Nicholas Brendon, who is best known for his role on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, was charged with domestic violence, according to TMZ.
The news outlet reports that the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office filed documents charging the 48-year-old with domestic violence for his October 2017 arrest.
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Brendon, who played Xander Harris on Buffy and also played Kevin Lynch on Criminal Minds, is facing one count of felony corporal injury to a spouse, according to the outlet. If convicted, he could spend up to four years in state prison.
The reported charge comes more than a year after Brendon was arrested in California on Oct. 11, 2017. At that time, he was charged with violating a protective order and felony inflicting injury on a spouse or cohabitant, jail records show. KMIR-TV reported that he was released the next day after being held on $50,000 bail.
Police said the actor allegedly pulled his girlfriend’s hair and yanked her arm around 9 p.m. that night at the Saguaro hotel in Palm Springs, according to The Desert Sun.
“He was with his girlfriend and they got into an argument,” Palm Springs Police Sgt. William Hutchinson told KESQ-TV. “During the argument at the bar, he pulled her arm and then violently pulled her by her hair.”
Brendon’s girlfriend allegedly had active protective orders against him in Florida and New York, police said. Although he was allowed to be around her, he was prohibited from harassing, injuring, assaulting or threatening her.
The 2017 incident wasn’t Brendon’s first with the law. In 2015, he pleaded not guilty to criminal mischief in New York after allegedly grabbing his girlfriend by the throat, stealing her car keys and smashing her cell phone. That year, he was arrested four times; he reportedly entered a rehabilitation facility that June for substance abuse, depression and alcoholism. In October of that year, he checked into another treatment center for depression.
He appeared on a December 2015 episode of Dr. Phil, where he revealed that he “had failed attempts at suicide” and had been in a dark place over the past few years. He also said he was dealing with emotional trauma from being molested by a music teacher who went to jail in 1981, when he was about 10 years old.
“I think about it every day of my life and I wonder how it affected me. Did I stop growing emotionally?” Brendon told Dr. Phil McGraw. “When you’re molested for a couple years and you’re blamed for it by the people who are supposed to be your protectors, there’s going to be a lot of confusion and a lot of sadness.”
At the end of the episode, he checked into a dual diagnosis treatment center, HeadWaters at Origin
“Maybe I’m just done,” he said. “Maybe I’m ready to be happy now.”
Photo credit: Gilbert Carrasquillo / Contributor / Getty
