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Five women who say they previously had romantic relationships with Republican Senate candidateHerschel Walkernow say he is unfit for office, with one ex-girlfriend telling The Daily Beastin an explosive new reportthat he “cannot have control over a state when he has little to no control of his mind.”
Among the women who spoke to the outlet was Cheryl Parsa, who described a five-year relationship with the former football star in the 2000s. Walker, Parsa says, demonstrated “unstable” behavior, and exhibited what she called “little to no control” over his violent actions.
Parsa told the Beast that Walker — whose spokesperson did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment — is “a pathological liar” who “knows how to manipulate his disease, in order to manipulate people, while at times being simultaneously completely out of control.”
“He is not well,” Parsa added. “And I say that as someone who knows exactly what this looks like, because I have lived through it and seen what it does to him and to other people. He cannot be a senator. He cannot have control over a state when he has little to no control of his mind.”
Parsa also described a 2005 incident in which she caught Walker cheating on her with another woman at his condo in Dallas. When caught, she said she thought Walker “was going to beat me,” and alleged that he threw out his fists toward her and put his hands on her neck.
“I saw a fist flying toward me. As I ducked down, he hit the wall beside my head and staggered backwards toward the bedroom, saying, ‘COME ON! I’M GONNA SHOW YOU WHAT A MAN IS!’ And I heard him from the bedroom beating himself up against the wall repeatedly and with force,” she claimed.
Walker, who will face off against Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock in aGeorgia runoff election next week, has seen his campaign plagued with controversy as several women have come forward to allege abuse or to claim that hepressured them to have abortionswhen they became pregnant with his children.
Walker’s ex-wife, Cindy DeAngelis Grossman, has previously gone public to describe the alleged abuse she experienced at the hands of the former football star — abuse that Walker has not disputed, though he has claimed he doesn’t remember the incidents.
Grossman’s allegations against her ex-husband are not new, and court records show she received a protective order in 2005, three years after the couple divorced.
The couple’s son, right-wing social media personalityChristian Walker, has also claimed that Walker threatened to kill he and his mother, writing in a tweet: “You’re not a ‘family man’ when you left us to bang a bunch of women, threatened to kill us, and had us move over 6 times in 6 months running from your violence.”
In another tweet, Christian wrote: “I don’t care about someone who has a bad past and takes accountability. But how DARE YOU LIE and act as though you’re some ‘moral, Christian, upright man.’ You’ve lived a life of DESTROYING other peoples lives. How dare you.”
Christianposted a follow-up videothe next day in which he doubled down on his claims and said of his father’s campaign, “Everything has been a lie.”
Walker — who is now remarried — has publicly acknowledged that he has struggled with dissociative identity disorder (DID), writing in his 2008 bookBreaking Free:My Life with Dissociative Identity Disorderthat he developed a dozen alter-egos to combat the bullying he suffered as a child.
He has also publicly acknowledged at least some violent tendencies, describing in his memoir, as well as in public events since, an instance in which he allegedly armed himself with a handgun and drove to meet a delivery driver, who was late with the delivery of a custom car, with the intention of killing him.
Walker didn’t go through with it, he has said, because he saw a “honk if you love Jesus"bumper sticker on the man’s car.
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Parsa told the Beast that she began attending therapy sessions with Walker in 2005, alleging that the therapist told her Walker’s DID was “the worst case [he’d] ever seen.”
“He said the only thing worse than having DID is Herschel Walker having DID,” Parsa added.
Ina campaign adthat came out in October, Walker said he had “overcome” his mental illness, but Parsa told the Beast that the alternate personalities she witnessed in Walker during their time together hasn’t gone away, saying she has noticed behavioral changes watching his campaign from afar.
“I am once again witnessing the child alters who cannot construct a complete sentence on the national stage, now speaking out on issues like gun violence and environmental issues,” Parsa said, a reference tocampaign appearancesin which he made incoherent remarks about both issues. “Personally, it is so sad to watch, and even more scary for our country.”
The therapist himself did not dispute the claims to the Beast, though the outlet notes he has previouslyspoken publiclyabout Walker’s violent behavior in his office, including for a 2011Playboyinterview in which he said the football star once threatened to kill him and everyone else in his office.
“That incident ended with him hitting the door and breaking his fist,” the therapist toldPlayboyat the time.
In that same story, Walker described how he stayed at a California psychiatric hospital for three weeks as an outpatient, tellingPlayboy: “For the first couple of days, you say to yourself, ‘I’m not like these people here. I’m not like these people.’ Then, all of a sudden, it hit me. I was just like those people. The diagnosis was right — is right. That’s what it was. That’s what it is.”
If you are experiencing domestic violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at1-800-799-7233, or go tothehotline.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.
source: people.com
