A new Chris Brown documentary highlights abuse allegations against the singer over the years, from the Rihanna attack to Sean 'Diddy' Combs' alleged rape of Jane Doe on his yacht.
Chris Brown's behavior is being questioned once again in a new documentary.
of Investigation Discovery Chris Brown: A History of Violence “Run it!” Explores allegations made against singers by Rihanna, Karrueche Tran and others. Multiple women have come forward in the dock detailing allegations against the R&B singer, including one Jane Doe who claims Brown drugged and raped her on Sean “Diddy” Combs' yacht in 2020.
Brown's attorneys have denied Doe's claims and called all allegations in the documentary “malicious and false.”
what Chris Brown: A History of Violence About?
During the network's “No Excuses for Abuse” campaign for Domestic Violence Awareness Month, the documentary traces Brown's rise in the music world — being touted as the next Michael Jackson — and how it crumbled after he physically assaulted Rihanna in 2009.
TMZ leaked police photos of Rihanna's graphic injuries. In a police report, she said Brown repeatedly punched her with his fists, nearly choked her until she was unconscious, and threatened to “kill” her. He pleaded guilty to felonious assault and was given five years' probation and community service.
Brown and Rihanna later got back together — reunited by Combs, who invited the two of them to work at his Miami home — and then split up (twice). Domestic violence experts at Doct explained how when people grow up witnessing abuse, as Brown and Rihanna both said they did, it makes it harder to end abusive patterns.
The documentary details how Brown's abuse continued. Tran, his girlfriend from 2010 to 2015, had a five-year restraining order against him. The model claims he punched her twice in the stomach, pushed her down the stairs, threatened to kill her and threatened her friends.
While in rehab for anger management, Brown smashed his mother's car window with a rock and broke a window on the set. Good morning America. He battled with Drake and Frank Ocean. Her former manager, Michael Guirguis, known as Mike G, sued her for assault, false imprisonment and battery. Brown was convicted of breaking a man's nose without provocation. In the summer, he was sued for brutally beating several men with the help of his entourage at a concert in Texas.
There have been multiple allegations of sexual harassment.
Freddie Sayegh, a criminal defense and entertainment attorney, told the doc, “I've looked at most of his criminal history, and he's got a 15-year history of being involved in some form of violence almost every year of his life.”
The doc explores how, despite this long list of serious claims, Brown — who suffers from bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder, court records show — has maintained his superstar status. A year after Rihanna's attack, BET tapped Brown for a big Michael Jackson tribute. When he kicked off his “11:11 Tour” in June this year, he joked to a sold-out crowd about trying to “blackball” him. Brown is popular with fans and is the second most followed male artist on Instagram.
The woman who accused Brown of raping her on Combs' yacht appeared in the dock
A Jane Doe appeared in the documentary claiming that Brown drugged and raped her in 2020.
She said she received “death threats” after suing Brown in 2022 – the case was dismissed “without prejudice” – but she was speaking out to “shed light on what really happened”.
Doe said she was an aspiring dancer who had just moved to Los Angeles. On a trip to Miami, a friend invited him to Combs' home on Star Island. That day, he met with Combs — who is currently in prison ahead of his sex-trafficking trial — and Brown.
Doe said Brown was nice and friendly at first. She hoped that hooking up with him would boost her aspiring dance career.
“We talked, and he gave me a drink,” she said. “This is when my memory starts to get a little weird” because her body suddenly feels heavy and she starts to feel tired.
Doe said Brown offered her a yacht trip, but she claims he took her to a bedroom and raped her when she said “no.” She claims he texted her after asking her to take Plan B, the morning-after pill.
Doe said she continued to talk to Brown after the alleged incident, but as she processed it through therapy, she realized it was sexual assault. She sued Brown for $20 million in 2022, but she sent texts and voice texts to Brown after the alleged rape came to light, leading her lawyers to believe she was not providing all the information. They dropped him as a client. Shortly after, a judge dismissed the case, citing a “lack of prosecution”.
An attorney for Doe, Ariel Mitchell-Kidd, appeared on the docket. Mitchell-Kidd said she is representing him again, telling PEOPLE, “I believe what happened to him is 100% true. I feel like I failed him as an attorney because I made him comfortable enough with me in such a short amount of time. Couldn't where she felt 100% comfortable being intimate with me.”
In the documentary, Brown's attorneys said Doe's claims were fabricated. A representative for Brown did not respond to Yahoo's request for comment.
An attorney for Combs declined to comment.
A woman named Lizean Gutierrez also appeared in the documentary and alleged that Brown gave her a black eye in 2016. He claimed he was invited to his hotel room in Las Vegas for a party, where cocaine, pills and marijuana were present and he accepted. A photo that allegedly angered Brown. He sued Brown for assault and they settled the case.
The doc revisits Brown's arrest in Paris in 2019 on charges of aggravated rape and drug violations. The investigation was later dropped, and Brown — who maintained his innocence — sued the woman for defamation.
There was also a 2017 complaint in which a woman claimed she was sexually assaulted at Brown's home, though not by Brown. The accused claimed that her phone was taken, she was drugged and barricaded in a room where she was sexually assaulted. He sued Brown for creating an unsafe environment. The case was settled out of court.
'Look how long it took Kelly to fall'
Doc uses domestic violence experts and statistics to examine Brown's long list of problems. It also points out how there were whispers and allegations about Combs and Kelly for years before they faced serious criminal charges.
“Look how long it took Kelly to fall,” Mitchell-Kidd told the doc. “It wasn't good enough that we videoed him” with a 14-year-old minor in the 2008 child pornography trial. “It wasn't going to do it. It took things like a documentary, [Surviving R. Kelly]. It took the power of the media,” he said. (Kelly was convicted of eight counts of sex trafficking in 2022. A few months later, he was convicted of child sexual abuse in a second federal trial.)
Sunny Hostin, who hosted ID's aftershow after the Brown documentary, talked about how she was surprised people had seemingly forgotten what Brown did to Rihanna.
“The attack on Rihanna happened 15 years ago, but I remember it like yesterday because I remember being in the courtroom,” said View The co-host, who is also an attorney. “But I recently took a friend of her son and other kids to a Chris Brown concert, and when they came back, I was a little shocked and I said to her and the teenagers: Did you know that he really, really hurt Rihanna? They had no idea.”
Chris Brown: A History of Violence Premieres Sunday, October 27 at 9 pm ET on ID.