Christian Slater Arrested on Sex Abuse Charge

Christian Slater was arrested on New York’s Upper East Side early Tuesday morning, CNN reports.

Slater was charged with third-degree sexual abuse after the alleged victim called 911, said New York Police Sgt. Mary Doherty. Local ABC affiliate WABC reports that the woman screamed for help before police responded.

“Basically he grabbed a woman’s behind on the street,” Doherty told CNN, adding that the actor was “intoxicated at the time.”

Video news footage of Slater showed him handcuffed and escorted by authorities into a police car as he declared, “I didn’t do anything.” Arraignment is scheduled for Tuesday morning.

Slater, 35, is currently costarring with Jessica Lange in a Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, playing the restless brother Tom Wingfield.

In February, the actor filed for divorce from his wife of five years, TV producer Ryan Haddon. (They share joint custody of their two kids, Jaden Christopher, 5, and Eliana Sophia, 3.)

The couple’s relationship had been described as volatile. In November 2003, Slater ended up with a gash over his left ear allegedly inflicted by his wife, police said. Witnesses reported that the Pump Up the Volume star stumbled out of an elevator at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, bleeding and saying, “My wife’s f—ing crazy.”

Officers later arrested Haddon, but she was released after Slater said it was all an accident.

In his own brush with the law, in 1997 Slater was charged with three counts of assault and one count of battery after assaulting a girlfriend while intoxicated, CNN reports. He served 59 days of a three-month sentence.