10 years in prison: Jemima Goldsmith details physical assault by Russell Brand
The TV producer says she called police to remove her ex-partner from her home in 2014, an incident she kept private to protect her teenage children.
By Beatriz Soto ·
Jemima Goldsmith, a 52-year-old television producer, has publicly stated that her ex-partner Russell Brand physically assaulted her. She described a history of violence, coercive control, and abuse that lasted through their relationship.
Goldsmith made these remarks on social media on Monday, shortly after Brand was sentenced to more than 10 years in prison. She said she has always been strongly and unequivocally on the side of Brand’s victims while sharing her own painful experience.
The producer explained that she called the police to have Brand removed from her house during a violent incident in 2014. She chose not to press charges or go public at the time because she was worried about the impact of press attention on her then teenage children.
Goldsmith noted that she has neither seen nor spoken to Brand since that period in 2014. She said her pain pales in comparison to what the women testified in court suffered, but the period had a lasting impact on her life.
Brand was found guilty on Thursday of raping a fan and sexually assaulting three women in separate incidents between 2004 and 2009. The jury cleared him of two further charges of rape and one of attempted indecent assault.
Goldsmith, known professionally as Jemima Khan, was in a relationship with Brand for a year from around September 2013. She said she assisted journalists who exposed Brand in a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary and in reports in the Times and Sunday Times in 2023.
She also stated she undertook to testify in court to his abusiveness if the newspaper that published the victims’ accounts were ever to be sued. Goldsmith said she was present the whole time Brand was with Szilvia Berki at her home in June 2014 and did not see anything untoward.
The new comments follow renewed media reporting on a harassment injunction that Goldsmith and Brand took out against Berki in 2014. Berki had made allegations against Brand to the police after being booked to give him a massage.
Goldsmith argued that online commentary and media reporting presented an untrue narrative and opened her up to vile hatred and abuse. She alleged that a series of untrue stories appeared in the tabloid press and that Berki embarked on a campaign of threatening abuse online and in emails.
The harassment order, granted by Mr Justice Jay, banned Berki from speaking to anyone about her allegations against Brand. The non-profit thinktank Tax Policy Associates, founded by former tax lawyer Dan Neidle, brought the injunction to light after Brand’s conviction.
