Jemima Goldsmith Speaks Out Amid Russell Brand Fallout

A ten-year sentence, then a statement

Russell Brand, 51, stood in the dock at Southwark Crown Court on November 9, 2026, as Justice Bennathan read his sentence: "The total sentence is one of ten years, six months," the judge said, according to NPR. It capped a four-week trial in which a jury convicted Brand on one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault — four of the seven charges he faced.

Hours after the sentencing, Jemima Goldsmith, who dated Brand for roughly a year around 2014, posted a lengthy statement on X. She said she wanted to support Brand's victims and to set the record straight about a civil court order tied to her own history with him, according to Vulture and Us Weekly.

Who's involved

Brand, now 51, built a career as a stand-up comedian and MTV host before reinventing himself as a political commentator and, later, a conspiracy-minded media figure; six women testified against him during the trial, NPR reported.

Goldsmith, 52, is a producer and former wife of ex-Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan; she dated Brand around 2014 and has not spoken to him since, per Us Weekly.

Szilvia Berki — spelled Sylvie Berki by Yahoo — is a massage therapist who accused Brand of assault in 2014; her allegation did not lead to charges, and she later became the subject of the harassment injunction described below, according to Tax Policy Associates and Vulture.

Brand's wife, Laura, and his father were in the courtroom for sentencing; none of the four women whose testimony led to his convictions have been named publicly, and the trial was not televised, NPR reported.

"I have had my own personal experience of his violence, coercive control and abuse." — Jemima Goldsmith, Brand's former girlfriend, via Us Weekly

The charges and the sentence

Brand was convicted of raping a woman he met at one of his shows at his Hampstead home in 2009 — an assault the prosecution said involved him removing a condom, which it cited as an aggravating factor at sentencing, NPR reported.

He was also convicted of three counts of sexual assault: grabbing a woman's breasts at a Soho party in 2004, assaulting a woman at the Choice FM radio station in 2004 or 2005, and assaulting a woman during a Channel 4 television production in 2009.

Brand pleaded not guilty to all seven original counts and denied having non-consensual sex with anyone, NPR reported. The jury found him guilty on four counts; coverage of the trial does not specify what happened on the remaining three.

Judge Justice Bennathan told the court Brand had become "a sexual predator," pausing "to pay tribute to the determination and bravery" of the women who testified, NPR reported. Brand's defense argued at sentencing that he is "a fundamentally different person" from who he was at the time of the offenses.

Outlets differ on how far back the underlying conduct reaches: Yahoo describes "incidents spanning 1999 to 2009," while NPR's account of the specific convictions covers 2004 to 2009.

The victims, the defense and the prosecution

Four women gave victim impact statements before sentencing — three read aloud by the prosecution, one delivered in person from behind a courtroom curtain, NPR reported.

The woman Brand was convicted of raping said, in a statement read by the prosecution: "It's something I carry with me every day and it often feels never-ending." She added that she no longer trusts her instincts "in the way I did," and said she hadn't reported Brand sooner because she didn't think she'd be believed given his fame, according to NPR.

The woman Brand was convicted of assaulting at a bar said the confusion of what she "should" or "could" do had stayed with her for over 20 years, and that she felt "physically sick" seeing Brand's fame grow afterward, per NPR. A third complainant said the assault had "a lasting impact on her life," and a fourth said it left her feeling her workplace was unsafe.

The prosecution asked for a long sentence, citing aggravating circumstances including the condom removal during the rape. The Metropolitan Police confirmed its investigation into Brand continues separately from the completed trial: "The Met's investigation into allegations of rape made by two women remains ongoing," a spokesperson told Us Weekly, adding that Brand "has previously been interviewed under caution in connection with the allegations."

Goldsmith's own words

In her X post, Goldsmith opened by distancing her statement from any claim about Brand's criminal case: "Firstly, and most importantly, I am and have always been strongly and unequivocally on the side of all of Brand's victims," she wrote, according to Us Weekly. "I am in awe of the courageous women who came forward at Brand's trial, told their stories, testified and ensured justice was done. I have had my own personal experience of his violence, coercive control and abuse."

She described a 2014 incident in which she called police to have Brand removed from her home: "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, per Us Weekly. She said she has "neither seen nor spoken to Brand since that period in 2014."

Goldsmith added that her own experience "pales in comparison to what the women have testified in court have suffered," but called the period "a difficult period in my life which has had a lasting impact," according to Us Weekly. She said she had assisted journalists investigating Brand and was prepared to testify to his "abusiveness" if they were sued over their reporting, and added: "I am glad and relieved that Russell Brand has finally faced justice."

The injunction she says was misreported

Much of Goldsmith's statement responded to renewed attention on a 2014 incident involving Szilvia Berki, a massage therapist Goldsmith had hired to come to the home she shared with Brand. Per Goldsmith's account, relayed by Vulture, Brand no longer wanted the massage once Berki arrived, and Berki was "clearly offended." Goldsmith said she was present throughout and "did not see anything untoward."

Berki told police Brand pushed her in the back as she left and that she was "attacked" by Goldsmith's dog — which, by Berki's own account, meant the dog had licked her face, according to Vulture. Police investigated and found no criminal offense.

Berki then took her allegations to tabloids and social media, and, by Goldsmith's account, was paid for some of those stories; she also sent Goldsmith a series of messages Goldsmith described as antisemitic, including lines like "What is going on in Britain is a dictatory of J evils," per Vulture. Brand and Goldsmith sued Berki for harassment; she represented herself with no lawyer, and Mr Justice Jay granted summary judgment against her in 2015 without a trial, according to Tax Policy Associates.

The resulting injunction, obtained and published by Tax Policy Associates, bars Berki from disclosing "any information" about what she says happened — not to journalists, family, friends, or even police — and ordered her to pay £50,000 in legal costs within two weeks, a sum the judge called her "probably impecunious" to afford, authorizing her bankruptcy. A Court of Appeal judge, Lady Justice Falk, reviewed the case this September and flagged concerns about the order's breadth, but it remains in force.

Goldsmith said she tried to get it loosened: "I instructed my lawyer in December last year to approach Ms Berki's barrister to say that I agreed to vary the injunction so that she could speak to the police again if she wanted to," she wrote, per Vulture — but said any change also required Brand's agreement, and "I have no ability to compel Brand in this matter, as I have not seen or spoken to him in over a decade."

Tax Policy Associates, which published the order, argues it goes far beyond an ordinary harassment injunction: "We think the injunction should never have been granted in these terms," the group wrote, calling it "a disturbing example of what happens when wealthy, powerful people take an unrepresented defendant to court." Nobody has ever established whether Berki's allegations were true, and Brand's unrelated convictions "don't tell us what happened in 2014."

What happens next

The Metropolitan Police's investigation into separate rape allegations from two women remains open, and Brand has previously been interviewed under caution in that inquiry; no date has been set for any further action. Brand's legal team has not indicated whether it will appeal the Southwark Crown Court convictions or sentence. The Berki injunction remains in force despite the Court of Appeal's stated concerns about its breadth, and any variation would require agreement from both Goldsmith and Brand — something Goldsmith says she cannot obtain from Brand directly.