Monday, September 7, 2015

I'll Remember...1988

 Sean Penn Tied Up and Then Beat the Crap Out of Madonna

Sean Penn is known for two things: acting and taking regular shits on right-wing politics. When the phrase "Hollywood liberal" gets tossed around, Penn is often one of the first examples mentioned. The Iraq War was perhaps his finest moment, as he spared no expense in letting the world know exactly how he felt about young people dying for oil. Over and over again.  So it's easy to think of him as a Bono type, a guy who might be annoying, but only because he cares about the suffering in the world too much.

The Incident:  While married to Madonna, Sean Penn pulled a Chris Brown that out-Chris Browned Chris Brown before there even was a Chris Brown.The two then-rising stars were married in 1985, although nobody really knows why, since the whole thing was a mess from the start. Sure, Penn was a ragehead who dealt with annoying paparazzi by shooting at them, dangling them upside down from balconies, and smacking them with rocks. But that's not what we're talking about here; his knack for doing the same kind of stuff to Madonna, however, very much is.Penn and Madonna would get into violent arguments all the time, and it probably didn't help that Penn drank so much every night that even Andre the Giant would've told him to slow it the fuck down. Finally, in 1988, after Penn flew into a rage over Madonna's supposed affair with Warren Beatty, she called the marriage off. Penn responded by turning his abusive nutcase dial up to 11.In June 1987, Madonna went to the Cedars Sinai hospital for an X-ray after Penn apparently hit her across the head with a baseball bat. At the time, they had been having a heart-to-heart talk about reconciling.

Madonna did not make an official complaint because Penn was about to serve a short jail term for attacking a film extra. He served 33 days of a 60-day sentence in the Los Angeles County jail (23 hours a day in solitary) for violating the probation he'd been given for punching a fan.

It was a decision she would come to regret. In the late afternoon of December 28, 1988, Penn scaled the wall surrounding the Malibu house and found Madonna alone in the master bedroom.

According to a report filed by Madonna with the Malibu sheriff’s office, the two began to quarrel. Penn told her he owned her ‘lock, stock and barrel’. When she told him she was leaving the house, he tried to bind her hands with an electric lamp and cord. Screaming and afraid, Madonna fled from the bedroom. What followed was a nine-hour ordeal which left her deeply shaken.

Penn chased her into the living room, caught her and bound her to a chair with heavy twine. Then he threatened to cut off her hair.
According to the police report, Penn was ‘drinking liquor straight from the bottle’ and the abuse went on for several hours, during which time he smacked and roughed up his victim.

He went out to buy more alcohol, leaving Madonna bound and gagged. Some hours later, he returned and continued his attacks.
Madonna said that he untied her after she agreed to perform a degrading sex act on him. She then fled the house and ran to her car.

Penn ran after her and was banging on the windows of her Thunderbird while she spoke to police on her mobile phone. Fifteen minutes later, she staggered into the sheriff’s office.

Lieut Bill McSweeny said: ‘I hardly recognised her as Madonna. She was weeping, her lip was bleeding and she had obviously been struck.



Why You Forgot About It:  While Penn was arrested, the charges were dropped because Madonna didn't want to generate a media circus, which may have been the one and only time in her life that Madonna actually wanted the press to go away. A couple of decades of political activism and two Oscars later, and the world barely remembers an incident that would turn most people into a pariah. But hey, can we really blame him for the immature mistakes he made when he was only, uh, 25 years old?



1 comment:

  1. Ok you say can't you blame him for the mistakes he made when he was only 25, but we can't forgive Chris Brown over something he did when he was 19...hypocrisy to the fullest.

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