Russell Brand sentenced to 10 years and six months for rape and sexual assault

British comedian Russell Brand, 51, has been sentenced to 10 years and six months in prison after a London jury found him guilty on one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault. Judge Bennathan handed down the sentence at Southwark Crown Court on Monday. The jury convicted Brand of raping a woman he met at one of his shows in 2009 and of sexually assaulting three women at a bar, a radio station and a TV studio between 2004 and 2009. Six women testified during the roughly four-week trial. Four of them gave victim impact statements before sentencing, three read by prosecutors and one read by a woman behind a curtain. None of the women have been publicly named. Brand denies all the charges and has said he never had non-consensual sex. The trial was not televised.

Brand moved from stand-up comedy and MTV hosting to political commentary and later to conspiracy theories, becoming popular with the U.S. right after his religious conversion. Critics said his treatment of women had been an open secret for decades.