Wherever you may stand on the “cancel culture” debate, there’s no denying that numerous high-profile figures have gotten away with terrible crimes that they likely wouldn’t have escaped in different circumstances.The following celebrities either spent little time in jail, were acquitted of their charges, or settled with their victims for substantial sums of money.Their stories are little known, and shed light on how far a powerful surname or a valuable connection can get you.This post may includeaffiliate links.
Wherever you may stand on the “cancel culture” debate, there’s no denying that numerous high-profile figures have gotten away with terrible crimes that they likely wouldn’t have escaped in different circumstances.
The following celebrities either spent little time in jail, were acquitted of their charges, or settled with their victims for substantial sums of money.
Their stories are little known, and shed light on how far a powerful surname or a valuable connection can get you.
This post may includeaffiliate links.
Sinead O’Connor called Prince a “violent abuser of women.”In her memoir, Rememberings, Sineadsharesan 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,claimedthe 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 suitaccusingthe 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 ofracially motivated crimesduring 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 Mayorgaaccusedthe 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,” hetoldPlayboy 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 starwas chargedwith 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 1991, the Mad Men alumwas chargedwith 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 Hammaddressed his behaviorin 2018, he referred to the events as a “bummer” and downplayed them as “sensationalized.”
In 1988, Pennwas accusedof 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.
In 1991, Rick James and his wife, Tanya Anne Hijazi,were jailedon suspicion of imprisoning and torturing a 24-year-old woman for three days at the singer-songwriter’s Mulholland Drive home.A year later, Jamesservedover two years in prison after he and his partner kidnapped and assaulted music executive Mary Sauger.Sauger said that she was supposed to encounter James and Hijazi for a business meeting but was held against her will and tortured for 20 hours.
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The lead singer of Motley Crue was convicted of vehicular manslaughter and drunk driving after hitting a car while under the influence.In 1985, Neil veered his car into traffic, causing the death of his own passenger, Hanoi Rocks drummer Nicholas Dingley, and wounding other drivers around him.The heavy metal starpaid$2.6 million to the victims and their families. He said that he “deserved to go to prison,” but the “power of cash” stopped that fate, which he believes is “f***ed up.”
The award-winning actor faced several accusations of sexual assault during the 1990s.One of the women whoaccused himwas sex worker Catherine Sheehan, who alleged that Nicholson had assaulted her after refusing to pay her fee.In the 2000s, she said that the assault impacted her mental health and that the injuries from the accident were “actually killing her.” These claims came after Sheehan settled with the actor for $39,000.
In 2007, Norwegian model and escort Audun Carlsen accused Boy George of handcuffing him to the wall and beating him with a chain in a paranoid episode.The Karma Chameleon singer had allegedly taken drugs before accusing Carlsen of hacking into his computer.Though he denied the assault, the singer admitted to handcuffing Carlsen to interrogate him about his computer.The former Culture Club frontman pleaded “not guilty” andwas sentencedto 15 months in jail in 2009.
An unknown woman from Pennsylvania accused the SNL alum of sexually assaulting her during an SNL afterparty when she was underage.She alleges that Sanz groomed her online and asked for explicit photos in the early 2000s when she was only 15 years old and he was 31. He invited her to a taping of the show and then to several afterparties, where he touched her inappropriately and allowed her to drink alcohol.The comedian and NBC denied the allegations butsettledwith the woman in 2022.
The Who’s guitarist was placed on a sex offender registry for five years after it was discovered that his credit card had been used to pay for child sex images online.Townshendarguedthat the content was part of a research campaign against child abuse, and he was looking to prove an illegal financial trail between Russian orphanages and British banks.After a four-month investigation, the police concluded that the musician was not in possession of any downloaded child pornography photos “but had accessed a site containing such images in 1999.”
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