21 A-List Celebrities Who Were Accused Of Violent Crimes

Sinead O’Connor called Prince a “violent abuser of women.”

In her memoir, Rememberings, Sinead shares an episode in which she escaped his house in the middle of the night after the singer physically assaulted her. As she described, Prince hit her with a hard object enclosed in a pillowcase after suggesting a pillow fight.

Charlene Friend, one of Prince's exes, claimed the musician threatened to have her “killed” after they broke up because “no one else could have [her].”

The former heavyweight boxer was convicted of raping 18-year-old beauty pageant contestant Desiree Washington in 1992 and served three years in prison.

That year, another woman filed suit accusing the boxing champion of sexually abusing her after the two met at a nightclub in Albany, New York, in the early 1990s.

She alleges that Tyson raped her in a limousine and caused her “physical, psychological and emotional injury.” 

“I told him ‘no’ several times and asked him to stop, but he continued to attack me,” the woman described. “He then pulled my pants off and violently raped me.”

Wahlberg was involved in a series of racially motivated crimes during the 1980s. 

In 1986, the actor and three of his friends were charged for chasing three black children while throwing rocks at them and yelling: “Kill the n*****!”

The following day, he attacked a group of primarily black nine or ten-year-old kids and gathered other white men to throw rocks at them at the beach.

Two years later, in 1988, Wahlberg attacked two Vietnamese men while high on PCP, calling one of them a “Vietnam f*** s***, and knocking him unconscious with a wooden stick.

The actor was found guilty of violating the civil rights of his victims in the first case and was charged with attempted murder and served 45 days of his two-year sentence for the latter crime.

“I am deeply sorry for the actions that I took on the night of April 8, 1988, as well as for any lasting damage that I may have caused the victims,” Wahlberg wrote in a 2014 pardon application.

In 2009, a woman named Kathryn Mayorga accused the Portuguese football star of raping her in a Las Vegas hotel room. The woman said she was later paid $375,000 in “hush money” as part of an NDA.

Mayorga then claimed she had been coerced into accepting the payment and asked for the legal document to be voided.

According to Ronaldo, the sexual encounter was consensual.

The civil lawsuit was dismissed after Mayorga’s lawyer reached out to the source of leaked confidential communications from Ronaldo’s attorneys to ask for copies.

Lennon himself admitted to using physical violence against women on several occasions.

"All that 'I used to be cruel to my woman, I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved' was me. I used to be cruel to my woman, and physically — any woman. I was a hitter. I couldn't express myself, and I hit. I fought men, and I hit women," he told Playboy Magazine in 1980.
"That is why I am always on about peace, you see. It is the most violent people who go for love and peace. Everything's the opposite. But I sincerely believe in love and peace.”

His first wife, Cynthia, wrote in her book that the British singer slapped her in the face in a fit of jealousy.

In 2003, the late basketball star was charged with sexually assaulting a 19-year-old employee of a lodge spa he was staying at in Edwards, Colorado.

The victim refused to testify following pressure from Bryant’s team, and the case was dismissed.

Later on, the sportsman issued an apology in which he acknowledged the woman never gave her consent. 

“After months of reviewing discovery, listening to her attorney, and even her testimony in person, I now understand how she feels that she did not consent to this encounter.”

He settled with the woman for an undisclosed sum in a civil suit.

In her book No Woman, No Cry: My Life With Bob Marley, Rita Marley wrote that the reggae singer sometimes forced himself on her to have sex without her consent.

In an interview with The Voice, Marley’s ex-wife described the incident as “rape.” However, she later accused British tabloids of blowing the story out of proportion.

“The way the guy put it in the newspaper, he made it look like Bob had me by the neck. When you think about it, you ask yourself whether a husband can actually rape his wife,” she said.

In 1991, the Mad Men alum was charged with assault after participating in a violent group attack at the University of Texas-Austin.

The victim, a Sigma Nu pledge named Mark Allen Sanders, claims that Hamm and six other fraternity men beat him, shoved his face in the dirt, lit his pants on fire, and led him around “with the claw of a hammer beneath his genitals.”
As a result of the attacks, Sanders fractured his spine and nearly lost a kidney.

The lawsuit was ultimately dropped.

When Hamm addressed his behavior in 2018, he referred to the events as a “bummer” and downplayed them as “sensationalized.”

In 1988, Penn was accused of tying his then-wife Madonna to a chair for nine hours in their Malibu home until the pop singer was able to escape and run to a police station.

“When Madonna staggered into the station, she was distraught, crying, with makeup smeared all over her face. I hardly recognized her…she had obviously been struck,” Lieutenant Bill McSweeney recalled.

The I Am Sam actor was charged with inflicting “corporal injury and traumatic conditions” but the singer dropped the complaints. She did, however, divorce Penn the following year.

Jackson was never convicted of child sexual abuse despite facing several accusations of this crime throughout his career.

The investigations began in 1993 and continued in 2003, with the entertainer being acquitted of all criminal charges on both occasions.

Later on, in the 2010s, two men alleged that they had been molested multiple times by Jackson and filed lawsuits against his estate and companies. They later told their stories on the HBO two-part documentary Leaving Neverland.

A judge dismissed the first man’s suit because he waited too long to file his claim. Two years later, the same judge dismissed the second man’s case because the corporations couldn’t be liable for Jackson’s actions.