Russell Brand’s wife, Laura Gallacher, told London’s Southwark Crown Court Thursday that her husband, who is on trial for rape and sexual assault allegations, is “caring, kind and a wonderful father” to their children, according to U.K. media reports.
Gallacher, 39, told the jury that “the way he treats me is to know me,” and that she feels seen by Brand and loves him “very much,” the BBC and The Guardian report.
Brand, 51, is facing seven charges including three counts of rape, three counts of sexual assault and one count of indecent assault. The charges involve six women and alleged offences between 1999 and 2009. The trial is expected to last up to 10 weeks.
The actor and media personality has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Brand and Gallacher got married in 2017, but had split up in the past over his disinterest in monogamy, Gallacher told the court, according to The Guardian.
“I wasn’t interested in having a relationship with him if he was sleeping with other people,” she said, the U.K. outlet reported.
They first began dating in 2006 after meeting at the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland. She described him then as being “very caring,” and willing to take things “totally at my pace.”
“I was not experienced; I had only had one partner before Russell, and I felt entirely cared for and looked after by Russell,” she continued, The Guardian reports, adding that she told the court she was aware he “liked women” and that he was “engaging” with other women within the first year of their relationship.
His infidelity eventually led to their split in 2007, but they reconciled in 2015 after Brand ended his marriage to Katy Perry — who has been in a relationship with former Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau since July 2025. Gallacher said that during their time apart, she and Brand remained friends and would talk about his promiscuity.
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She went on to describe their marriage as “honest” and “clear.”
Brand, who took the stand on Wednesday, acknowledged that he had engaged in “reckless” sexual activity for much of his life.
“I have been persuasive, seductive, begging and flirting, and have dedicated a lot of my life to what seems now beyond reckless philandering and idiocy,” he told the court towards the end of about four hours of evidence, Reuters reported.
“I was in a position of fame. As I became more successful and famous, I was very comfortable allowing that to facilitate sexual access, which I agree was wrong,” he added.
The jury has previously been told how all the complainants came forward to detectives after a documentary was broadcast in 2023, along with several newspaper articles in which anonymous allegations were made by other women who are not involved in the trial.
Prosecutors allege that Brand raped a woman after meeting her at a fringe event for a Labour Party conference in 1999, forced a woman to give him oral sex in the toilets of a London bar in 2004, and molested another woman at a radio station in 2004 or 2005.
He is also accused of trying to drag a woman into the men’s toilets at MTV Europe, in London, where she was working in 2001, and of anally raping a woman in 2009.
The final allegation is that he assaulted a woman while they were involved in a recording project.
“Consent is fundamental, essential, necessary and indeed more important than sex itself,” Brand told the court while discussing the first rape allegation.
While he said he did not remember incidents involving three of the alleged victims, he did recall details about the other alleged rapes, saying both women had either consented or the incident was not as they portrayed, Reuters said.
During the trial’s opening statements earlier this month, the prosecution described Brand as a “ruthless” sexual predator who was “indiscriminate and voracious” in his pursuit of sexual contact at the time of the alleged assaults and said he viewed women as a “means to an end.”
The trial is ongoing.
— with files from Reuters
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