You Be the Judge: Ten and a Half Years for Russell Brand, and 20 Who Got Less

Disclaimer: This piece is opinion, Sally's own, and it contains language your nan wouldn't use in church.

Ten and a half years.

That's what Russell Brand got on Monday at Southwark Crown Court. Nine years for one count of rape in 2009, plus eighteen months on top for three sexual assaults between 2004 and 2009. He'll serve around seven of them before he sees daylight on licence, and he'll be on the sex offenders' register indefinitely.

I'll put my hand up straight away. I don't know what happened in a Hampstead bedroom seventeen years ago. Neither do you. Twelve jurors heard four weeks of evidence and they decided, and I'm not going to pretend I sat in that jury box. The women in this case have lifelong anonymity, and they'll keep it here.

But I do know what ten and a half years looks like next to what this country hands out to everyone else. And once you've seen the list below, I don't think you'll be able to unsee it either.

So here's the deal. I'll give you the facts. I'll give you twenty real cases, with the links. Then you be the judge.

YOU BE THE JUDGE: 20 who got less than Brand

Every one of these is a real British case. Every one is a sexual offence. Every one got less than ten and a half years. Many of the victims were children. Click the links and read them yourself.

1. Kabeer Hassan (Rochdale, 2012). Raped a 15-year-old girl who was handed to him by the gang's leader as a birthday "treat". Nine years. BBC

2. Rolf Harris (2014). Twelve indecent assaults on four girls, one of them aged seven or eight. Five years and nine months. BBC

3. Luke Grender (Newport, 2016). Raped a 12-year-old schoolgirl, dragging her upstairs. A two-year suspended sentence, replaced with three years' detention on appeal. BBC

4. Abdul Aziz (Rochdale, 2012). Took over as the "main trafficker" in a ring that passed round girls as young as 13. Nine years. BBC

5. Stuart Hall, BBC broadcaster (2013). Fourteen indecent assaults on thirteen girls aged nine to seventeen. Fifteen months, doubled to thirty on appeal. BBC

6. Ramin Bari (Rotherham, 2024). Four counts of rape against a vulnerable girl from the care system, part of the Operation Stovewood grooming investigation. Nine years. BBC

7. Nazir Ahmed, Lord Ahmed of Rotherham (Sheffield, 2022). Twice attempted to rape a young girl and seriously sexually assaulted a boy under 11 in the 1970s. Five and a half years, cut to two and a half on appeal. BBC

8. Haider Ali (Teesside, 2025). Raped two women in separate attacks within an hour; one of them was pregnant. Ten years, raised to fifteen on appeal. BBC

9. Adil Khan (Rochdale, 2012). Convicted of trafficking a child for sexual exploitation; he fathered a baby with a 13-year-old victim. Eight years. BBC

10. Eugene Gallagher (Newry, 2019). Admitted raping a 15-year-old girl and four indecent assaults when he was 16. Three years, suspended. He walked out of court. BBC

11. Yasser Ajaibe (Rotherham, 2024). Indecently assaulted an 11-year-old girl who lived in a children's home. Six years. BBC

12. Gagandeep Gulati (Leicester, 2025). Raped a vulnerable woman, filmed it, shared the video, then told police he was the victim. Six years, raised to nine on appeal. BBC

13. Abdul Rauf (Rochdale, 2012). A mosque religious studies teacher who drove girls to men for sex and asked a 15-year-old if she had any younger friends. Six years. BBC

14. Ibrar Hussain (Keighley, 2025). Raped a vulnerable teenage girl who was plied with drugs and alcohol in the 1990s. Six years and six months, raised to ten on appeal. GOV.UK

15. Max Clifford (2014). Eight indecent assaults on four women and girls, including a 15-year-old. Eight years. BBC

16. Rebecca Joynes, teacher (2024). Six counts of sexual activity with two schoolboys she groomed from 15, and had a baby with one of them. Six and a half years. BBC

17. Adam Johnson, England footballer (2016). Groomed a 15-year-old girl and engaged in sexual activity with her. Six years. BBC

18. Imran Ahmad Khan, ex-Tory MP (2022). Plied a 15-year-old boy with gin, dragged him upstairs and sexually assaulted him. Eighteen months, half of it in custody. BBC

19. Charlie Elphicke, ex-Tory MP (2020). Three sexual assaults on two women; the judge called him a "sexual predator". Two years, and out after one. BBC

20. Huw Edwards, BBC newsreader (2024). Three counts of making indecent images of children. Six months, suspended. Not a day inside. BBC

One of theirs

Let's not rewrite history. Russell Brand wasn't some outsider who wandered in off the street. He was the establishment's favourite naughty boy.

Through the 2000s he was everywhere. Channel 4 gave him Big Brother's Big Mouth. The BBC gave him a Radio 2 show. Hollywood gave him Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Get Him to the Greek. Then in October 2010 he married Katy Perry in India, with elephants, and became a global household name. The marriage was over by 2012, but the point stands. For a decade, the people who run British telly, British radio and the red carpets thought he was marvellous.

Even Sachsgate in 2008, when he and Jonathan Ross left those vile messages on Andrew Sachs's answerphone, cost him a BBC job and not much else. He was one of theirs. Insiders get second chances. Lots of them.

Then he turned

And then something happened. Brand got spiritual, got political, and started asking questions the people at the top didn't like.

In 2014 he launched The Trews on YouTube, a year after telling Britain not to bother voting for any of them. He turned against the parties, the pharma companies, the war machine and the media he used to work for. When YouTube pulled one of his videos in 2022, he moved his daily show, Stay Free, to Rumble. His YouTube channel still sits at around 6.8 million subscribers. He says he reaches 25 million people across his channels. In April 2024 he was baptised in the River Thames.

Now, you can think he talks rubbish. Plenty do. I've disagreed with him myself, loudly. But he went from being the darling of the establishment to one of its loudest critics, with an audience bigger than most newspapers.

In September 2023 came the Times, Sunday Times and Channel 4 Dispatches investigation. The women went to the police in 2023 and 2025. Charges followed. And this month, a conviction and ten and a half years.

I'm not telling you that's a conspiracy. I'm asking you whether the timing sits right with you. Because it doesn't sit right with me.

What the jury actually decided

Let's be precise, because precision is the one thing this story hasn't had.

Brand faced seven charges involving six women. The jury of eight men and four women convicted him of one rape and three sexual assaults involving four women. They acquitted him of two rapes and one attempted indecent assault. Three of the seven counts went in his favour.

The alleged offences were between fifteen and twenty-five years old by the time they reached court. For the most serious charges, as the Observer noted, there were no other witnesses in the room.

On the rape count, the defence, Ian Winter KC, put it to the woman that she had agreed to what happened. She denied it, firmly and repeatedly. The jury believed her. That is their job, and I respect that it's their job.

My question isn't who was in the room. My question is this. When a case rests on memories of a night seventeen years ago, with no one else present, can any of us be comfortable that the result is ten and a half years when men who did what you're about to read about got a fraction of that?

Because the judge himself took a year off for Brand's lack of a serious record and his work helping addicts. Ten and a half years was the discounted price.

Read that list again. Children of eleven, twelve and thirteen. Girls in care homes. A girl of seven or eight. Two women raped inside an hour.

Now do the sums. Add up the sentences those twenty were first handed and the average comes to about five and a half years. Barely half of Brand's. Six of the twenty were first given less than half his term. Three were suspended, meaning no prison at all, at least to begin with.

Let that sink in.

And it isn't only sex crimes. PC Benjamin Monk tasered Dalian Atkinson for 33 seconds and kicked him in the head. The former footballer died, and Monk got eight years for manslaughter (BBC). Anne Sacoolas caused the death of 19-year-old Harry Dunn by careless driving and got eight months, suspended (BBC).

"But Sally, the law was different then"

I can hear the lawyers already. Older offences were sentenced under older laws with lower maximums. Guidelines changed. Guilty pleas earn discounts. Some of those sentences were increased on appeal.

Fine. All true. And notice something. Every sentence on that list that went up only went up because the Attorney General or the Solicitor General stepped in and called it unduly lenient. The system's first instinct was leniency. Brand's judge also followed the rules. The rules just happened to land very differently on him.

And notice who's on that list. A peer of the realm. Two Conservative MPs. A BBC newsreader. A BBC broadcaster. Insiders, every one. Ahmed had his sentence cut by a Court of Appeal led by the Lord Chief Justice. Elphicke served a year. Edwards never saw a cell.

The insiders who stayed inside got the soft landing. The insider who walked out and started shouting got ten and a half years.

Magna Carta was meant to stop this

I grew up believing in this country. I still do. That's why this makes me so bloody furious.

In 1215, at Runnymede, the barons made a king promise three things that every British child should be able to recite.

Clause 39: no free man shall be imprisoned except by the lawful judgment of his peers. Brand got his jury, and I won't pretend otherwise.

Clause 20: punishment must be in proportion to the offence. Look at that list and tell me proportion is alive and well.

Clause 40: "To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice." Delay cuts both ways. If those women were wronged, seventeen years is far too long to wait for justice. And if a man is to lose ten years of his life, seventeen years is far too long for anyone to fairly defend himself against a single night with no one else in the room.

Those barons weren't saints. But they understood something our judges seem to have forgotten. A punishment that depends on who you are isn't justice. It's patronage. Justice is supposed to be blind to who you are and what you've said.

Equal justice isn't a slogan. It's the deal. Same crime, same punishment, whoever you are and whatever you said about the people in charge.

You be the judge

Here's my position, plainly. I'm not asking you to say Brand is innocent. A jury convicted him, and the women at the heart of this deserve their anonymity and their dignity.

I'm asking something else. Is it justice when a man who stopped being one of theirs gets more time than men who raped children in Rochdale and Rotherham? Is it justice when a BBC newsreader with indecent images of children walks free, while a former BBC presenter who turned on the BBC goes down for a decade?

Because from where I'm sitting in the East Midlands, it looks like two-tier justice. One tier for the people who stay loyal. Another for the ones who bite the hand.

I've given you the cases. I've given you the links. I've given you Magna Carta.

Same law. Same scales. Same justice.

Is British justice broken? You be the judge.

And Remember:

Trust no Single Source

Trust Your Gut

and Stay Curious

Sally Joe

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Cover and article photo: Russell Brand by Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 4.0 (modified)