Bill O’Reilly‘s teenage daughter told a court-appointed forensic examiner that she saw her dad physically abuse her mother.
Gawker obtained partial transcripts from the 2014 custody trial between O’Reilly and his ex-wife, Maureen McPhilmy. The statements by Manhattan psychologist Larry Cohen, who was assigned by Nassau County Supreme Court justice to interview each member of the family, support reports that O’Reilly physically abused his ex-wife.
“In the course of your meetings with the children, did either of them describe any incidents of domestic violence between their parents?” McPhilmy’s attorney, Casey Greenfield, asked Cohen during across-examination recorded last year.
“Yes,” Cohen said before elaborating that O’Reilly’s daughter “said her dad was choking her mom or had his hands around her neck and dragged her down some stairs.”
O’Reilly, the host of Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor,” denied doing so in a statement released to the media on Monday.
“All allegations against me in these circumstances are 100 percent false,” he said. “I am going to respect the court-mandated confidentiality put in place to protect my children and will not comment any further.”
O’Reilly’s daughter, who was 15 at the time of the interview with the psychologist, also told Cohen that the media personality said her mother “is an adulterer,” her stepfather “is not a good person,” and “if she spends her time or more time at the mother’s home, it will ruin her life.”
Moreover, Cohen’s testimony reveals that O’Reilly’s daughter cried after he threw temper tantrums — or what O’Reilly himself described to the psychologist as “going ballistic.”
Cohen states his daughter called the emotional outbursts “scary and demeaning.”
Apparently O’Reilly wasn’t around very much, either.
Greenfield asked Cohen if O’Reilly’s daughter “reported to you that her father was never around to have a relationship with her for 11 years, correct?”
“That’s what she said,” Cohen responded.
“And the word, when I emphasize the word ‘never,’ that was her word, was it not?” Greenfield asked.
“Yes, it was,” Cohen said.