They then met again in the early hours of the morning of July 1, when she arrived at his house after he had pleaded with her to come over.
“When I walked in — the door was unlocked and I just walked in,” Nadia says. “He comes running out of the bedroom naked. And I’m kind of taken aback. I’ve got a bag on my shoulder, a little dress and a coat on top.”
Nadia says Brand took her to a wall and kissed her and made a comment, something along the lines of: “I’ll keep you safe.” He then told her that “a friend” was already in the bedroom and that he wanted her to join them, according to Nadia.
“I’m like, no, that’s not happening, I don’t care, that’s not happening, we’re not doing that,” she says. “I tried to get away from him and I slipped away from the wall. And then I went to another wall that had a painting on it. A huge painting. And my bag got actually stuck underneath that, and it’s still on my arm. And at this point he’s grabbing at my underwear, pulling it to the side.”
Nadia alleges that she told Brand to get off her and that she wanted to leave, but he carried on. “I’m stuck underneath the painting and he’s pushing up against me,” she says. “He’s a lot taller than me. And he has that glazed look in his eye again. And I can’t move. And I told him, ‘Get off, get off.’” Nadia claims that Brand pushed her up against the wall and raped her, without a condom.
Brand finally finished and she says she pushed him away.
“And then he blocks the door that I’ve come into because he doesn’t want me going,” Nadia says. “He’s like, ‘Are you OK?’ I’m like, ‘No I’m not OK, you need to get away from me.’ And he’s like, ‘Let’s calm down.’”
Nadia says that Brand eventually stepped away from the door he had been blocking after Nadia told him she wanted to use the bathroom.
“I ran out and I jumped in my car — thank God I didn’t park in his driveway — and booked it out of there,” she says. “That was it. I sat on the road a little bit longer. I was in a daze.”
At 3.29am, Brand sent Nadia a text message. He wrote: “I’m sorry. That was crazy and selfish. I hope you can forgive me, I know that you’re a lovely person. X.” He tried phoning her at 3.51am, but the call went unanswered.
Nadia says she was up most of the night. She did not reply to Brand’s text until 10.59am. She wrote that he had taken advantage of her and “scared the **** out of me”. She wrote in her text to Brand: “Do you know how scary [you are] when that glaze look comes over. When a girl say NO it means no. Do I have to go and get myself tested?”
Brand replied that he was “very sorry” and wrote: “You don’t need to get tested. I will make this up to you somehow with live [sic] and kindness. Not my original idea which was more sex. You’ve been lovely to me and I’m embarrassed by my behaviour. Sorry. X.”
The US phone number that Brand used to send the messages has been verified by multiple sources.
Nadia, meanwhile, had told a close friend what had happened and she took her to the Rape Treatment Center (RTC) at UCLA Santa Monica Medical Center that same day.
She has shared a full copy of her treatment records, which state that she provided her underwear and other samples as evidence, which were frozen. An officer from the Los Angeles Police Department was alerted by the centre, according to the notes, but she chose not to make a police report — saying to the centre she “didn’t think my words would mean anything up against his”. The notes also state that “she was worried that, if her assailant’s name is somehow released, then her name will be dragged through the dirt”.
