Russell Brand's Ex Jemima Goldsmith Breaks Years-long Silence Hours After His Prison Sentence

A decade-old call to police

Hours after a judge sentenced Russell Brand to 10 years and six months in prison on Monday, Nov. 9, his former girlfriend Jemima Goldsmith posted a lengthy statement on X describing her own history with him — a history that predates the four women who testified against him at trial.

Goldsmith, 52, dated Brand for about a year around 2014. She said that during a "violent incident" that year, she called the police to have him removed from her house.

"I chose not to press charges at the time and not to go public with this, as I was worried about the impact of the press attention on my then teenage children," she wrote, according to Extra.

She said she has "neither seen nor spoken to Brand" since that period in 2014.

Who Jemima Goldsmith is

Goldsmith is a film and television producer. She is the daughter of the late billionaire Sir James Goldsmith and the sister of former U.K. Conservative minister Zac Goldsmith, according to Yahoo News Canada. She is also the former wife of ex-Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan and the mother of two sons.

She and Brand were never married. Their relationship lasted roughly a year in the mid-2010s, outlets reported, and ended well before the conduct described at his trial.

"I have had my own personal experience of his violence, coercive control and abuse," — Jemima Goldsmith, in her statement posted to X, per Extra.

The conviction and sentence that prompted her statement

Brand, 51, was found guilty on Nov. 5 of one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault following a four-week trial at Southwark Crown Court, NPR reported. The jury acquitted him of two counts of rape and one count of attempted indecent assault. The charges involved four women and incidents spanning 2004 to 2009. Brand denied all charges and said he never had non-consensual sex, according to NPR.

Judge Joel Bennathan sentenced Brand to a total of 10 years and six months on Monday — nine years for the rape conviction, with additional time for the three sexual assault counts — Extra reported, citing The Guardian. Bennathan said Brand must serve two-thirds of the sentence before he becomes eligible for parole.

At sentencing, Bennathan told Brand that his fame had let him act "however you liked, when you liked, unhindered by the rules by which decent people live," Extra reported. NPR reported that the judge said Brand had become "a sexual predator" and paused "to pay tribute to the determination and bravery" of the women who testified against him.

Brand was taken to HMP Wandsworth after the hearing. Under sentencing guidelines, he could be released after serving roughly two-thirds of his term — about seven years — and would then spend the remainder of the sentence on licence, Yahoo News Canada reported.

What Goldsmith said, in her own words

"I am and have always been strongly and unequivocally on the side of all of Brand's victims. I am in awe of the courageous women who came forward at Brand's trial, told their stories, testified and ensured justice was done," Goldsmith wrote, according to Extra.

"I have had my own personal experience of his violence, coercive control and abuse," she wrote.

"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 wrote, according to Entertainment Weekly.

She said she had assisted journalists Rosamund Urwin, Louisa Compton and Dorothy Byrne, who first reported allegations against Brand in 2023, and that she had agreed to testify about his "abusiveness" if the newspaper that published the allegations were ever sued, per Extra.

"I am glad and relieved that Russell Brand has finally faced justice," she wrote, according to Entertainment Weekly.

The injunction she says followed her online

Goldsmith's statement also addressed a 2015 harassment injunction that she and Brand took out against a woman identified by Yahoo News Canada as Szilvia Berki. Goldsmith said recent reporting on the injunction had opened her up to "vile hatred and abuse online," which is why she set out to explain it directly.

Goldsmith said she had hired Berki to give Brand a massage at her house on June 7, 2014. Brand did not want the massage. Goldsmith said she was present the whole time and "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," according to Entertainment Weekly.

Berki later told police that Brand had pushed her and that she had been attacked by Goldsmith's dog. Goldsmith said a police investigation "concluded that there was no case to answer and that no criminal offense had been committed." She said she sought the injunction after receiving "extremely frightening" messages from Berki, per Entertainment Weekly.

Reaction from the reporter she helped

Rosamund Urwin, the Sunday Times correspondent who led the 2023 media investigation into Brand, told the BBC that Goldsmith had helped her "a lot." "I have seen the abuse she's been getting online and I did try to tell people that part of the story was much more complicated than they realise," Urwin said, according to Yahoo News Canada.

"I wish people would remember women that come forward are brave people and that is what she has done tonight – she has spoken out with immense bravery about how Russell Brand treated her," Urwin said.

What happens next

London's Metropolitan Police have said new charges against Brand could follow as more women come forward. Det. Supt. Andy Furpy told BBC Breakfast that reports received during and since the trial are being assessed "through a lens of threat, harm, and risk," per Extra. No new charging decision has been announced, and nothing in the coverage suggests a separate case is being built specifically around Goldsmith's 2014 account.