Daniel Baldwin files for divorce
Granted restraining order against his wife
Actor Daniel Baldwin has been granted a restraining order against his wife and filed for divorce, claiming she punched him, threatened him with a knife in front of their children and made threats of violence and death “too numerous to list”.
The 50-year-old said his wife woke the couple’s children, aged one and three, at their Oregon home by screaming and throwing objects while drunk.
Joanne Baldwin was arrested on Thursday night for violating her parole on a drink-driving conviction.
The police chief in Lake Oswego, the wealthy suburb where the couple have lived since 2010, said she is not expected to be released from jail until a hearing next Wednesday.
The couple married in July 2007. Don Forman, the interim police chief in Lake Oswego, said 41-year-old Ms Baldwin surrendered in response to a warrant alleging she had violated terms of her probation from an earlier conviction for driving under the influence.
“One of our police staffers called her and strongly suggested that she turn herself in,” he said.
She was arraigned and is being held until a hearing next week, he added. He said he did not have details about how she is alleged to have violated her probation.
Mr Baldwin has lived with his wife since 2006. The couple married in July 2007. He filed for divorce on Tuesday.
“There are so many instances of violence and death threats, they are too numerous to list,” he wrote in a cramped scrawl in his request for a restraining order. “Sadly, all of them seem to occur in front of our children.”
Mr Baldwin alleges a history of violence by his wife, beginning in 2009. He said that, in that incident, his wife punched him, leaving him with a black eye, then chased him outside to his car.
Mr Baldwin said his wife is “violent and dangerous” when she consumes alcohol. After a second drink-driving conviction in June 2010, Mr Baldwin said his wife broke her probation “hundreds of times”.
Ms Baldwin’s aggressiveness and drinking escalated since the first signs of violence, the actor said in the complaint.
In January, she said she had watched a documentary on women who killed their husbands, Baldwin wrote, and quoted her as saying “Now I know how to do it, I understand why they did it. You have been warned. Move out of this house or I am going to kill you.”
Mr Baldwin said that statement was overheard by the couple’s children, the older of whom later asked him “Is mommy going to kill us?”
The violence continued, Mr Baldwin said, in incidents in March and May, and culminated with the fight on Sunday.
When the couple relocated from California to Lake Oswego, Mr Baldwin said at the time that he hoped to turn Portland, Oregon, into a hub of film and television production, much like Vancouver, British Columbia, was in the 1990s.
“I just wanted to do something that really mattered,” he told The Oregonian newspaper. “I know I have the power and ability to do something more with my life. Lake Oswego was home to iron foundries in the early 20th century. The city, on the banks of the Willamette River, grew into one of the most affluent suburbs of Portland.