While Sen. David Vitter, Republican of Louisiana, has gone into seclusion following the revelation that he patronized Pamela Martin and Associates, a D.C. call girl service, here in Minnesota another family values conservative, Mark Olson, Republican state legislator from Big Lake, took the stand in his own defense against charges that he beat his wife last November 12, a Sunday, after returning home from church in the afternoon. Olson testified that he had hung up on his wife earlier in the day when she telephoned to scold him about something, and now they began to wrestle after she confronted him while he worked in the garage.
"I didn't let go because I didn't want to hurt her. I just wanted it [the discord] to stop," Olson said, weeping as he testified, according to the account of the Star Tribune. His wife's version of events was not that different, though she did say her husband had pushed her down three times, not once as the legislator said. She also testified that he had threatened to "finish the job" before he left.
There is apparently a history of reciprocal assaults involving Bible-throwing between the legislator and his wife. Olson's lawyer had hinted at introducing a battered husband defense, and Heidi Olson, 50, who according to the the newspaper article is "larger than her husband," admitted once hitting him. But she said he had assaulted her on several occasions, once for example when he threw two Bibles at her, apparently hitting her with at least one of them, since she claimed to have been bruised.
Olson's answer is that his wife was in the habit of throwing Bibles at him, and, in an effort to show her how that felt, he had taken to throwing Bibles at her, too. "The first time she threw the Bible, I couldn't understand what I did to cause this," he testified. "I abhorred it, and then I found myself doing the same thing."
The next day, after a jury convicted him of intending to cause his wife to fear he would hurt her, but acquitting on the more serious charge of actually hurting her, Olson told reporters that he loved his wife and was hoping for a reconciliation. Heidi issued a statement in which she forgave her husband. Indications are that he will return to the legislature, where his Bible-tossing is merely metaphoric in nature.
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