Rihanna and Chris: No Excuse for Abuse

As a first-time offender with a powerhouse legal team, Chris Brown was able to reach a plea agreement that spared him a single day of jail time (to put this into perspective, Paris Hilton was sentenced to 45 days in jail for violating her parole). Although we’re glad Brown assumed the responsibility for “committing felony assault by means likely to cause great bodily injury,” and we think he will learn a lot from his pending community labor and domestic violence classes, we question what kind of message this ruling sends to young people today. And so do many of those around us; a People magazine poll reveals 67% of respondents believe that justice was not served.

OK, we get that Brown is a first-time offender, but the nature of his first crime out of the gates — brutally and bloodily abusing a defenseless woman and threatening to kill her — needs to be taken into consideration. Young people today who have been looking up to Chris and Rihanna as talented, up-and-coming artists need to understand that there is simply no excuse for abuse; it doesn’t matter what text message she was looking at or what was said or what she was wearing.

Based upon blog responses we read shortly after the crime, a number of confused young people attempted to justify his actions, offering ignorant comments like “you weren’t there, you don’t know what she did to him.” And Rihanna’s reaction to reconcile with and protect Brown shortly after the event took place didn’t help much. We realize it is ultimately her personal decision and she needs to lead her own life, but Rihanna is obviously not being counseled by the right people.

Our analysis of their birth dates indicates Chris and Rihanna are innately capable of having a “picture-perfect” relationship—the kind that any of us would envy. But nurture wins out over nature in Chris’ case: his parents got divorced when Chris was really young, and his mom’s boyfriend terrorized both him and his mom at a critical point in his life. So unless Chris gets the therapy he desperately needs, he’s setting himself up for domestic violence instead of domestic bliss.