utmost to stop them, without hesitation. Ms Berki later reported to the police that Brand had pushed her in the back whilst she was leaving the house and that she also said she was ‘attacked’ by my dog, which she described in her police statement as my dog licking her face.” The police investigated Berki’s complaint, and Goldsmith said she cooperated fully by providing CCTV footage.

“Following an investigation into Ms Berki’s allegations, police concluded that there was no case to answer and that no criminal offence had been committed,” said Goldsmith. But Berki began selling untrue stories to the tabloids, Goldsmith said, and began a campaign of “vicious antisemitic and threatening abuse online and in emails” toward her.

The post ended with Goldsmith saying she hopes the information will “clarify speculation.” She said: “I am glad and relieved that Russell Brand has finally faced justice.”