Pop singer Bobby Brown has been charged with battery after a weekend domestic dispute with his wife, singing star and actress Whitney Houston, left her with facial injuries, police said Thursday.
The 34-year-old Brown was accompanied by his wife as he turned himself in to authorities on Wednesday. He was released after receiving a copy of the charge, but is scheduled to appear in court next month, said Fulton County police spokesman Kurtis Young.
Police said they were called to the home of Brown and Houston in the Atlanta suburb of Alpharetta on Sunday evening. Houston, whose hit songs include “I Will Always Love You,” told authorities Brown had struck her with an open right hand.
Houston, 40,”sustained visible injuries to her face, which included a bruise on her left cheek and a cut on her inner upper lip,” Fulton County police said in a written statement.
Brown, an original member of the music group New Edition, was not at home when police arrived.
Lawyers for Brown and Houston were not immediately available to comment, but a local media report said the pair was trying to resolve the matter privately.
Brown, whose hit songs include “My Prerogative” and “Every Little Step,” has a history of run-ins with the law dating back to his youth in Boston. In August, he served jail time in Georgia’s DeKalb County for violating his probation from a 1996 drunken driving conviction.
He was held for 26 days in a Florida jail in 2000 for violating probation in connection with an incident at an Orlando nightclub. That same year, he pleaded no contest to charges of kicking a hotel security guard in West Hollywood, California.
The couple, who married in 1992, have a 10-year-old daughter, Bobbi Kristina.