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Denise Richards‘ claims of abuse against her estranged husband, Aaron Phypers, were backed up by his cousin, Kathleen McAllister, in court on Monday.
As the 54-year-old Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star appeared in court in hopes of making her restraining order against Aaron, 53, permanent, detailing shocking encounters she endured before their breakup, Kathleen was seen virtually, claiming to have witnessed Aaron giving Denise a black eye in January 2022.
“I saw Aaron hit Denise and immediately she had a really bad black eye,” Kathleen said on October 6, via PEOPLE. “I’m literally in shock now to this day about it.”
According to Kathleen, who worked for Aaron as a holistic energy practitioner on and off from 2017 until 2022 at his medical office, Aaron hit Denise with the palm of his hand.
“[Denise] was in shock, I was in shock,” she recalled, noting that the couple had been arguing about “listening devices” Aaron suspected Denise had planted in his office before things got physical.
“[It was an] evening of chaos and arguing [that] kept escalating,” she explained, adding that “there was alcohol mixed in.”
Over the last few years of their marriage, Kathleen claimed to have seen many “horrific” acts of abuse by Aaron, including an incident in which he allegedly “pinned [Denise] against the concrete wall where his truck was parked at the office.”
“He was choking her and her head slammed against the [wall] and caused a concussion,” she shared. “She was just really upset, in pain, disoriented. [I was] concerned she could have died.”
Another fight reportedly took place in the bathroom of Aaron’s office in early 2022, leading Denise to sustain an “injury on her head from [Aaron] slamming her head on the toilet paper rack in the bathroom,” and a different encounter occurred at the same location in March 2021.
Denise “hid in the bathroom,” Kathleen alleged. “Aaron was terrorizing her, and she was looking for support. I was in my office, and she was texting from the bathroom.”
Looking back at their marriage, Kathleen said that between January and May 2022, she witnessed “escalating abuse” with frequent “yelling and arguing,” and Aaron threatening to kill Denise “several times.”
“We both were [afraid]. He threatened to kill us,” she stated. “He just would be raging and threatening that if we told anybody, he’d kill us all. As abuse escalated through the years, he exploited our empathy.”
Kathleen also confirmed that many incidents between Aaron and Denise involved substances.
“Aaron was what anyone would refer to as an alcoholic, so that fueled the aggression,” she explained.
Also at the hearing, Denise’s lawyer said Kathleen only agreed to testify if her name was kept off the witness list.
“She is deathly afraid of Mr. Phypers,” the lawyer stated. “[Kathleen was] afraid of her name being spread to the news and being intimidated by any third party who saw her name in the news.”
During her own testimony, Denise said of Aaron, “He’s almost killed me so many damn times.”
“[Aaron] would often threaten to throw me through the windows and off balconies” of hotels, Denise shared, also via PEOPLE.
Speaking of the reason behind their split, Denise said it happened after she asked Aaron to vacate their shared townhouse.
“He got very angry at me and volatile, he got very close to me,” she claimed. “I had just recovered from a full facelift and I still had stitches behind my ears, and I felt extremely vulnerable.”
“He would get as close as a couple of inches from my face … He would grab my arms and he would yell, call me names, [like] cheating wh*re and a c*nt and a lying b*tch,” she continued.
After Aaron refused to leave, Denise went to her office, where she slept on a sofa.
“Emotionally, it was hard for me to understand,” she shared. “Especially with having what he has done for a living, working in the wellness space, that he would know how much that this would affect me emotionally too. And it just made me feel vulnerable, it made me feel scared, it made me feel sad. It made me feel intimidated by him. He’s very big.”
“I’m a lot smaller than him,” she added.
The following day, Denise awoke to Aaron entering the room with his dad, threatening to release nude photos he found on her phone and hitting her ear with his hand.
“I was wearing a baseball cap. My head moved, he flipped the hat off very aggressively,” she explained. “I still had stitches on one side of the ear… which caused some bleeding and so much pain because I had incisions on both sides.”
But when Denise told Aaron that he “hurt” her, he denied it, allegedly saying, “I didn’t touch you.”
Denise then called Aaron’s mom and tried to call 911 before Aaron began making threats.
“Something very dangerous is going to happen to you. You’re going to disappear,” he reportedly warned.
Following their breakup, Denise and Aaron were involved in another incident at their shared townhouse, where he arrived to retrieve his laptop and tried to gain access to her phone.
He “grabbed me by both arms and then pushed me down on the stairs,” Denise shared, noting that Aaron left with his laptop, her purse, and credit cards.
Earlier in the year, Denise said that Aaron got physical with her at a hotel in Chicago after bringing up text messages she’d sent to another man.
“[He was] grabbing me, pushing me down,” she recalled. “His fingers were around my face.”
Another incident reportedly took place at a hotel in Los Angeles in May as she recovered from a seven-hour surgery on her breasts and stomach.
After napping, Denise recalled Aaron waking her up and becoming “very hostile and aggressive” about her messages with another man.
“He sat me down on the toilet and I was shaking, holding my phone on my lap,” Denise alleged. “He said, ‘Give me your f*cking phone.'”
Aaron then allegedly “hit [Denise] with his right hand,” damaging a drain she had from her surgery.
Denise and Aaron are expected to be in court through October 8.