One of the women who have accused now-convicted rapist Russell Brand of sexual assault is publicly revealing her identity for the first time after the disgraced comedian was sentenced to more than 10 years in prison.
Warning: the following contains an explicit and potentially distressing description of an alleged sexual assault.
“He ended up forcing me against the headboard [of the bed] and I couldn’t move, and he orally raped me — and I was choking and crying,” Mia Latter — who went by the pseudonym “Alice” in damning reports by the Sunday Times, The Times, and a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary outlining the various allegations against Brand, 51 — claimed in an interview with The Times published on Saturday, November 14, alleging the actor raped her when she was 16 and he was 30.
“I was trying to push him off, so he knew that I didn’t want him to be doing that, and so I ended up having to hit him in the stomach to get him off me,” Latter continued to claim. “I’ve never hit anyone [before] and …. He said, “I just wanted to see your mascara run.’”
Latter told the outlet that she has decided to waive her right to anonymity after authorities decided not to include her allegations in Brand’s highly-publicized rape and sexual assault trial, in which the Get Him to the Greek actor was found guilty of one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault. (He was found not guilty on the remaining three counts. The comedian has maintained his innocence despite his conviction.)
“They [the police] wanted me to be part of a subsequent trial, but they said that the decision was made [not to include her in the first trial] after he had done the Megyn Kelly and the Piers Morgan interviews,” she claimed. “I was told that I wasn’t actually going to make it to the October trial because… they didn’t want it to become ‘the Alice show,’ which was my pseudonym in the article. I was devastated by it.”
Back in April, Brand admitted to having sex with a 16-year-old when he was 30 during an interview with former Fox News host Megyn Kelly.
“The plain fact of it is that in Europe and in the United Kingdom, where I’m from, the age of consent is 16. And I did sleep with a 16-year-old when I was 30,” Brand said while appearing on The Megyn Kelly Show at the time. “When I was 30, I was a very different person. I was a lot younger, and I was an immature 30-year-old.” (The age of consent in the U.K. was 16 in 2006 and remains so to this day. Brand has repeatedly denied any sexual wrongdoing.)
“He was a very successful man who had a lot of power and sway in the industry,” Latter told the outlet, responding to Brand’s comments on Kelly’s podcast. “Whereas I was a 16-year-old with no life experience, no sexual experience and no prior relationships. What was my level of maturity meant to be?”
Months later, the comedian was sentenced to 10 years and six months in prison for rape and sexual assault. Kelly, 55, quickly came to the disgraced comedian’s defense in the wake of his conviction and subsequent prison sentence.
“I don’t believe the charges,” Kelly said during the Monday, November 9, episode of her YouTube show. “And I don’t have to believe them just because the jury came through with the opposite conclusion. I feel indignant that this obvious conservative stalwart has been targeted.”
The former journalist added, “And he had backdoor sex with a woman who licked his backdoor before she was even introduced to him. This is insane.”
Latter told The Times she decided to go public with her identity in an effort to change consent laws.
“I just don’t know what capacity I have to give years more of my life to this, for my head to be occupied with these awful crimes,” she said. “And it takes a toll on your personal life, on your marriage. I feel as though I haven’t been the world’s greatest mum at times, because I’ve been so upset, and I haven’t been the greatest daughter [or] sister.”
She continued, “It’s shocking to me time and time again that whenever the news comes up again about him, it’s always in the comments about the relationship with a 16-year-old. That’s not the most heinous bit. But why is that the thing that everybody collectively gets stuck on? I think we all sort of agree that … adults shouldn’t be allowed to have sexual relationships with children, with somebody under the age of 18. That really doesn’t seem like a gigantic leap to take.”
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).
