Angelina Jolie has accused her ex-husband, Brad Pitt, of choking one of their children during a flight.
The actress filed a 17-page complaint against Pitt on Tuesday, accusing him of verbally and physically abusing their children on a transatlantic flight back in 2016.
Jolie had referenced the specific flight from France to L.A. in previous court documents, but she hadn’t mentioned Pitt’s hands allegedly being placed on a child’s throat.“Before it was over, Pitt choked one of the children and struck another in the face. Some of the children pleaded with Pitt to stop. They were all frightened. Many were crying,” the complaint said.
The filing also alleged that Pitt was violent towards Jolie as well and that he "grabbed her by the head and shook her, and then grabbed her shoulders and shook her again before pushing her into the bathroom wall. At one point, he poured beer on Jolie; at another, he poured beer and red wine on the children,” the filing states.
The complaint is part of a messy legal battle between the former couple about the sale of a French winery they previously co-owned. Pitt filed a lawsuit against Jolie's former company in February, claiming that the sale of her stake in the Chateau Miraval winery was unlawful because both owners had agreed they would never sell their interests without the other’s consent.
Jolie's complaint this week maintained that no agreement existed between herself and Pitt and that Pitt had refused to buy her out of her share in the winery unless she agreed to not publicly disclose his abusive behaviour.
The Washington Post writes "the cross-complaint claims Jolie first tried to sell her stake to Pitt, but he conditioned a deal on her signing a “non-disparagement clause that would have prohibited her from speaking outside of court about Pitt’s physical and emotional abuse of Jolie and their children.”The complaint alleges this is the real reason why Jolie was forced to end her marriage with Pitt. “Jolie has never before publicly explained why she and Pitt reached this point — why they divorced, — and she has gone to great lengths to try to shield their children from reliving the pain Pitt inflicted on the family that day,” the document says. The day of the flight was the day "Jolie's marriage came to an end," says the document.
