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For several days now, we’ve been reporting on the domestic violence allegations against Taylor Frankie Paul.
Now, we have video that seems to corroborate Dakota Mortensen’s version of events.
In case you missed it, Paul was arrested in February of 2023 after Mortensen alleged that Paul kicked and punched him while heavily intoxicated.
He also claimed that Taylor threw several chairs at him, one of which struck her daughter from a previous relationship (Paul and Mortensen have a 2-year-old son together).
And indeed, the footage obtained by TMZ shows Taylor physically assaulting Dakota — at one point putting him in a headlock and pulling his hair — and hurling multiple metal stools in his direction.
It doesn’t appear as though he was hit by the chairs, but at one point, he shouts, “Your daughter is sitting right there.”
The daughter begins crying as Taylor’s assault continues. It’s not entirely clear from the footage, but TMZ reports that the 5-year-old was struck by one of the flying stools.
According to a police report obtained by the outlet, the girl was hit and later had a “goose egg on her head.”
After a neighbor called police, Dakota reportedly showed the footage to the officers who responded, leading to Taylor’s arrest.
The video was then used by prosecutors while they were making a case against her.
While some of the more serious charges were dropped as part of a plea deal, Taylor pleaded guilty to an aggravated assault charge, and she was sentenced to probation.
She’s still on probation, which is just one factor that makes ABC’s decision to cast her as the new Bachelorette so baffling.
Already, The Bachelorette is losing sponsors, and this latest development might finally force ABC to cancel the entire season.
The video is damning, to say the least, but Paul’s PR team is sticking to their guns.
“It’s sad to see the latest installment of his never-ending, desperate, attention-seeking, destructive campaign to harm Taylor without any regard for the consequences for their child,” a rep for Taylor said in a statement issued today (via TMZ).
“Releasing an old and selectively edited video on their son’s birthday is a reprehensible attempt to distract from his own behavior.”
It’s worth noting that we don’t know what happened before Dakota began filming, and Taylor shouts “you threw me” several times in the video.
She later accused him of throwing her to the ground.
Still, it might be hard to convince audiences that they should root for Taylor to find the man of her dreams after she threw a chair that struck a 5-year-old in the head.
Paul’s Hulu reality show, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, has already suspended production. We will have further updates on this developing story as new information becomes available.
