Chris Brown’s behavior is once again being called into question in a new documentary.Investigation Discovery’s Chris Brown: A History of Violence explores allegations made against the “Run It!” singer by Rihanna, Karrueche Tran and others. Multiple women come forward in the doc to detail allegations against the R&B singer, including one Jane Doe who claims Brown drugged and raped her on Sean “Diddy” Combs’s yacht in 2020.Brown’s attorneys deny Doe’s claim and call all the allegations in the documentary “malicious and false.”
Timed with the network’s “No Excuse for Abuse” campaign for Domestic Violence Awareness Month, the documentary looks at Brown’s rise in the music world — being touted as the next Michael Jackson — and how it came crashing down after he physically assaulted Rihanna in 2009.
TMZ obtained leaked police photos of Rihanna’s graphic injuries. In a police report, she said Brown repeatedly punched her with his fist, choked her until she was nearly unconscious and threatened to “kill” her. He pleaded guilty to felony assault and was given five years probation and community service
Brown and Rihanna later reunited — brought back together by Combs, who invited them both to his Miami home to work things out — and split (twice) after that. Domestic violence experts in the doc explained how when people grow up witnessing abuse, as Brown and Rihanna both said they did, it makes it harder to end patterns of abuse.The documentary details how Brown’s abuse allegedly continued. Tran, his girlfriend off and on from 2010 to 2015, was granted a five-year restraining order against him. The model claimed he punched her in the stomach twice, pushed her down a flight of stairs, threatened to kill her and threatened her friends.
Brown also smashed his mother’s car windows with a rock while in rehab for anger management, and broke a window on the set of Good Morning America. He fought with Drake and Frank Ocean. His former manager, Michael Guirguis, known as Mike G, sued him for assault, false imprisonment and battery. Brown was found guilty of breaking a man’s nose without provocation. Over the summer, he was sued for allegedly brutally beating several men, with the help of his entourage, at one of his concerts in Texas.
Freddy Sayegh, a criminal defense and entertainment attorney, said in the doc, “I looked at most of his criminal history, and he’s got a 15-year history of nearly every year of his life being involved in reported violence of some sort.”
The doc explores how, despite this long list of serious claims, Brown — who has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder, court records showed — has maintained his superstar status. One year after Rihanna’s assault, BET tapped Brown for a big Michael Jackson tribute. As he kicked off his “11:11 Tour” in June of this year, he joked to the sold-out crowd about attempts to have him “blackballed.” Brown remains popular with fans and is the second-most followed male artist on Instagram.
