Mike Fleiss, creator of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, has been accused of attacking his wife Laura Fleiss, who is currently pregnant. The alleged attack by The Bachelorette producer took place at their home according to court documents.
Fleiss, 55 years old, married Laura, 31 years old, on April 2014 and the ceremony was officiated by The Bachelor host Chris Harrison. Laura won the Miss America crown in 2012. The couple has one son together, Ben, who was born in May 2015. This isn’t the first run-in with the law for Fleiss, as he was charged with harassing Baywatch star David Charvet and his wife, Brooke Burke, in 2014.
The court documents state that Laura Fleiss filed for an emergency domestic violence restraining order against her husband. This was done after he allegedly attacked her in their Hawaiian home on July 4 and “demanded” she have an abortion. Laura is currently pregnant with the couple’s second child. In the court documents, which were obtained by Variety, Laura Fleiss states, “While we were at our house in Kauai, Mike demanded that I get an abortion. Our son Ben was in the house, seated in another room nearby. Mike told me, ‘If you have an abortion, then we can just go back to the way we were.’”
In Laura’s statement, she alleges that Mike Fleiss “grabbed (her) body… forcibly pinned (her) up against the wall.” This took place right before he started yelling at her and threatening to “punch her in the face.” The altercation continued later on, as Mike allegedly took Laura’s cellphone and she was pleading for him to return it to her while leaning up against the side of his truck. Fleiss allegedly “forcefully shoved” Laura during this time. This anger from Mike Fleiss stems from the fact that Laura is pregnant with their second child, as Laura states he had “become enraged” at the fact she was pregnant and threatened to “cut her off financially.”
Chris Harrison was asked to speak about the situation and while on The Ringer’s Bachelor Party podcast, he said that “it is a very personal, private matter between he (Fleiss), his wife, his kids, his family.” For now, divorce papers have been filed for Mike and Laura and it looks like things could get nasty as this plays out publicly.
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Sources: Variety, Mike Fleiss