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.



#1 Bob Marley

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.

Image credits: Eddie Mallin

#2 Brad Pitt

In 2022, Angelina Jolie accused her ex-husband of assaulting her and their children on a private flight in 2016.

According to court documents, the actor and producer grabbed Angelina’s head and pushed her into a wall. He allegedly choked one of their children and struck another when they tried to defend their mother.

A representative for Pitt denied Angelina’s allegations, labeling them as “another rehash that only harms the family.”

“It was agreed by all parties that criminal charges in this case would not be pursued due to several factors,” a report made by FBI investigators and federal prosecutors concluded.

Image credits: Toglenn

#3 Cristiano Ronaldo

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.

Image credits: Анна Нэсси

#4 Michael Jackson

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.

Image credits: Constru-centro

#5 Prince

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, another of Prince’s exes, claimed the pop star threatened to have her “killed” after they broke up because “no one else could have [her].”

Image credits: Allen Beaulieu

#6 Mike Tyson

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.”

Image credits: Super Festivals

#7 Mark Wahlberg

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.

Image credits: Paul Natkin/Getty Image

#8 Katy Perry

The pop singer has been accused of sexual misconduct several times.

In 2018, model Josh Kloss, who appeared in the 2010 music video for Teenage Dream, alleged that the singer removed his underwear to reveal his genitals at a party and touched him without his consent.

Georgian TV host Tina Kandelaki has also accused Perry of sexual harassment, claiming that she inappropriately touched her while intoxicated at an industry party.

The star responded by saying: “I think we live in a world where anyone can say anything. I don’t want to say ‘guilty until proven innocent,’ but there’s no checks and balances: a headline just flies, right?”

Image credits: katyperry

#9 Kobe Bryant

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.

Image credits: Keith Allison

#10 John Lennon

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.

Image credits: Vinnie Zuffante/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

#11 Jon Hamm

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.”

Image credits: Dominick D

#12 Horatio Sanz

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 but settled with the woman in 2022.

Image credits: Behind The Velvet Rope TV

#13 Jack Nicholson

The award-winning actor faced several accusations of sexual assault during the 1990s.

One of the women who accused him was 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.

Image credits: jacknicholson

#14 Sean Penn

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.

Image credits: Vinnie Zuffante/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

#15 Boy George

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” and was sentenced to 15 months in jail in 2009.

Image credits: Paul Carless

#16 Coco Chanel

The famed Parisian designer was accused of being a Nazi informant during WW2 by her friend Vera Bate, a German agent.

While the French government arrested Chanel for having ties with the Nazi intelligence organization Abwehr, she was later released due to a lack of evidence.

Some have suggested that her friendship with Winston Churchill played a critical part in her being released from prison.

In his biography Sleeping With the Enemy, journalist Hal Vaugh narrates how Chanel entered the intelligence group via her boyfriend, Baron Hans Gunther von Dincklage, a Gestapo spy and asset to the Abwehr.

Image credits: Los Angeles Times

#17 Rick James

In 1991, Rick James and his wife, Tanya Anne Hijazi, were jailed on suspicion of imprisoning and torturing a 24-year-old woman for three days at the singer-songwriter’s Mulholland Drive home.

 

A year later, James served over 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.

Image credits: Leach Entertainment Features

#18 Michael Fassbender

Fassbender’s former girlfriend Sunawin “Leasi” Andrews filed a restraining order against him in 2010 after accusing the X Men star of domestic abuse.

Andrews claimed that the injuries caused by Fassbender sent her to the hospital, which is why she sought compensation to pay for the associated medical bills.

Though the woman withdrew her petition when the restraining order expired, the accusations resurfaced during the #MeToo movement.

Legal documents mention an incident in which Fassbender dragged Andrew with his car while the vehicle was moving. “I went to the hospital and had a twisted left ankle, blown out left knee cap, and a burst ovarian cyst,” the filing read.

When DailyBeast asked the Inglorious Basterds actor to comment on the episode, he told the journalist, “You’ve got the paperwork. What more is there to say?”

Image credits: Gage Skidmore

#19 Pete Townshend

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.

Townshend argued that 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.”

Image credits: Ross Belot

#20 Vince Neil

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 star paid $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.”

Image credits: thevinceneil

#21 James Franco

The Los Angeles Times reported that five women had accused the Disaster Artist actor of sexually exploitative behavior. The events took place in 2018 when Franco was working as their acting teacher or mentor.

A former student said that he “would always make everybody think there were possible roles on the table if we were to perform sexual acts.” 

The following year, two former students filed a lawsuit against Franco for subjecting them to “sexually exploitative auditions and film shoots.” The lawsuit was settled in 2021, and it was disclosed that the actor agreed to pay $2.2 million as settlement.

Image credits: Angela George