Michelle Berman wants to be clear: she never intended for it to happen this way.

Berman downplays domestic violence inquiry

But the estranged wife of Gilbert Mayor Steve Berman says she is frightened of him and believes she had no choice.

So she’s told investigators, and the Tribune, that Berman has been abusing her, physically and mentally, for years.

She finally called friend and Gilbert police counselor Lacy Cox last week, she said, after Steve Berman threatened to kill her father. She says she asked Cox to keep the matter confidential.

Still, Gilbert police turned the case over to the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. “The next thing I know they’re knocking on my door,” she said. Detectives conducted a tape-recorded interview with Michelle on July 9.

“Please make it clear that I wish him no harm,” she said in a telephone interview Monday.

“I just wanted a quick, quiet separation and divorce. But because of the threats, I had to report it to a counselor.”

Steve Berman has refused numerous requests since last week to respond to the allegations. At the time, he said, “I haven’t been accused of anything. You guys haven’t seen a police report. There’s nothing to talk about.”

On Tuesday, Tribune reporters waited outside his office at Gilbert Town Hall for more than three hours to talk to the mayor; his staff said he was busy in meetings but passed on questions to him.

About 3 p.m., Berman left through a back exit and sprinted to his truck, past a reporter waiting outside. The reporter called to him but he kept running and then jumped in his truck, driving off even though the truck’s sun shield was still in the front window. Berman smiled and waved at the reporter as he drove off.

Then, late Tuesday, Chris Baker, who identified himself as Berman’s political consultant, released a statement from Berman, saying that “at no point have I ever been physically abusive towards her, nor have I ever threatened as she alleges, to kill her or her father.”

He said the problems between them stem from her “serious and documentable drug abuse problem.”

“As with any marriage where someone has a substance abuse problem, situations can sometimes become tough to deal with,” the statement said. “My wife and I have had many heated discussions stemming from her drug abuse that I have later regretted.”

Michelle Berman told the Tribune two days ago she had struggled with an addiction to prescription painkillers after she broke her foot and her knee but has been clean for three years. “I’m proud to say I fought it and I won,” she said. She said she has the test results that prove it.

Michelle predicted Berman would use her previous addiction to deflect the domestic violence allegations. Two of her close friends interviewed by the Tribune supported her contention that she has not used drugs for years.

Berman has not been arrested or charged in the MCSO case. The sheriff’s office won’t release any information on the investigation until it is completed, sheriff’s spokesman Capt. Paul Chagolla said.

Among other things, Michelle Berman says she told county investigators about an incident May 17 when Berman punched her in the back.

“We were walking into the bedroom and this guy punched me with all his might, right in the back,” she said. “He begged me for forgiveness.”

It was a typical pattern, she said, that began soon after they met at Steve Berman’s Cellular Solutions phone store in 2001. Verbal or physical abuse, Michelle Berman said, was always followed by apologies and promises.

The last time she left, Michelle said, he asked her to marry him. And in November, after six years together, she did.

It’s also a pattern friends have seen developing, and worsening, over the years.

“He’s spent the last few years trying to keep her from going anywhere and seeing anyone,” said Staci Buchanan, a former Republican precinct committeewoman and longtime friend of Michelle.

“I know what’s going on. I’ve seen it,” Buchanan said. “I don’t want Steve to get out of this one. She doesn’t deserve what he’s done to her.”

Buchanan said Michelle has called her in tears many times and talked of abuse, both physical and verbal. She says she saw bite marks in Michelle’s swollen, purple thumb. Michelle says Berman bit her.

There’s also a pattern that emerges from more than two decades of divorce records from Maricopa County Superior Court involving Berman, who turned 60 on Tuesday and is in the final year of his second four-year term as Gilbert mayor.

Michelle Berman, 46, is the mayor’s fourth wife.

His third wife, Dawn Berman Schackner, filed for divorce in 1996 after about 10 years of marriage, which produced a daughter, Elizabeth.

Schackner and Berman fought bitterly over money, and Berman sought alimony but didn’t get it.

Though their divorce became final in May 1997, they were still arguing in court about money and custody matters more than five years later.

Schackner alleged that Berman failed to pay his share of medical bills for Elizabeth. Berman accused Schackner of keeping Elizabeth from seeing him, and demanded that the child appear at his 2001 swearing in ceremony.

Schackner filed two orders of protection against Berman alleging threats of violence, though the second, in April 2001, was denied and the first, in March 1999, was dismissed weeks later.

Though acrimonious, the court records don’t indicate physical violence during his marriage to Schackner.

But that’s not the case with wife No. 2.

Christine Berman married Steve when she was five months pregnant with the couple’s son, Steve Jr. She also had a daughter, whom Berman adopted when she was about 6 years old. He later had the adoption reversed on the advice of a court psychologist.

But Christine Berman moved out and filed for divorce less than three years after their 1981 marriage.

In court documents, she sought custody of the children, saying she feared for her safety and that of her children due to Berman’s “violent temper and repeated acts of mental and physical abuse and harassment.”

In response to Berman’s resistance to paying alimony, Commissioner Joel Glynn found in 1985 that Christine Berman had been unable to work, in part, because of “injuries sustained by an assault from respondent/husband.”

Berman also balked at paying child support, but offered to let his wife and children share the survival meals he had stockpiled at his home, according to court records.

Psychologist Phillip Esplin, in a court-ordered family study, noted “long-standing tension in the family, coupled with episodic violence.”

“Both of the youngsters, in my opinion, are at substantial risk for future maladaptation as the result of chronic conflict between their parents,” Esplin wrote.

In August 1995, Berman admitted to slapping his then 13-year-old son in the face during an argument.

According to a 2001 Tribune article, a psychological report during his divorce with Schackner alleged that he also hit one of her daughters and that problems stemming from a “possible mood disorder were obtained from several sources.”

A Gilbert police report on the incident with Berman’s son said he didn’t mean to hurt his son and was undergoing anger management counseling, according to the Tribune story. The court also ordered counseling for father and son.

But Berman was apologetic about hitting his son.

“The fact is, I”m extremely ashamed that I did it. I was sorry I did it when I did it,” he told the Tribune in 2001.

But he also said the police report was wrong.

“I was going through a number of counseling classes with my son because my son was having a bunch of problems,” Berman said in the 2001 article. “But I simply wasn’t having any anger management problems.”

Berman also said the court reports were in error and denied ever harming his second wife, other than one incident where he accidentally ran over her foot.

“She walked up to the car window screaming and raising hell at me. I basically put the car in reverse and backed out and the next thing I know she’s screaming like hell,” he said in 2001. “It’s not like I got her in my headlights and ran her down.”

Berman’s son, now 26, lives in his father’s Gilbert home, along with 20-year-old daughter Elizabeth.