Jemima Goldsmith has publicly accused Russell Brand of “violence, coercive control and abuse”, revealing that she called the police to have him removed from her home during a violent incident in 2014. Her statement was published on Monday, only hours after Brand was jailed for ten years and six months for rape and sexual assault.
Goldsmith, 52, a film producer and writer, posted the statement on X, saying she felt she had no choice but to speak because of what she called misleading reports and speculation about a harassment injunction obtained to protect her and her family. It was the first time she had spoken publicly about her relationship with Brand, which lasted between 2013 and 2014.
“I have had my own personal experience of his violence, coercive control and abuse. I had to call the police to have him removed from my house in 2014 during a violent incident,” she wrote. She said she chose not to press charges at the time and not to go public, because she was worried about the impact of press attention on her children, who were then teenagers. She added that she has neither seen nor spoken to Brand since that period in 2014.
Goldsmith said she had “always been strongly and unequivocally on the side of all of Brand’s victims”, and praised the women who gave evidence at his trial. “I am in awe of the courageous women who came forward at Brand’s trial, told their stories, testified and ensured justice was done,” she wrote.
Her statement also addressed the harassment injunction at the centre of the renewed speculation. In June 2014, a massage therapist, Szilvia Berki, came to Goldsmith’s house for roughly 30 minutes after Goldsmith had booked her to give Brand a massage. Berki later reported to the police that Brand had pushed her in the back as she was leaving the house, and that she had also been “attacked” by Goldsmith’s dog.
According to Goldsmith, the police investigated Berki’s complaint and concluded that there was no case to answer and that no criminal offence had been committed. She said she cooperated fully with the investigation, gave a truthful statement and handed over home CCTV footage. A harassment injunction against Berki was taken out in 2014 and made final in 2015, barring her from alleging that either Brand or Goldsmith had committed a criminal offence against her.
Goldsmith said she had told Berki she would agree to vary the injunction so that Berki could speak to the police again if she wished, and that she had instructed her lawyer to engage on Berki’s other requests. She also alleged that Berki had waged a campaign of threatening and antisemitic abuse against her online and in emails.
The statement further disclosed Goldsmith’s role in the investigation that first brought the allegations against Brand into the open. She said she had assisted journalists Ros Urwin, Louisa Compton and Dorothy Byrne at The Sunday Times and Channel 4 in their 2023 investigation, and had undertaken to testify in court about his abusiveness if the newspaper that published the victims’ accounts were ever sued.
Brand, 51, was sentenced on Monday at Southwark Crown Court to ten years and six months in prison. A jury convicted him last week of raping one woman and sexually assaulting three others between 2004 and 2009, and cleared him of two further counts of rape and one count of indecent assault. The details of the injunction resurfaced in coverage of the sentencing, which Goldsmith said was what prompted her to speak.
What happens next is unclear. Berki may respond to Goldsmith’s account, the injunction could yet be varied to let her speak to police, and Brand’s representatives may answer the new allegations. For now, Goldsmith’s statement stands as the most direct account yet from someone close to Brand at the time, and it adds a new and personal dimension to a case that has already reshaped his public life.
