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Friday, Oct 30, 2009 4:31 PM UTC

Jon Gosselin’s girlfriend “emotionally abused”

Hailey Glassman has a few choice words for her "Jekyll and Hyde" boyfriend

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Topics: Broadsheet, Kate Gosselin,

From today’s Department of Revelations That Fail to Shock Us: Jon Gosselin’s girlfriend thinks he’s kind of a dick.

In the first of a two-part interview for “The Insider” that aired Thursday night, 22-year-old Hailey Glassman wept repeatedly as she spoke of her relationship with television’s top baby-maker. “He’ll call me and take his anger out on me. He has ‘mantrums,’” she said. “I shouldn’t have to put up with being emotionally abused. I cry and say, ‘Why are you so mean to me?’ He takes it out on me.”

Gosselin responded by issuing a statement that “I am grateful for her emotional support and I regret any pain that my actions have caused her as she has selflessly born the pressures I have endured under the media glare. I am committed to making things right with Hailey as well as Kate and especially my children. I ask you to please give me the opportunity to prove myself.”

One might well question the wisdom of weeping about one’s relationship on an entertainment television show, and it’s tough not to want to scrub your mind long and hard after hearing anyone speak of “love” and being “emotionally abused” in such close proximity. Glassman certainly hasn’t won any fans among the commentors on the Insider.com, where the general sentiment can best be summed up by “Keep crying B****!! You asked for it and now your (sic) getting it!” and “She is getting what she deserves.”

That seems in keeping with Glassman’s own assessment of how she’s viewed: “People judge me before they meet me. I get threats every day. I get called a home wrecker and a fat whore. People will stare or point. It gets worse every day.”

The thing about abuse, though, whether it’s emotional or physical, whether it comes from a lover or a stranger on the street, is that it doesn’t just happen to people we like. It can happen to people who smoke and get arrested and party hard and fall down into walls. It can happen to people who get called “homewrecker” and “skank.” And if America’s telling Glassman she had it coming, she can’t entirely be blamed for apparently agreeing. But if we’re emotionally healthy enough to be baffled that a woman could say, “He’s like Jekyll and Hyde. But I still love him,” then we have to be likewise evolved enough to get that nobody “deserves” it. Not Hailey Glassman, not anybody.

Mary Elizabeth Williams

Mary Elizabeth Williams is a staff writer for Salon and the author of "Gimme Shelter: My Three Years Searching for the American Dream." Follow her on Twitter: @embeedub. More Mary Elizabeth Williams.

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