Rihanna After the Chris Brown Attack: Case, Plea, and Aftermath

On the night of February 8, 2009, hours before both were scheduled to perform at the 51st Grammy Awards, Chris Brown assaulted his then-girlfriend Rihanna in a rented Lamborghini in Hancock Park, Los Angeles. The Rihanna and Chris Brown assault left her with visible injuries to her face and body, produced a felony conviction for Brown, and became one of the most closely watched domestic violence cases in modern pop culture. Brown pleaded guilty to felony assault and was sentenced to five years of probation. Rihanna went on to become one of the most commercially successful entertainers and entrepreneurs in the world, while Brown has faced a near-continuous string of violence-related legal cases in the years since.

What Happened That Night

According to a sworn affidavit by LAPD Detective De Shon Andrews, the argument began after Rihanna read a text message on Brown’s phone from a woman with whom he had a prior sexual relationship. Brown pulled the car over and tried to force Rihanna out. When she didn’t leave, he shoved her head against the passenger window, leaving a raised circular contusion on her forehead, then punched her repeatedly in the face while steering with his other hand.¹

The violence escalated from there. Brown told Rihanna he was going to “beat the shit out of” and “kill” her, threw her phone out the window, put her in a headlock, and bit her left ear. When Rihanna turned off the ignition and took the key, Brown choked her until she began to lose consciousness. She tried to gouge his eyes to break free; he bit her fingers. Rihanna eventually pushed him away with her feet and screamed for help. A nearby resident heard her and called 911. Brown walked away from the vehicle.¹

Rihanna’s documented injuries included contusions to her head, a punch wound to her left eye, a mouth full of blood that splattered across her clothing and the car’s interior, and bite marks on her ear and fingers.¹ Brown surrendered to police at the Wilshire station that evening, was booked on suspicion of making criminal threats, and released after posting $50,000 bail. Neither artist performed at the Grammys.²

The Leaked Police Photo

Within two weeks, a graphic police evidence photo of Rihanna’s battered face was published by TMZ. An internal LAPD investigation traced the leak to Officer Rebecca Reyes, who admitted using her personal cell phone to photograph two of the 33 official evidence images because she was “star-struck.” Reyes shared the images with her niece, two other officers, and her personal email. Phone records showed she had 51 calls that day with fellow officer Blanca Lopez, who contacted several media outlets, including TMZ, during the same period.³

Reyes was fired after an administrative hearing found her guilty of multiple counts of misconduct. She challenged the termination in court, but in 2014 Superior Court Judge Luis Lavin upheld her dismissal, ruling that her conduct should “preclude her from being a peace officer” and that the evidence supported a finding that she “participated in the release of the photograph.”⁴⁵

Rihanna later told Diane Sawyer that every time she saw the image, “the whole thing plays back in my head. It’s humiliating to see your face like that.”⁶

The Charges, Plea, and Sentence

Brown was charged with two felonies: assault likely to produce great bodily harm and making criminal threats.⁷ On June 22, 2009, he pleaded guilty in Los Angeles Superior Court to one count of felony assault as part of a plea deal; the criminal threats charge was not pursued in the final plea.⁸

His sentence included five years of supervised probation, 180 days of community labor, a yearlong domestic violence counseling course, and a stay-away order requiring him to remain at least 50 yards from Rihanna, reduced to 10 yards at music industry events.⁹

Probation Problems and Jail Time

Brown was permitted to perform his community labor in his home state of Virginia rather than in Los Angeles. That arrangement became a flashpoint in 2013, when the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office filed a motion alleging “significant discrepancies indicating at best sloppy documentation and at worst fraudulent reporting” in Brown’s service records. Prosecutors said Brown had claimed four hours of trash pickup on a day he was documented boarding a private plane to Cancun, and claimed to be picking up trash in Richmond on a date when photographers captured him at a charity event roughly 100 miles away in Washington, D.C. About a third of his logged hours were performed at a daycare center where his mother had been the director.¹⁰¹¹

Brown’s probation was revoked multiple times. In July 2013, a judge revoked it after Brown was charged with hit-and-run driving and driving without a license following a traffic accident in Los Angeles; those charges were later dropped.¹² In October 2013, he was arrested for felony assault after punching a man outside a Washington, D.C., hotel; the charge was reduced to a misdemeanor, to which he pleaded guilty.¹³ He was ordered into a 90-day in-patient anger management program but was expelled for violating the facility’s rules in March 2014. He spent roughly two and a half months in jail before being released in June 2014.¹⁴

In January 2015, Judge James R. Brandlin revoked Brown’s probation again after he traveled to San Jose without permission and still had roughly 200 hours of community service outstanding, with his probation set to expire days later.¹⁵ He ultimately completed the terms and was released from probation in March 2015.⁹

Rihanna’s Own Account

Rihanna’s first extended public discussion of the assault came in November 2009, in an interview with Diane Sawyer on ABC’s 20/20. She rejected claims that she had provoked the attack, calling them “ignorance,” and said plainly: “At no point did I hit Brown.” She added, “Because even if I hit him first, that makes it okay for him to do that to me?”⁶

She acknowledged going back to Brown about three weeks after the attack, meeting him in Miami, and described it as a “selfish” mistake driven by the fact that she was still in love. “If I feel this depressed, then what is he going through?” she recalled thinking. “The whole world hates him now. His fans, his career. He lost me. I just need to let him know, ‘Don’t do anything stupid.'” She said she ended the relationship shortly after.⁶ Her message to fans: “Don’t react off of love. F love. Come out of the situation and look at it in the third person and for what it really is.”¹⁶

Three years later, in an August 2012 interview with Oprah Winfrey, Rihanna described the aftermath as “a weird, confusing space to be in” and said losing Brown felt like losing a best friend. “Everything I knew switched in a night, and I couldn’t control that,” she said.¹⁷ She told Winfrey she still loved Brown: “I truly love him, so the main thing for me is that he is at peace.” She credited forgiving her own father for childhood issues with helping her find the capacity to forgive Brown.¹⁸

The 2013 Reconciliation and the Backlash

Signs of a renewed relationship appeared through 2012, and by early 2013 Rihanna confirmed to Rolling Stone they were a couple again. She said she prioritized her own happiness: “I decided it was more important for me to be happy. I wasn’t going to let anybody’s opinion get in the way of that. Even if it’s a mistake, it’s my mistake.” She insisted the dynamic had changed: “We don’t have those types of arguments anymore. That’s just not an option.”¹⁹

The reconciliation drew heavy criticism. Domestic violence advocates Leslie Morgan Steiner and L.Y. Marlow expressed concern that Rihanna’s public profile meant her choices would influence young fans, particularly those between 16 and 24 who are most vulnerable to dating violence.²⁰ Rihanna pushed back: “I’m not a role model,” and, “After being tormented for so many years, being angry and dark, I’d rather just live my truth and take the backlash. I can handle it.”¹⁹ The couple split again later that year. In February 2011, at Rihanna’s request, a court had already relaxed the restraining order to allow the two to communicate and appear on stage together; she said at the time she did not want to make things “more difficult for him professionally.”²¹

How the Case Reshaped the Domestic Violence Conversation

The National Organization for Women issued a statement the day after the assault, noting that domestic violence tends to reach the “public spotlight” only when celebrities are involved, and called for a broader media dialogue including advocates, medical professionals, and survivors.²² The Women’s Law Project pointed out that women aged 20 to 24 face the highest risk of nonfatal intimate partner violence and that Rihanna was 20 at the time of the attack.²³

A 2012 study published in the Journal of Health Communication analyzed 48 articles from seven leading U.S. tabloid magazines published in the three months after the assault. While 83 percent of the articles made at least a passing reference to abuse being wrong, only 40 percent framed condemnation of the abuse as the dominant message. In 36 percent of articles, victim-blaming was the dominant frame, with content suggesting Rihanna provoked the attack through jealousy or by failing to leave the relationship. Forty percent contained language that sexualized or romanticized the abuse or the couple’s reconciliation, and 38 percent included myths attributing Brown’s violence to “snapping” or anger control problems.²⁴

The framing had measurable effects. A survey of 200 Boston-area youth found that 46 percent believed Rihanna was responsible for the violence committed against her. The researchers concluded that tabloid media communicated “mixed messages” that minimized the seriousness of partner abuse and called for journalist training to frame such incidents as a preventable public health problem rather than celebrity scandal.²⁴

Rihanna’s Career and Life Since

Rihanna’s first public appearance after the attack came on May 5, 2009, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute Gala.²⁵ Her album Rated R, released in November 2009, sold over 1.1 million copies in the United States. Its follow-up, Loud, released a year later, sold more than 1.76 million.²⁶ She went on to accumulate a string of number-one singles, launch Fenty Beauty, and headline the Super Bowl LVII halftime show in February 2023, a performance she used to announce her second pregnancy and her return to live music after a seven-year album hiatus.²⁷

She began dating A$AP Rocky around the end of 2019. The couple has since welcomed three children: sons RZA (born May 2022) and Riot Rose (born August 2023), and a daughter, Rocki Irish Mayers (born September 2025).²⁸ Rihanna has spoken about approaching the relationship with “a lot of caution” given their long history as friends, saying they both understood “the trouble that we could bring to each other’s lives.”²⁹

She has also directed resources to domestic violence survivors. In April 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, her Clara Lionel Foundation and Jack Dorsey donated $2.1 million to the Mayor’s Fund for Los Angeles to provide shelter, meals, and counseling for domestic violence victims affected by lockdowns. “Victims of domestic violence exist all over the world,” she said, “so this is just the beginning.”³⁰

Chris Brown’s Legal Record Since 2009

The Rihanna case was not the end of Brown’s involvement with the courts. Billboard and People have maintained running timelines of his legal history, which includes:¹³³¹

2011: threw a chair through his dressing room window at Good Morning America after being questioned about the Rihanna case.
2012: involved in a New York nightclub brawl with Drake’s entourage that injured eight people.
2013: altercation with singer Frank Ocean in West Hollywood; felony assault arrest in Washington, D.C., later reduced to a misdemeanor.
2016: arrested after a police standoff at his home when a woman accused him of threatening her with a gun; sued by former manager Mike G over an alleged attack.
2017: Karrueche Tran, his ex-girlfriend, was granted a five-year restraining order after alleging threats of violence.
2018: sued for sexual assault, battery, and false imprisonment related to a 2017 party at his home (settled out of court in 2020).
2019: detained in Paris on a rape allegation (charges later dropped).
2024: sued for $50 million over an alleged unprovoked assault on four concertgoers backstage in Fort Worth, Texas.

In mid-2025, Brown was arrested in Manchester, England, and charged with grievous bodily harm with intent over an alleged 2023 assault on music producer Abraham Diaw at a London nightclub. Prosecutors alleged Brown struck Diaw with a bottle and then “punched and kicked repeatedly.”³² Brown pleaded not guilty at Southwark Crown Court on June 20, 2025, and was released after paying a £5 million security fee. His trial on the GBH charge is scheduled for October 2026. He faces two additional charges in the same case and was due to enter pleas on those counts in July 2025.³³

Separately, in a civil case brought by his former housekeeper Maria Avila, who alleged she was mauled by Brown’s dog at his Los Angeles home in December 2020, a court ordered Brown to pay $13 million in damages. Brown had sought to bar any mention of his 2009 assault of Rihanna during the trial; the court granted that request, ruling the prior conviction was irrelevant to the dog-bite claims.³⁴³⁵

1
NBC Washington. LAPD Detective’s Affidavit Details Alleged Beating by Chris Brown of Rihanna
2
Los Angeles Times. Chris Brown Is Arrested on Suspicion of Making Criminal Threats
3
The Hollywood Reporter. Judge Examines LAPD Officer Tied to Rihanna Photo Leak
4
BBC News. Rihanna Photo Leak Officer Firing Upheld
5
USA Today. Firing of Officer Who Shared Rihanna Photo Upheld
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Rolling Stone. Rihanna Breaks Silence About Chris Brown Incident in Emotional 20/20 Interview
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Courthouse News. Chris Brown Pleads Guilty to Assaulting Rihanna
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The Guardian. Chris Brown Pleads Guilty
9
Los Angeles Times. Chris Brown Off Probation in Rihanna Assault Case
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Los Angeles Times. Chris Brown Returns to Court Over Community Service
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ABC 13. DA Alleges Chris Brown Community Service Records Fraudulent
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CNN. Chris Brown Probation Revoked
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Billboard. Chris Brown Legal Troubles Timeline
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CBC News. Chris Brown Probation Revoked in Rihanna Assault Case
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ABC 7. Chris Brown’s Probation in Rihanna Assault Case Revoked
16
ABC News. Rihanna Speaks on Chris Brown Assault
17
The Guardian. Rihanna Tells Oprah About Chris Brown Assault
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BBC News. Rihanna Tells Oprah She Still Loves Chris Brown
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The New York Times. Rihanna Says She Has Reconciled With Chris Brown
20
NPR. Why Are Rihanna and Chris Brown Back Together
21
BBC News. Chris Brown Restraining Order Relaxed
22
National Organization for Women. Rihanna Assault Calls Attention to Violence Against Women
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Women’s Law Project. Rihanna, Chris Brown, and Domestic Violence
24
National Center for Biotechnology Information. U.S. Tabloid Magazine Coverage of a Celebrity Dating Abuse Incident
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Billboard. Chris Brown and Rihanna Timeline
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Billboard. Rihanna Hits 10 Million in U.S. Album Sales
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Time. Rihanna Super Bowl Halftime Show Highlights
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Billboard. A$AP Rocky and Rihanna Relationship Timeline
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Vogue. Rihanna and A$AP Rocky Relationship Timeline
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The Guardian. Rihanna Donates to Los Angeles Domestic Violence Fund
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People. Chris Brown Arrests and Controversies
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France 24. US Singer Chris Brown Charged With Assault in Britain
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BBC News. Chris Brown Pleads Not Guilty to GBH Charge
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Rolling Stone. Chris Brown Ordered to Pay $13 Million in Dog Bite Case
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Yahoo Entertainment. Chris Brown Wins Bid to Exclude Rihanna Evidence