Does the Academy Deliberately Award Domestic Abusers?

5. Terrance Howard

When Terrance Howard was nominated for an Oscar for his 2006 performance in Hustle & Flow, the nomination came years after he was accused of assaulting many women in his life. Howard’s list of domestic abuse allegations is lengthy, and it all started in 2001 when he allegedly punched his first wife, Lori McCommas. Howard even went as far as to blame McCommas for the incident by stating, “She was talking to me real strong, and I lost my mind and slapped her in front of the kids.”

He married his second wife, Michelle Ghent, on January 20, 2010, and the abuse allegedly started a week after they tied the knot. Ghent accused him of punching her in the face, beating her on a balcony in South Africa, threatening her with a butcher knife, and strangling her in their Costa Rica rental house. When asked about the Costa Rica incident Howard said, “She was trying to Mace me, and you can’t see anything so all you can do is try to bat somebody away, and I think that something caught her. But I wasn’t trying to hit her.”

In 2012, his mistress, May Seng Yang, claimed Howard attacked her at his Pennsylvania home while his current girlfriend, Erica Jiles, looked on. Yang told police Howard had choked her, threw her to the ground and punched her in the eye after she accused him of giving her herpes.