Russell Brand and the Dangerous Double Standard of the ‘Nice Boy Defence’

When questioning the first complainant in court, Russell Brand’s defence barrister said his 51-year-old client was a “young-looking boy” at the time of an alleged rape in 1999.

He then went on to suggest that there had therefore been “no power imbalance” between the comedian and the alleged victim, who says she was attacked by Brand during the Labour Party conference in Bournemouth. Brand denied the allegation and was subsequently acquitted of this charge. Today, a jury at Southwark Crown Court found him guilty of raping another woman in 2009 and of three counts of sexual assault. He was acquitted of two rape charges and one count of attempted indecent assault.

The ‘nice boy defence’

In 1999, Brand would’ve been 24—a man by definition and law. We see this a lot when men are accused of sexual wrongdoing. In fact, there’s even a name for it: the so-called ‘nice boy defence’. “It’s used quite widely in sex offence cases where the defence will try to portray the defendant as young, inexperienced, vulnerable, immature, respectable, sensitive—not the type to commit this sort of offence,” says Marcus Johnstone, managing director of PCD Solicitors.

Conversely, women are typically referred to as ‘girls’ in everyday conversation, but in situations like these, they are almost always described as ‘women’. “It suggests they are in control, they’re capable, they’re adults—and able to consent,” explains Dr Sophie Holmes-Elliott, senior lecturer in sociolinguistics at Queen Mary University. “[Defence lawyers] are trying to activate those membership category attributes in the minds of the jury.”

And so what this framing does is afford men the innocence, cheekiness and vulnerability associated with boyhood—irrespective of their actual age, alleged actions or whether a jury finds them guilty or not. Women, on the other hand, are apparently considered old enough to be in control of not just their own actions, but the actions of others, and are forced to absorb the guilt and shame of what happened to them as a result.

What’s particularly interesting to me about this gendered double standard is that a lot of the time, boys’ childhoods are cut short by their desire to fulfil masculine ideals, and yet suddenly, when they secure that status as adults and find themselves in trouble, they seem more than willing to be infantilised because it works to their advantage and diminishes the severity of their actions.

One of the most telling examples of this is the 2016 Brock Turner case, in which the now-convicted rapist was described as not just a “boy”, but also a “gifted swimmer”. This shifted the focus away from his crime and the shattering impact it had on his victim, Chanel Miller, and instead towards his “wasted potential”.

This sends a clear and dangerous message: that a perpetrator’s life is considered more valuable than the victim’s. Even when found guilty of such a heinous act, men are met with empathy, and the women are simply collateral damage. That Turner only served three months of a six-month sentence demonstrates yet again how rarely the punishment fits the crime, which adds yet another barrier for women and girls to come forward.

Johnstone all but confirms these defence strategies, explaining that lawyers use the delayed reporting of crimes to throw the claimant’s credibility into question, and they also make a point of repeating certain phrases throughout a trial so they stick in the jury’s mind.

One such tactic is the use of ‘the R word’—“not ‘rape’, but ‘regret’. “They’ll keep harping on about regret as the R word so they don’t mention rape,” says Johnstone. “If they have to, they’ll talk about ‘a sexual encounter’ because it minimises the alleged offence. The emphasis is on portraying that this is a woman who has regretted it—who consented to it, but the following day regretted what she’d done, and has reported it to save face, perhaps with the parents or a boyfriend who’s back home, etc.”

Regardless of whether a defendant is convicted or acquitted, the way in which we talk about rape and represent it in wider culture matters.

“It shapes the way we understand it, why it happens, who’s to blame when it does, and how we respond to disclosures,” explains Rape Crisis CEO Ciara Bergman.

“Research has shown that even small changes in language can influence whom people blame, how seriously they view the crime, and the sentences they consider appropriate. It also shows the devastating power of rape myths at trial: research involving more than 7,600 mock jurors showed that those who believed these myths were less likely to judge a defendant guilty,” she says.

It’s in part why, in 2025, former justice secretary David Lammy introduced major reforms to modernise criminal courts and speed up process times, as well as to ban the ‘serial liar’ defence and the presentation of ‘bad character’ evidence relating to a claimant’s sexual history in court.

Still, when rape conviction rates already sit at a dismal 53% in the UK and women and girls are deterred from speaking up because of lengthy waits and how their character may be called into question during the process, a lot more needs to be done to ensure victims of sexual crimes come forward—and feel supported when they do.

High-profile cases like Brand’s matter beyond the courtroom. While Brand was convicted of four offences and acquitted of three others, the wider questions raised by the language used throughout the proceedings remain.

This isn’t just about six women and a celebrity in isolation; this is about the cultural impact of perpetuating harmful rhetoric about women, men and the severity of sex offences. The language used to describe defendants and complainants doesn’t exist in a vacuum—it can reinforce the very stereotypes that shape how society understands sexual violence, credibility and consent. The right to a robust defence is fundamental, but so too is recognising the wider cultural consequences of the narratives we perpetuate.

As Bergman puts it: “Ending rape culture means stopping the trivialisation of rape full stop.” Words, in these instances, can be just as powerful—and harmful—as actions.