British comedian Russell Brand has been charged with rape and assault by police in the U.K.
The 50-year-old actor, known for his work in R-rated comedies including “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” and “Get Him to the Greek,” was charged with single counts of rape, indecent assault, oral rape and two counts of sexual assault, the Metropolitan Police Service announced in a statement.
The charges are connected to alleged attacks on multiple women between 1999 and 2005. He’s scheduled to face charges before the Westminster Magistrates’ Court on May 2.
Brand has pivoted away from acting and has worked to refashion himself as an anti-establishment commentator, and made news last year announcing he’d been baptized.
The baptism came months after numerous women alleged they were sexually assaulted by him between 2006 and 2013. The accusations first surfaced in a joint investigation published in September by the Times of London and U.K. Channel 4’s “Dispatches” news program.
Brand denied the allegations a day before their publication, saying in a YouTube video, “The relationships I had were absolutely, always consensual.”
He added: “I was always transparent about that then. Almost too transparent, and I’m being transparent now. To see that transparency metastasized into something criminal that I absolutely deny makes me question: Is there another agenda at play?”
In November, the BBC reported it had received five complaints about the actor, who was a BBC radio host from 2006 to 2008. A month later, Brand was interviewed “under caution by detectives in relation to a further six, non-recent, sexual offenses,” the Associated Press reported.
Times staff writer Meredith Blake contributed to this report.
