

Fox News’ overtly racist host Bill O’Reilly beat and dragged his wife multiple times in front of their kids after divorce documents were released.

In fact, in one instance O’Reilly dragged his wife down the stairs of their home when he didn’t know his daughter was witnessing the beating, according to the court documents.

Three weeks ago, a Nassau County Supreme Court justice ended a bitter three-year custody dispute between Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly and his ex-wife, Maureen McPhilmy, Gawker reports, by granting custody of the couple’s two minor children to McPhilmy.

Most of the documents pertaining to New York family court cases are sealed, Gawker has learned that the justice in the case heard testimony accusing O’Reilly of physically assaulting his wife in the couple’s Manhasset, N.Y. home.

During the hearing, a court-appointed forensic examiner testified at a closed hearing that O’Reilly’s daughter claimed to have “witnessed her father dragging McPhilmy down a staircase by her neck, apparently unaware that the daughter was watching.” That same source indicated that the daughter, who is 16 years old, told the forensic examiner about the incident within the past year.

The apparent domestic violence assault would be the latest in a series of revelations about O’Reilly’s disturbing treatment of his family members, and his ex-wife in particular.

Documents also accuse O’Reilly of being viciously vindictive. After he and McPhilmy separated in April 2010, McPhilmy began dating a Nassau County Police detective named Jeffrey Gross. When O’Reilly got wind of it, as Gawker reported in 2011, O’Reilly called up his high-placed connections within the NCPD to have Gross harassed and investigated. O’Reilly was coincidentally raising money for the department’s associated charity, the Nassau County Police Department Foundation, and he leveraged those connections to try to wreck his now ex-wife’s new relationship.

According to the publication, O’Reilly’s calls sparked an internal affairs investigation into Gross and his relationship with McPhilmy.

Not surprisingly, O’Reilly issued this statement after the documents were released, denying the accusations to Politico’s Dylan Byers late Thursday:

“All allegations against me in these circumstances are 100% false. I am going to respect the court-mandated confidentiality put in place to protect my children and will not comment any further.”