Jemima Goldsmith says ex-partner Russell Brand physically assaulted her, alleging violence and coercive control

On Monday, shortly after Russell Brand was sentenced to more than ten years in prison, Jemima Goldsmith posted a statement on X saying he had physically assaulted her. The 52-year-old TV producer, known professionally as Jemima Khan, accused her former partner of "violence, coercive control and abuse" and described her own experience as painful.

Goldsmith began by praising the women who testified at Brand's trial, saying she was in awe of their courage and that they had ensured justice was done. She said she has always stood "strongly and unequivocally" on the side of his victims. Then she turned to her own history. In 2014, she said, she had to call the police to have Brand removed from her house during a violent incident.

She chose not to press charges then, and not to go public. Her reason, she wrote, was concern about the effect of press attention on her teenage children. She said she has neither seen nor spoken to Brand since that period. She added that her pain pales in comparison with what the women who testified in court suffered, but that it was a difficult time in her life with a lasting impact.

The sentence followed a verdict delivered on Thursday. Brand was found guilty of raping a fan and of sexually assaulting three women in separate incidents between 2004 and 2009. He was cleared of two further charges of rape and one of attempted indecent assault. Goldsmith is reported to have been in a relationship with him for about a year from around September 2013.

She also described her part in earlier exposure of Brand. She said she helped the journalists behind a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary and the reports in the Times and Sunday Times in 2023. She said she had also undertaken to testify in court to his abusiveness if the newspaper that published the victims' accounts were ever sued.

What prompted the statement, she said, was renewed press reporting about a harassment injunction that she and Brand took out in 2014 against a woman named Szilvia Berki. Berki had made allegations against Brand to the police after being booked to give him a massage at Goldsmith's home in June 2014. It is understood the police found there was no case to answer. Goldsmith said she was present the whole time Brand was with Berki and saw nothing untoward, even though he was later found guilty of sexually assaulting other women and, she said, later physically assaulted her. She wrote that if she saw any man abuse any woman, she would do her utmost to stop him without hesitation.

Goldsmith said the online commentary and media coverage of the injunction presented "an untrue narrative" and exposed her to "vile hatred and abuse online". She alleged that a series of untrue stories appeared in the tabloid press and that Berki mounted a campaign of threatening abuse online and in emails. The Guardian has not been able to reach Berki.

The injunction was granted by Mr Justice Jay, a High Court judge and former leading counsel in the Leveson inquiry. It was brought to light after Brand's conviction by Tax Policy Associates, the campaigning thinktank founded by former tax lawyer Dan Neidle. The Guardian amended its article on 9 November to clarify the circumstances of the injunction. Berki's account remains unheard in this reporting, and the scrutiny of the injunction appears likely to continue.