Russell Brand’s 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 “confronted” the Sunday Times journalist Rosamund Urwin, whose investigation led to Brand’s victims coming forward, telling her: “I hope you are pleased with yourself.”
Urwin responded: “I’m pleased justice has been done,” to which Winter replied: “Well, it wasn’t. You fucked it.”
“Congratulations,” he added, in an incident that happened outside the courtroom door at Southwark crown court on Thursday afternoon, with a group of journalists watching.
In a statement issued on Friday lunchtime, Winter said he had referred himself to the Bar Standards Board, his professional regulator.
He said: “Having seen the ways matters have been characterised in today’s 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.
“I have made such a report.”
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.
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.
After the trial, experts added to calls for a change in the law to ensure juries are warned against “rape myths”.
In his closing speech, Winter said none of the complainants had “resisted or screamed or even tried to leave” during their encounters with Brand.
Claire Waxman, who is the victims’ commissioner for England and Wales, is seeking to update the law to ensure juries are warned against “rape myths”. She criticised “outdated and harmful assumptions” that victims must have screamed or tried to fight off their attacker.
The head of Scotland Yard, Mark Rowley, told BBC Radio ۴’s Today programme he supported Waxman’s call. “I think what I’ve heard reported heads towards, it’s getting very close to victim-blaming, which is something we’ve thought very hard about in policing and make sure we don’t do.
“People 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’t one way of reacting.” On Friday a No ۱۰ source said the prime minister, Andy Burnham, agreed with Waxman’s position.
Speaking after the trial Urwin told a Times podcast she approached Winter after the verdict because her name had been mentioned during the trial. “I thought he’s talked about me a lot, I’ll go and introduce myself and that is a legitimate thing to do,” she said. “I was surprised to be confronted and spoken to in that way.”
It is understood that several complaints have been submitted to the Bar Standards Board but the regulator said it would not “comment 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”.
A spokesperson said complaints were usually handled confidentially unless they resulted in a disciplinary tribunal hearing.
The comedian Katherine Ryan criticised the barrister on her podcast Telling Everybody Everything, saying: “That was so unprofessional, so inappropriate, so aggressive. Really sickening.”
Ben Taylor, the editor of the Sunday Times, defended Urwin, his newspaper’s chief news correspondent. He said: “I found what Mr Winter did quite extraordinary. I have never seen or heard of a barrister behaving in this way. There’s a really serious point here, which is that it was not Ros who found Russell Brand guilty at Southwark crown court.
“It was a jury of eight men and four women who have sat through this case. They’ve listened to the evidence, they’ve listened to the defence, and they have gone away and they’ve come back with some very considered verdicts.
“By impugning Ros’s integrity, what Mr Winter is doing, and he should really be called to account for this, he’s impugning the integrity of the entire case.
“He’s impugning the integrity of a jury … 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.”
During the trial, Winter had argued that reporting of allegations against Brand by the Times, Sunday Times and a Channel ۴ Dispatches documentary had “poisoned the well”, and rendered it impossible for his client to have a fair trial.
The trial judge, Mr Justice Bennathan, dismissed an attempt by Brand to block his trial from taking place because of negative media coverage.
In a pre-trial argument, Brand, through Winter, had accused the journalists who first exposed him as a sexual predator of being “criminals”, suggesting their reporting in ۲۰۲۳ had made a fair trial impossible and venturing that they may have committed the crime of perverting the course of justice.
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.
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “Rape myths have absolutely no place in our courts and victims should never feel as though they are the ones on trial.
“Judges 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’ commissioner’s proposals as we continue to strengthen protections for victims.”
Brand, ۵۱, was convicted of raping a ۲۱-year-old fan in ۲۰۰۹ and sexually assaulting three women in separate incidents between ۲۰۰۴ and ۲۰۰۹.
He is in custody and due to be sentenced on Monday.
