YouTube has suspended monetization on Russell Brand’s channels amid allegations of rape and sexual assault. Though Brand’s channels remain on YouTube, the Google-owned company has halted advertisement on videos by the comedian.
“If a creator’s off-platform behavior harms our users, employees or ecosystem, we take action,” a YouTube spokesperson told U.K. media outlets on Tuesday, per Variety and THR. The company added that Brand had violated YouTube’s “Creator Responsibility policy.”
The author and comedian-turned-wellness guru and podcast host is in the news due to a Times investigation published Saturday, which centered on four women who have accused him of rape and sexual assault between 2008 and 2013. The allegations against Brand were also brought forth in an episode of the Channel 4 investigative show Dispatches that aired Saturday night in the U.K.
The report has prompted Brand’s agency to drop him and U.K. police to urge other potential victims to come forward. Along with being dropped by his agency, Brand’s U.K. publisher, Bluebird, decided to pause all book releases related to Brand, including his next book, Recovery: The Workbook, which was scheduled to be published in December).
Before the article published and the episode premiered, Brand turned to social media Friday to post a video where he pre-emptively defended himself against forthcoming “extremely egregious and aggressive attacks” that he “absolutely refutes”
“These allegations pertain to the time when I was working in the mainstream, when I was in the newspapers all the time, when I was in the movies. And as I’ve written about extensively in my books I was very very promiscuous,” Brand said in the video.
The accusations span a seven-year period from 2006 to 2013, during which time Brand was married to singer Katy Perry from 2010 to 2012.
Perry’s comments about the dissolution of her marriage recently resurfaced, with Perry describing her ex-husband as “very controlling.”
“At first when I met him he wanted an equal, and I think a lot of times strong men do want an equal, but then they get that equal and they’re like, I can’t handle the equalness. He didn’t like the atmosphere of me being the boss on tour. So that was really hurtful, and it was very controlling, which was upsetting,” Perry told Vogue in 2013.
“I felt a lot of responsibility for it ending, but then I found out the real truth, which I can’t necessarily disclose because I keep it locked in my safe for a rainy day,” she continued. “I let go and I was like: This isn’t because of me; this is beyond me.”
