George Lazenby pointed gun at me, says his daughter
31-Aug-2008 • Actor News
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Melanie Lazenby said her father, who is currently waging a bitter divorce battle against Shriver, was "violent", "aggressive" and "intimidating" - and outlined a number of shocking incidents in a signed court declaration, obtained by News Limited, this week.
The 35-year-old, who is a luxury property realtor in Manhattan, said the James Bond actor pointed a gun at her when she arrived home late as a teenager and once flushed her head in a toilet as a punishment.
Miss Lazenby said she loved her estranged father - who is fighting for sole custody of son Georgie, 4, and twins Kaitlin and Samuel, 2 - but maintained he should not be allowed to spend time alone with the children.
"He tormented me, humiliated me, hurt me physically, scarred me emotionally and has placed a feeling of fear and mistrust in me that I have never been able to get past despite giving it a good effort," she wrote.
"My fear is that he does have a temper - which sometimes leads to violence and saying awful things - and that it could flare up again when provoked. I do worry if he is alone with them and one of the children upsets him - that without someone to step in if he gets into a fit of rage - that one of the children could get hurt based on his past behaviour."
Lazenby's explosive eight-page declaration was filed as part of Shriver's custody case in the Los Angeles Superior Court, where the doubles champion and her husband of six years faced off this week.
Shriver, 46, has accused her husband, who turns 69 on Friday, of being an abusive alcoholic who assaulted her, threatened to kill her if she left him and scared their children and nannies with his regular rages.
The tennis star-turned-commentator filed for divorce from Lazenby three weeks ago, while he was in Australia visiting his elderly mother Joan in NSW.
The court granted Shriver's requests for a restraining order after she detailed violent outbursts, including one which led to her her fleeing the UK with their children before she had completed her contract to commentate at Wimbledon last year, and for his tri-weekly visits with the children to be supervised by a court-appointed supervisor.
Miss Lazenby, who lives in the trendy West Village in a multi-million dollar penthouse, said her father's temper could be terrifying.
"From the ages of about 10 to 21 my Dad frequently would hit me, pin me up against a wall, slap me and hold either my arms or my face with extreme force - frequently causing bruises," she wrote. "Sometimes he would attack me under the influence of alcohol and sometimes he was totally sober."
The stunning blonde - who is a regular on New York's jet-set social scene and has dated high-profile men including Prince Albert of Monaco and Hollywood star Jerry O'Connell - is Lazenby's daughter from his first marriage to US publishing heiress Christina Matser.
Mrs Matser - who filed for divorce from the On Her Majesty's Secret Service actor in 1994 after 21 years of marriage - also filed a declaration against her ex-husband as part of Shriver's case this week. The 56-year-old blonde met Lazenby when both were modelling in London in the early '70s.
She had detailed decades of abuse from her husband, which she alleged began when he punched her in the face while she was five-months' pregnant with their daughter.
Mrs Matser - who lives in Holland with her second husband, Dutch philanthropist and author Fred Matser - alleged that Lazenby had repeatedly threatened to kill her if she divorced him and he broke her nose as their son Zack was dying from a brain tumour in 1994.
The former Pirelli calendar model and her daughter said they would be willing to testify against Lazenby if they were called as witnesses for Shriver in the couple's divorce battle.
Miss Lazenby detailed several violent incidents, including two that took place at the family's Los Angeles mansion, one of several multi-million dollar homes they owned around the world.
"One night I arrived home from a party with my friend an hour after (the) curfew (imposed on her)," she wrote.
"We walked around the corner to find my Dad standing in the dark with a gun pointed at us and we were terrified.
"He was pointing the gun at us as his way of teaching us a lesson about punctuality.
"In 1992, when I was about 18, I sometimes forgot to flush the toilet out of laziness in my own private bathroom. One time, he went into the bathroom and saw that my toilet was not flushed and he pulled me out of a chair in the living room, dragged me into the bathroom, lifted the toilet seat up and pushed my face inside of the toilet bowl into my own urine - to teach me a lesson about flushing toilets."
She said she had been estranged from her father for several years but tried to reconcile with him when he had children with Shriver.
She said this was because she wanted "have a relationship with my half-siblings".
However, the relationship broke down again in 2004, during a Christmas holiday in Sydney, when her father became abusive during a drunken "tirade" in a Canberra restaurant because she didn't accompany him to a hardware store. She was unable to go because she was spending time with her toddler half-brother.
Lazenby and Shriver are due to have their custody dispute heard on October 15.
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