Oksana Grigorieva claims her ex-boyfriend Mel Gibson punched her twice in the face in January 2010, breaking her nose, knocking out some of her teeth and giving her a concussion. The Moscow-born singer, who is of Ukrainian descent, has filed a domestic violence restraining order against the actor-producer-director, best known for his starring turns as a deranged cop in the Lethal Weapon series.
Gibson’s attorney has denied the charges, claiming that their client’s former mistress is disgruntled over a custody agreement.
Grigorieva announced that she took legal action against Gibson due to his failure to get professional help to control his violent impulses and was a threat to their daughter.
Restraining Order
According to Oksana Grigorieva, the rumors that she was served a restraining order by her ex-lover are untrue. Rather, it was she who served the restraining order on him.
“There is no restraining order against me, but my lawyers went to court and a judge granted a restraining order against him,” she told the English newspaper The Daily Mail in an interview published on Sunday, June 27th.
She charged that Mel Gibson’s behavior towards her and her child amounted to “cruelty” and claimed he was not paying child support.
Grigorieva said she is in bad financial straits. “He is not paying me a penny. Nothing,” she told the newspaper. “I am having to live on credit cards and borrowed money. It is not a good situation.”
She obtained her restraining order on Monday, June 21st, and Gibson went to court on Wednesday, the 23rd, to get the order modified so he could see his daughter. The order was sealed the following day at Superior Court in Los Angeles.
Grigorieva lives with Gibson’s daughter Lucia in upper-middle-class Sherman Oaks. The child was born in October 2009.
Gibson Responds
Oksana Grigorieva had alleged that Mel Gibson was “extremely violent” in her application for a restraining order.
Gibson’s attorney, Stephen Kolodny, told the celebrity Web site TMZ that Grigorieva’s claim that his client was violent were false. He points to the fact that the judge modified her restraining order to allow unrestricted, overnight access to their child Lucia as proof that the judge did not buy the argument that he was dangerous.
The custody agreement between the two gives both 50-50 custody over their daughter, and Kolodny says that Grigorieva is trying to renege on the agreement and limit Gibson’s access to Lucia.
Gibson sought his own restraining order only to prevent his former mistress from going public with any charges.
“Making sensational allegations is not the way to resolve this,” Kolodny told TMZ. The attorney said the actor wants a resolution to their conflict worked out in court, not in the press.
Friends of Gibson told TMZ that Grigorieva continued to travel with Gibson after the alleged January incident. Other sources friendly to Gibson have claimed that the January incident did get out of hand, but that the actor was interceding to stop Grigorieva from shaking the baby.
The relationship between the two, legally and in all other ways, has decayed into a “He said, she said” scenario being played out in the world’s tabloids. Gibson had hoped their parting would be amicable.
Reputation
Mel Gibson won a Best Director Oscar directing Braveheart in the mid-1990s, but he has seen his acting career slip into oblivion in the 21st Century. Once one of the top stars in the world who commanded a $25 million per picture salary, he has done very little acting over the past decade. He did direct two epic motion pictures, the controversial The Passion of the Christ (a block buster at the box office that made Gibson very wealthy) and the less-successful Apocalypto.
Oksana Grigorieva claims she was silent about Gibson’s attack on her to protect his reputation. That reputation already is in tatters, due to controversial statements issued to the press over his career. He also is seen as odd duck due to his allegiance to an ultra-conservative Roman Catholic break-away movement that his father, who is an anti-Semite, belongs to.
Gibson himself was accused of anti-Semitism for bringing The Passion of the Christ to the screen. Some Jews alleged that the motion picture resurrected the blood libel against the Jews that they, as a people, committed deicide by engineering the murder of Jesus Christ.
Then, there was his drunk driving arrest when he began raving like a lunatic after being pulled over. Gibson made anti-Semitic comments to the Los Angeles County Deputy Sheriff who had stopped him. Gibson ranted to the patrolman, who was Jewish, that the Jewish people were responsible for all the world’s wars.
He immediately apologized for his outburst, but he engendered a public perception that he was as out of control as his character Martin Riggs in the Lethal Weapon series, a loose-cannon police sergeant with mental health issues.
Sources:
Fox News,Mel Gibson’s Lawyer: Oksana Made Abuse Story Up
New York Post, ,Mel Gibson’s Wife: $400 Million Woman
TMZ, Mel Gibson — I’m Worth What?; Oksana Alleges Violence Against Mel GibsonMel Gibson’s Baby Mama: He Beat Me Bad; Mel Gibson’s Lawyer: Oksana Full of Lies, Deceit
Us Magazine, Mel Gibson’s Ex: “What He Is Doing Is Cruelty”
