Posted on 04/10/2002 8:41:00 AM PDT by IncPen
For the past 10 months, convicted former U.S. Rep. Mel Reynolds and his estranged wife, Marisol, have shared a South Side apartment on weekends. But they have not had sex in eight years. He yells at her in front of their three children, calling her "fat" and "slut," she said. She calls him names, too, like "pedophile," he said. She feared for her safety so much Sunday that she called police to the home.
On Tuesday, a Cook County judge came down on Marisol Reynolds' side, saying she was a credible witness when testifying about Mel Reynolds' alleged mental abuse. The judge called the former congressman's testimony "unfathomable" and "incredible."
Referring to his statement that "I have never struck my wife at all" when asked about photos of her that appeared on local television stations years ago, Judge Moshe Jacobius said, "It's incredible for Mr. Reynolds to sit here and acknowledge Marisol's pictures of her bruised face on TV and say some other person must have done this and he has no knowledge of how this came about."
Jacobius ruled that Marisol could move out immediately with the three children into a Section 8 subsidized apartment she has leased 10 blocks from Reynolds' apartment. Reynolds can visit on alternate weekends.
Reynolds spends five days a week in a halfway house serving out a sentence on corruption charges.
Reynolds comes home from 6:30 p.m. Friday until 8:30 p.m. Sunday, and on those nights "We sleep at opposite ends of the house," Marisol said. "I sleep in my son's bottom bunk bed. He sleeps in the master bedroom."
Marisol called police to the house Sunday after her husband lost his temper upon finding out she filed for divorce Friday. She said Tuesday that she believes her husband has had affairs with up to four women since getting out of jail. He wires money to some of them, she said.
Reynolds said that in his position as executive director of Salem Baptist Church's Hope Community Development Center, he runs a prison ministry and sends $25-$50 to male and female inmates to spend in prison commissaries.
Salem Pastor Rev. James Meeks and Rev. Jesse Jackson, leaders of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, helped persuade President Clinton to commute Reynolds' sentence and encouraged Marisol to give her husband another chance.
Marisol agreed to come back from Massachusetts to Chicago when her husband was released from prison to facilitate her children's relationship with him, but, she said Tuesday, "I just knew I wasn't going to sleep in the same bed with him. He said he would never touch a fat b.... like me again. That hurt me."
"She returned voluntarily to Illinois, under no court order," Jacobius said. "That presents a classic [battered woman] symptom."
Marisol said her husband takes their 8-year-old son to McDonald's, comments on women wearing tight pants and flirts with women there using pick-up lines such as, "Do you go to Salem?"
Reynolds said his wife has said hurtful things to him, too.
"The other morning, in front of both my daughters in their bedroom, she called me a pedophile," Reynolds said. "I don't know where that came from. Apparently that's something she's been harboring for a long time."
"In fact, you were convicted of sex with an underage girl," Reynolds' own attorney, Christopher Carroll, asked him.
"When she was 17," Reynolds said.
Actually, court records indicated Beverly Heard was 16 when she and Reynolds first had sex.
Another chance to what? Cheat with underage girls?
Nice of the two of the country's biggest philanderers to give Mel "another chance!"
The author needs to re-visit his definition of "win".
As a side note, its nice to see we're cracking down so hard on corrupt politicians.
In the interests of truth, note that Clinton commuted his sentence.
The difference is that Mel still has to render as a sex-offender, and the conviction stands.
No doubt Clinton shivered when he signed THAT piece of paper...
OK, I'm stupid. What's the joke in that "pick-up line"? Aside from Democommies like Mel being a joke just in themselves, that is.
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