“Actor and director Mel Gibson has pleaded no contest to a “misdemeanour” battery charge after a fight with then-girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva in 2010. Gibson, 55, was placed on probation for 36 months and ordered to attend a year of domestic violence counselling. The complaint accuses Gibson of “wilfully and unlawfully” using force and violence against Ms Grigorieva. A misdemeanour charge is generally considered a lesser criminal act than a felony charge in the US”. – BBC News

Photo: Oksana Grigorieva arrives at the premiere Of Warner Bros. “The Edge Of Darkness” held at Grauman's Chinese Theatre on January 26, 2010 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

Israelis protest against gender segregation and violence towards women by ultra Orthodox Jewish extremists on December 27, 2011 in Beit Shemesh, Israel. The protest comes following a series of incidents that have seen women being forced to sit at the back of segregated buses, being forced to walk only on certain sides of the road and the harrassment of schoolgirls due to their choice of attire. (Photo by Uriel Sinai/Getty Images)

Kashmiri woman takes part in a physical test of a recruitment rally for the Special Police Officers (SPO) in Jammu and Kashmir Police, in Srinagar on December 6, 2019. As many as 23,000 people have applied for posts in the Special Police Officers (SPO) in Jammu and Kashmir Police and 100 positions will filled in the current phase of recruitment, local authorities said. (Photo by Tauseef Mustafa/AFP Photo)

A woman poses for photographs while Indonesian police officers burn seized various drugs during a press conference at the regional police headquarters in Banda Aceh on June 12, 2025. (Photo by Chaideer Mahyuddin/AFP Photo)

A dog trainer works with a previously abandoned dog at a police centre in Saltillo, Mexico March 4, 2016. Stray dogs are adopted by the police from a municipal anti-rabies centre and then trained to help the police patrol the streets, and search for drugs, explosives and weapons. (Photo by Daniel Becerril/Reuters)

A woman with her daughter walks past a barricade that was set up by members of the police as they protest bad police governance, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Thursday, January 26, 2023. (Photo by Joseph Odelyn/AP Photo)

A demonstrator confronts a police officer outside the 18th District Police station during a rally after the death of Walter Wallace Jr., a Black man who was shot by police in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S., October 27, 2020. (Photo by Bastiaan Slabbers/Reuters)

Police officers introduce a litter of golden retriever puppies to be trained as police dogs during a ceremony at the National Police Academy in La Paz, Bolivia, Monday, August 16, 2021, the date of the feast day for Saint Roch, considered the patron saint of dogs, among other things. (Photo by Juan Karita/AP Photo)