Meet Mel Gibson, wife beater, misogynist.

I wasn’t going to touch this story but then I thought about it and I decided I had to. I’ve never understood the Mel Gibson thing. He’s always left me cold as an actor and a sex symbol. Shudder. But he has arguably been Australia’s most successful actor of all time and has enormous power in Hollywood. This power diminished somewhat after his anti-semetic ranting against Jews when arrested for drink driving a few years ago.

But he did the usual Hollywood thing, said sorry, went to rehab. This time? I don’t think there’s a rehab for men who bash women, men who hit a woman while she is holding their baby. Oh wait, yes there is. It’s called jail. And I hope to God that’s where this misogynist, abusive man is heading.

Today, another tape has surfaced, where Mel Gibson admits hitting his former girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva while she was holding their baby because “you fucking deserved it”.  The level of abuse is utterly shocking to listen to but we should listen because millions of women are subjected to abuse every day, women too frightened to leave, too frightened to tell.

RadarOnline reports:

On tape, a teary Oksana is heard asking Mel, “What kind of a man is that who would hit a woman when she is holding a child in her hands, hitting her twice in the face?

“What kind of a man is that?” the Russian musician repeats. The Braveheart star responds: “You know what — you f**cking deserved it.”

Mel’s sickening “you f**cking deserved it” admission sheds new light on the he-said, she-said battle that has been raging between Oksana and Mel for the past several weeks. His legal team has insisted Mel did not hit Oksana and that they had only a loud argument. The disputed event apparently took place January 6 in his Malibu mansion.

Gibson’s camp has been on a hunt to find who released the tape. His lawyers want to know if Oksana did it. Grigorieva’s lawyers “vehemently denied” she leaked the tapes and for the first time, RadarOnline.com can reveal Oksana did not release the recording to us. But we’ve learned that she decided to record Mel after he made a series of death threats against her.

Mel told Oksana, “I am going to come and burn the f—ing house down.

“How dare you act like such a b—h when I have been so f—ing nice?”

A thousand standing ovations for Oksana for having the courage and foresight to record the abuse because without this evidence, it would simply be a case of he-said-she-said and in such situations, where the man is rich and powerful, the woman never wins. She is inevitably portrayed as a gold-digger who is blackmailing the star or making false accusations for money. Please.

As former Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown wrote today at The Daily Beast:

If this tape is allowable in court it may happily be just the evidence needed to land him in jail for domestic abuse. This is no “he said she said” argument now, it’s Mel, clear as a bell, admitting he hit Oksana “while she was holding a child in her hands” because she “fucking deserved it.”

We live in a culture of destructive transparency. Text messages leaked. Phone calls taped. Pictures uploaded in real time, and sound bites exploding on unsuspecting careers. But there’s an upside to our leaky, sneaky world. Vile, fraudulent bullies like Mel Gibson or free-range sex addicts like Tiger Woods can be exposed at last to the censure—and ridicule—they deserve. As Allred put it, “the Internet is very aggressive but it’s good in a way for women. Silence always favors the wrongdoer.”

Mel Gibson, the brave man who gets his rocks off from bullying, beating and berating the mother of his baby has predictably gone to ground, sequestered with Hollywood’s highest paid lawyers and spin doctors. Who is in Oksana’s corner? Who is helping her right now?

My thoughts also turn to Jodie Foster, someone whose reputation in Hollywood is above reproach and someone who has always stood by Mel Gibson and defended him in the past. She is currently directing Mel Gibson in a film called, impossibly, The Beaver and I can only hope and pray that she will take a stand against this disgraceful violence and sack his sorry arse immediately.

There must be no second chances for this man this time. These tapes don’t simply portray a private argument. They are evidence of an inexcusable crime.

If you are suffering from domestic abuse or if this post and the related comments bring up any issues for you please contact Lifeline on 1800 200 526.  They are available 24 hours a day