What does it say about Missourians that despite all we know about Eric Greitens, he’s at least until now been the front-runner in this year’s U.S. Senate race?
The same supporters who wrote off the allegations of sexual coercion and abuse against our former governor four years ago — hey, he was never convicted of anything — will probably discount the new accusations from the mother of his children, too.
But what interests me more than the political ramifications of what Sheena Greitens alleges is this question: If even a woman as successful as the former Missouri first lady feared leaving her husband, then why do we continue to pretend that any woman, including those with far fewer resources, could just walk away from an abusive relationship if she really wanted to?
An associate public affairs professor at the University of Texas at Austin, the former Sheena Chestnut is the daughter of two doctors from Washington state. A Stanford grad who was a Marshall Scholar at Oxford, she earned a Ph.D. in government from Harvard. As first lady, she advocated for adoption and foster care and researched a book on refugees from North Korea.
Yet as we know, or ought to by now, status and professional accomplishments offer no immunity from violence. According to her affidavit, Eric Greitens threatened to kill himself “unless I provided specific public political support” after the allegations against him became public.
He said he would “have me arrested for kidnapping and child abuse” she said, if she took their children to her parents’ house. And he tried to convince her that “because of his authority as a former governor who had supported law enforcement, the police would support him and not believe me.” He also threatened to use his influence to get her job offer from UT rescinded, his ex-wife says.
After Greitens resigned in ignominy as governor of our state four years ago, we ran an editorial thanking his then-wife for her always dignified service to Missouri at an extraordinarily difficult time in her life. On Monday, the world learned just how difficult.
The AP first reported that in a March 15 affidavit filed Monday in Sheena Greitens’ ongoing custody battle, she said Eric Greitens was physically abusive to her and to their children as they were separating. He made her fear for their safety, she said, and threatened to use his political contacts to destroy her reputation.
“Prior to our divorce, during an argument in late April 2018,” she wrote, “Eric knocked me down and confiscated my cellphone, wallet and keys so that I was unable to call for help or extricate myself and our children from our home. I became afraid for my safety and that of our children at our home.”
His “behavior included physical violence toward our children, such as cuffing our then-3-year-old son across the face at the dinner table in front of me and yanking him around by his hair.” Greitens called her a “lying bitch,” among other things, she said.
If all of this sounds familiar, maybe that’s because many of these assertions mirror those made by the woman who accused Greitens of blindfolding and coercing her sexually in his basement. That woman, his former hairdresser, also alleged that he took away her keys and phone so she couldn’t get away. She, too, accused him of throwing her to the floor. “Out of nowhere,” she testified, he “smacked me and grabbed me and shoved me down on the ground.”
He called her a whore, she said, and restrained her in his basement after taking away her clothes.
At the time, Republicans and Democrats in the Missouri House who heard her sworn testimony agreed on this point: They believed her. Greitens denied the violence, but also claimed everything that happened had been consensual. He refused to testify before the committee and resigned.
But unfortunately, he did not stay gone. And worse, Missouri voters didn’t seem to want him to.
Our board has said since the day Greitens launched his senatorial bid that he’s not fit to serve our state again in any elected office. We asked why he would be willing to put his family through any more than he already had: “He and his wife are now divorced, but must she and their children spend the next two years reliving this nightmare? Is Greitens so hungry for approval that he would subject them to a dissection of his behavior?”
Yes and yes, apparently.
And just to make sure that not even one of the classic defenses of intimate partner violence was left on the bench in his statement denying his former wife’s allegations, Greitens said she is “deranged,” is suffering from mental illness and is launching “malicious attacks that are clearly politically motivated.” So she’s motivated in part by partisanship?
One of you is believable, Eric, and it’s not you.
“Co-parenting can oftentimes be challenging,” his statement piously noted, “but both parents should always have their children’s best interests at heart. Sadly, only Eric has done what is necessary to create a stable and healthy environment for his children.” Because nothing says “stable and healthy” like blindfolding a woman, taping her to an exercise machine and getting run out of Jeff City?
Missourians have known for years who Eric Greitens is and is not. And voters should never even have entertained taking him back.
