‘Jimmy Savile Police Unit’ helps with Russel Brand probe

A specialist sex-crimes squad set up after UK entertainer Jimmy Savile was found to have abused hundreds of people is now helping to investigate the damning allegations against Russell Brand, it emerged Thursday.

Operation Hydrant was set up in 2014 amid the scandal of once-beloved BBC star Savile, who died in 2011 aged 84, being able to rape and molest kids and vulnerable adults for more than 50 years.

Its focus is “non-recent” sexual offenses — especially any potentially involving “persons of public prominence.”

That now includes looking into the rape and sexual assault allegations made against Brand, 48, a spokesperson confirmed to The Times of London, the UK paper that first detailed the accusers’ claims.

“We are working with [London’s] Metropolitan Police in support of their response to recent allegations,” a spokesperson told the UK paper of Brand, who has faced further accusers since four first came forward.

The operation “would urge any victim or survivor who feels ready to report any allegations of sexual assault to come forward and speak to officers.

“The Hydrant program does not provide comment on the status . . . of individual investigations,” the spokesperson said, saying that was “a matter for forces.”

The UK Times, along with a Channel 4 documentary crew, over the weekend detailed allegations from four women — including a then-16-year-old girl who says he called her “the child” — of assault between 2006 and 2013.

Since the bombshell allegations have roiled the UK, another woman has gone forward to Scotland Yard to report she was sexually assaulted by Brand in central London’s hip Soho area in 2003.

Brand, who has reinvented himself as an online commentator and podcaster, has been open about being a prolific philanderer, but vehemently maintained that they have all been “absolutely always consensual.”

Savile used his iconic celebrity status to attack patients in hospital beds, star-struck teenagers from his TV show audience, and even a teenage girl visiting a cancer hospice, police said in 2013.

The report listed 214 criminal offenses by Savile, including 34 rapes — 28 of children — but many more have also been alleged. The attacks began in 1955 and lasted into 2009.

He was included in the report about Brand, who seemingly knew about the TV star’s sick side years before it was exposed.

The Times highlighted an on-siar call Brand made to Savile in May 2007 — five years before the latter’s crimes were exposed — pretending to offer to bring him a girl.

“I’ve got a personal assistant . . . And part of her job description is that anyone I demand she greet, meet, massages, she has to do it. She’s very attractive, Jimmy,” Brand said, according to the UK Times.

A former BBC controller, Lorraine Heggessey, said it “beggars belief” that the interview was broadcast.

“Somebody should have said it’s not acceptable to continually have these jokes about sex, jokes about women,” she told “Dispatches.”
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“You can see a very clear pattern of unacceptable behavior that consistently undermines and demeans women and that leads to sexual exploitation of them.”

Russell Brand sexual assault allegations

Russell Brand was accused of raping, sexually assaulting and abusing four women over the course of seven years from 2006 to 2013.

• One woman, identified as “Nadia,” alleged the “Get Him to the Greek” star raped her against the wall of his Los Angeles home in 2012 and was treated at a rape crisis center the same day, according to medical records cited by the outlets.
• Another accuser who was 16 at the time, who is known only by the pseudonym “Alice”, alleged that the then-31-year-old called her “the child” and assaulted her during their “emotionally abusive and controlling” three-month relationship, according to the report.
• Allegations from Brand’s other accusers included a woman, identified as “Phoebe,” who claimed he sexually assaulted her at his property in West Hollywood after they met at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, according to the Times of London. Brand trapped her in a bedroom and chased her around before pinning her down and assaulting her. 
• The star’s ex-girlfriend, Jordan Martin, made similar accusations in her self-published 2014 book “kNot: Entanglement with a Celebrity.” She claims he sexually assaulted her at the Lowry Hotel in Manchester, England, after becoming angry that she had spoken to an ex-boyfriend in 2007.
• Pop star Dannii Minogue angrily labeled Russell Brand a “vile predator” as far back as 2006 — accusing him of creeping her out by perving over her “fabulous breasts” and refusing to “take no for an answer.”

Brand denied the allegations in a video on YouTube and X, formerly Twitter, alerting fans to “serious criminal” allegations that he said would be made against him.

“Amidst this litany of astonishing, rather baroque attacks, are some very serious allegations that I absolutely refute,” Branded shared. “The relationships I had were absolutely, always consensual.”

While the investigation proceeds, YouTube has suspended Brand from making money on the video streaming site, his pub “Crown Inn” located in Pishill, Britain, has been temporarily shut down and BBC has formally launched a review into the comedian’s time at the network.