Ex-Athlete Jim Brown Arrested in Rape Case

Jim Brown, the professional football star-turned actor, was arrested together with a woman companion Wednesday on suspicion of rape and sexual battery on a 33-year-old woman at Brown’s Hollywood Hills home.

Police said Brown, 49, and Carol Moses, 22, were arrested just before noon at Brown’s residence on fashionable Sunset Plaza Drive, where the attack was said to have occurred Tuesday night.

The alleged victim, who was not identified, complained to Hollywood Division detectives that Brown and Moses sexually assaulted her after Brown struck her several times, according to police.

A brief police statement said that the woman’s complaint was under investigation and that no formal charges have been filed by the district attorney.

Brown posted $17,500 bail and was released seven hours after the arrest. Moses was freed from Sybil Brand Institute for Women on $1,000 bond. Neither could be reached for comment.

This is not Brown’s first run-in with the law. In 1965, he was accused of beating and sexually molesting two teen-age girls. One later dropped the complaint and the other went to court and lost, then filed a paternity suit which she also lost.

Brown was arrested in June, 1968, and accused of assault with intent to murder when his 22-year-old girlfriend was found semi-conscious under the balcony of his Hollywood apartment.

That charge was dropped when the woman said she had fallen while trying to leave the apartment when the police appeared on the scene. Brown was charged with resisting a deputy and was fined $300.

In 1978, he was jailed for a day and fined $500 for beating up a pro at a Los Angeles golf course in an argument over the placement of a golf ball.

In court, the prosecutor denounced the sentence as “completely inappropriate” because Brown had several previous assault arrests, a record of “past assaultive conduct” and “many brushes with the law.”

Last year, the former Cleveland Browns star talked of returning to professional football to add more distance to his 12,312-yard career rushing record and to keep former Pittsburgh Steeler Franco Harris from breaking the record. The matter became moot when the Chicago Bears’ Walter Payton outran both Brown and Harris.