RUSSELL BRAND ROCKED BY RAPE SCANDAL!

Katy Perry's ex branded vile, degenerate predator

MOVIE oddball Russell Brand is in the hot seat with police following a horrific report accusing him of raping, abusing and bullying gals - including an underage 16-year-old beauty who claims American Idol judge Katy Perry's ex-hubby groomed her as his sex toy.

The day after an explosive British TV documentary, Russell Brand: In Plain Sight, presented four women claiming the 48-year-old Forgetting Sarah Marshall actor had fiendishly preyed on them around a decade ago, London's Metropolitan Police announced they're investigating an earlier 2003 incident in trendy Soho!

Brand denies any "criminal" wrongdoing, but Scotland Yard is on his case and is asking "anyone who believes they may have been a victim of a sexual offense, no matter how long ago it was, to contact us."

The documentary's devastating revelations detailing Brand's alleged sex attacks from 2006 to 2013 were new to viewers, but sources claim his bad behavior was not a secret to those who've worked with him.

Insiders insist the Get Him to the Greek actor was so notorious for his dirty deeds more than a decade ago, plans were made to keep female workers away from him!

Kristen Bell, who played his lover in 2008's Forgetting Sarah Marshall, says she threatened him about his tacky ways, saying: "I made it really clear from the beginning that I would sock him in the balls if he tried anything. So he was intimidated."