\n<\/p>\n
Russell Brand\u2019s barrister has reported himself to his professional regulator after being accused of launching a tirade at a journalist shortly after the former comedian had been found guilty of rape.<\/p>\n
Ian Winter KC \u201cconfronted\u201d the Sunday Times journalist Rosamund Urwin, whose investigation led to Brand\u2019s victims coming forward, telling her: \u201cI hope you are pleased with yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Urwin responded: \u201cI\u2019m pleased justice has been done,\u201d to which Winter replied: \u201cWell, it wasn\u2019t. You fucked it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCongratulations,\u201d he added, in an incident that happened outside the courtroom door at Southwark crown court on Thursday afternoon, with a group of journalists watching.<\/p>\n
In a statement issued on Friday lunchtime, Winter said he had referred himself to the Bar Standards Board, his professional regulator.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cHaving seen the ways matters have been characterised in today\u2019s press, I consider my professional duty requires me to self-report those allegations to the Bar Standards Board so the matter can be subject to proper scrutiny.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have made such a report.\u201d<\/p>\n
The incident happened moments after a jury had found Brand guilty of rape and three counts of sexual assault at the conclusion of a four-week trial. He was cleared of two further charges of rape and one of attempted indecent assault.<\/p>\n
Brand had denied all the charges against him, and argued through his lawyer that he had been wrongly accused and was the victim of a media conspiracy.<\/p>\n
After the trial, experts added to calls for a change in the law to ensure juries are warned against \u201crape myths\u201d.<\/p>\n
In his closing speech, Winter said none of the complainants had \u201cresisted or screamed or even tried to leave\u201d during their encounters with Brand.<\/p>\n
Claire Waxman, who is the victims\u2019 commissioner for England and Wales, is seeking to update the law to ensure juries are warned against \u201crape myths\u201d. She criticised \u201coutdated and harmful assumptions\u201d that victims must have screamed or tried to fight off their attacker.<\/p>\n
Deniz Ugur, deputy director of the End Violence Against Women (EVAW) coalition, said: \u201cIt is really appalling to see defence lawyers intentionally lean into a whole range of tired tropes and myths about rape.\n <\/p>\n
\u201cRape myths like the ones we\u2019ve seen in this case have no place in the courtroom.\u201d<\/p>\n
The head of Scotland Yard, Mark Rowley, told BBC Radio 4\u2019s Today programme he supported Waxman\u2019s call. \u201cI think what I\u2019ve heard reported heads towards, it\u2019s getting very close to victim-blaming, which is something we\u2019ve thought very hard about in policing and make sure we don\u2019t do.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople fall into myths about [how] a rape victim must behave in a certain way, must react in a certain way. The evidence is really clear. Some people will fight. Some people will freeze. Some people will tell people straight away. Some people bottle it up for years. There isn\u2019t one way of reacting.\u201d On Friday a No 10 source said the prime minister, Andy Burnham believed that Waxman\u2019s calls should be examined.<\/p>\n
Speaking after the trial Urwin told a Times podcast she approached Winter after the verdict because her name had been mentioned during the trial. \u201cI thought he\u2019s talked about me a lot, I\u2019ll go and introduce myself and that is a legitimate thing to do,\u201d she said. \u201cI was surprised to be confronted and spoken to in that way.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is understood that several complaints have been submitted to the Bar Standards Board but the regulator said it would not \u201ccomment as to whether or not it has received any information about potential misconduct by a barrister regardless of how any information comes to our attention\u201d.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson said complaints were usually handled confidentially unless they resulted in a disciplinary tribunal hearing.<\/p>\n
The comedian Katherine Ryan criticised the barrister on her podcast Telling Everybody Everything, saying: \u201cThat was so unprofessional, so inappropriate, so aggressive. Really sickening.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ben Taylor, the editor of the Sunday Times, defended Urwin, his newspaper\u2019s chief news correspondent. He said: \u201cI found what Mr Winter did quite extraordinary. I have never seen or heard of a barrister behaving in this way. There\u2019s a really serious point here, which is that it was not Ros who found Russell Brand guilty at Southwark crown court.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a jury of eight men and four women who have sat through this case. They\u2019ve listened to the evidence, they\u2019ve listened to the defence, and they have gone away and they\u2019ve come back with some very considered verdicts.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy impugning Ros\u2019s integrity, what Mr Winter is doing, and he should really be called to account for this, he\u2019s impugning the integrity of the entire case.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s impugning the integrity of a jury \u2026 who have sat there solemnly and done their duty, and the judge who oversaw the case and everybody else involved. I think what he did was reprehensible.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/span>The jury found Russell Brand guilty of rape.<\/span> Photograph: James Veysey\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n During the trial, Winter had argued that reporting of allegations against Brand by the Times, the Sunday Times and a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary <\/strong>had \u201cpoisoned the well\u201d, and rendered it impossible for his client to have a fair trial.<\/p>\n The trial judge, Mr Justice Bennathan, dismissed an attempt by Brand to block his trial from taking place because of negative media coverage.<\/p>\n In a pre-trial argument, Brand, through Winter, had accused the journalists who first exposed him as a sexual predator of being \u201ccriminals\u201d, suggesting their reporting in 2023 had made a fair trial impossible and venturing that they may have committed the crime of perverting the course of justice.<\/p>\n But the judge rejected that attempt to stop the trial, ruling that Brand could simply be tried by people who had not seen the previous media reporting.<\/p>\n A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: \u201cRape myths have absolutely no place in our courts and victims should never feel as though they are the ones on trial.<\/p>\n \u201cJudges are already able to give directions to counter rape myths but we are going further by changing the law to stop irrelevant sexual history and previous allegations being weaponised against rape victims. We will also carefully consider the victims\u2019 commissioner\u2019s proposals as we continue to strengthen protections for victims.\u201d<\/p>\n Brand, 51, was convicted of raping a 21-year-old fan in 2009 and sexually assaulting three women in separate incidents between 2004 and 2009.<\/p>\n He is in custody and due to be sentenced on Monday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Russell Brand\u2019s barrister has reported himself to his professional regulator after being accused of launching a tirade at a journalist shortly after the former comedian had been found guilty of rape. Ian Winter KC \u201cconfronted\u201d the Sunday Times journalist Rosamund Urwin, whose investigation led to Brand\u2019s victims coming forward, telling her: \u201cI hope you are<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":52598,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[16958,12177,243,21137,8288,4000,4773,2019],"class_list":{"0":"post-52597","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-barrister","9":"tag-barristers","10":"tag-brand","11":"tag-confrontation","12":"tag-journalist","13":"tag-reports","14":"tag-russell","15":"tag-watchdog"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/52598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}