Real Housewives of Beverly Hills personality Denise Richards revealed that she felt conned by her estranged husband, Aaron Phypers, who never “scared” her until after they were married and he got his green card.
In an interview on the Dumb Blonde podcast, Denise reflected on her “abusive marriage.” While Aaron and Denise’s marriage “didn’t start that way,” it eventually became “physically,” “emotionally,” and “financially” abusive. The Drop Dead Gorgeous actress called present-day Aaron “a different person than the person [she] married.”
Denise explained, “That’s the hardest part of it. We were together over eight years, married a little over six, and I never thought I would’ve been in this situation ever. And now I get it. It’s easy to say, ‘Why wouldn’t someone leave,’ or ‘You should’ve known, you should’ve seen these things,’ a lot of people asked me that. I didn’t. I wouldn’t have married the person.”
“During the separation,” Denise “learned so much of who he is.” While recalling Aaron slapping her in the face, she called the act “shocking” and “startling.” The first time he struck her, Denise claimed was after they wed and after her unemployed ex got his green card. “I was like, ‘Oh, f*ck. There’s no going back from this.’ My dad always taught my sister and me, ‘If a man hits you once, he’ll hit you again.’ And I told him, I said, ‘I don’t know what to do.’”
Denise claimed that Aaron seemed “so remorseful” after hitting her, to the point she “felt bad for him.” She then “played it down” after he’d put “doubts” in her head. Her daughter, Sami Sheen, “saw through him.” She added, “It was stuff that I could hide, on my arms or something. And then he gave me a black eye. That was when I was like, ‘Oh, f*ck. What am I gonna do now? How am I gonna tell people?’ It was awful.”
“At that moment I thought, ‘Is my eye okay?’ I was so scared… And then it was just all the time, doing stuff. But [people] ask me, ‘How come you never called the police?’” Simply put, Denise was “f*cking scared to leave.” The abuse became “normal.” She “knew it was wrong” but was “so beaten down” that she “didn’t know how to leave.”
“It’s survival. He’s such a big guy. I’ve never laid a hand on him. I would not be here right now if I did,”
