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‘Bachelor’ Creator Mike Fleiss Under Criminal Investigation for Allegedly Assaulting Pregnant Wife

The Bachelor creator Mike Fleiss is under criminal investigation for domestic violence after allegedly assaulting his pregnant wife, Laura Fleiss, the Kauai Police Department confirms to Us Weekly.

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“The incident remains under police investigation,” a spokesperson tells Us.

The news comes one day after Laura, 31, filed court documents regarding an alleged incident at the estranged couple’s Kauai, Hawaii, home on July 4. In court documents obtained by The Blast, the Miss America 2012 winner claimed that Mike, 55, “demanded that I get an abortion” so that they could “just go back to the way” they were as a family of three. (They already share 4-year-old son Benjamin.)

“While Mike has frequently been verbally abusive towards me during our marriage, in recent weeks, he has become enraged, due to the fact I am pregnant with our second child,” she said in the paperwork. “Mike told me many times that he did not want us to have a second child.”

Mike-Fleiss-Criminal-Investigation-Allegedly-Assaulting-Pregnant-Wife
Mike Fleiss and Laura Kaeppeler attend the ‘Other One: The Long, Strange Trip of Bob Weir’ screening during the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival in New York City on April 23, 2014. J Carter Rinaldi/FilmMagic

Related: Hollywood’s Ugliest Divorces

Laura (née Kaeppeler) further accused Mike of threatening to “shove me down the stairs” on July 6 before he allegedly “grabbed my body, forcibly pinned me up against the wall and held me there.” After detailing other disturbing claims, Laura said, “I have been hiding in a hotel for the past several days with Ben, and want to be able to return home without fear for myself, my son and my unborn child.”

The former beauty pageant queen was granted a temporary domestic violence restraining order against her estranged husband, who filed for divorce from her on July 10 after five years of marriage. She has also requested custody of their son, Ben, and family dog Nina.

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The TV producer, who launched the Bachelor franchise in 2002, responded to Laura’s allegations with a court filing of his own later on Tuesday, July 16. Per The Blast, he claimed she was the one who attacked him. He also said that he believed Laura was on birth control as he “did not want to have another child.”

A spokesperson for Warner Bros., the production company behind The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, told Us, “We are aware of these serious allegations, and are looking into them.”

Mike was previously married to his high school sweetheart, Alexandra Vorbeck, from 1988 to 2012.

If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, please call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 for confidential support.

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