Russell Brand's 10-Year Sentence and the Slow Business of Reform

Russell Brand was sentenced to more than 10 years in jail yesterday, convicted of raping one woman and sexually assaulting three others. That is the hardest fact in this story, and everything else follows from it.

Helena Kennedy KC, Labour peer and chair of the Creative Industries Independent Standards Authority (CIISA, the industry body set up to handle misconduct complaints in music, film, TV and theatre), made two claims in response: the conviction will not end abusive behaviour in the creative industries, but whistleblowing is now possible.

Kennedy did not soften her account of the trial. She described "the brazen and brutal sense of entitlement exhibited by a pampered star at the height of his fame", and credited "the bravery of the women who came forward to seek justice". Both quotations carry her voice, and she earned the right to use them.

What did the trial expose?

For a criminal barrister who has spent a professional lifetime challenging victim-blaming, the proceedings were a rerun of old habits. Kennedy noted that familiar tropes resurfaced: assumptions about victims not screaming out during rape and not reporting immediately.

Her verdict is blunt. The justice system, she argues, has to provide women with a fair opportunity to obtain justice without subjecting them to discriminatory assumptions and further trauma.

What is her concrete proposal?

Kennedy wants procedural reform, not sentiment. Lawyers who conduct sex cases, she writes, should be required to hold a certificate proving they have undergone recent additional training.

The logic is simple. If outdated assumptions about how "real" victims behave survive into cross-examination, the fix is education with a paper trail — like a driving licence for specialist advocacy.

Where does CIISA fit in?

The uncomfortable premise of Kennedy's piece is that a conviction of this magnitude changes less than the public expects. Workers in music, film, TV and theatre, she observes, may still not feel they can speak up about abuse.

The authority she leads exists precisely for that gap. CIISA is positioned as a route for those who don't trust, or can't use, the criminal courts — the second door in a building where the first one has historically been locked.

What happens next?

The sentence closes one case. It does not close the conditions that produced it, and Kennedy's piece reads as a warning against treating a courtroom outcome as an industry cure.

Her closing bet is the more modest one: that the possibility of whistleblowing, backed by a standards authority and better-trained lawyers, is what actually shifts behaviour. Ten years in prison for one man is the headline. Structural change is the fine print — and the part that decides whether the next case is reported at all.