Tanya Young of Basketball Wives LA interviews Pilar Sanders about the arrest, abuse, and divorce on her website. This is the first time Pilar has given an exclusive interview since the arrest. It's a really good interview.
Q: What information is in the media that you would like to address or correct?
A: That he (Deion) attacked me on the 23rd. I never attacked him. He choked me. It wasn’t the first time. He is a violent person. Anything that you see him say, my goodness, count it as a lie. I’m flabbergasted every time I see him do another media piece. Its sickening.”
Q: You’ve stated that Deion has abused you in the past. In what ways?
A: Many ways. Financially it started before Christmas and continues until today. He just stopped providing for the family. He cut credit cards. He cut financial support … No resources at all, whatsoever. Even when we’re still in the house, my daughter would beg for clothes, he wouldn’t buy her any clothes. It would come to a point where she would say, dad will you get me a sandwich from Subway and he would be like, no – that’s a five dollar sandwich. He would tell her go ask your mommy. What he would try to do was use every piece of leverage he could ever get a hold of and try to use against me and try to turn the children against me. So what he was telling the kids was that basically, if you stay with me I can provide for you, your mother doesn’t have money, you’re not going to be able to get clothes, you wont be able to get food, who knows what type of place you will be at, but here, you will have everything you need and want.
Q: The court gave you temporary custody of your daughter and gave him your sons. What’s the “father-daughter” relationship like?
A: There is no interaction with my daughter … She wanted to start dancing again. So I said “okay we will start dancing.” She asked her dad if he would pay for dance lessons or ballet shoes or tap shoes or anything at all and he refused. He would say no ask your mother. Knowing very well that he set up our family so that he would be the sole provider and that’s what he wanted. He got much pleasure out of seeing disappointment in my children’s eyes when they would ask how is mommy supposed to get this and that and you are not giving her any money.
Q: Has there been physical abuse from him in the past?
A: Yes, there has on more than one occasion. And he’s done it in front of people. He did it in front of two of our producers on our show, Primetime Love … It’s so idiotic and its funny and its not funny. During the shooting of it, I have a very light personality, with that, there were a lot of parts that were just naturally funny and it just kinda happened. So he called shooting down and he called a meeting with myself and two producers from Los Angeles and we went to our back room where the sitting area is – he said “there has to be a good cop and a bad cop and there is only one comedian here and the comedian is me.” I just started laughing and said, “Oh my God you are ridiculous” and I say, “I can’t help it if I’m funnier than you”. Then he leaped across the table and grabbed my neck and squeezed it to the point that I thought that he poked a hole in my trachea. The two producers didn’t know what to do. They couldn’t get him off of me. They couldn’t do anything so I started kicking him in his groin. That’s the only thing that got him off of me … There were other times when he grabbed me and ripped jewelry … When he was verbally abusive, I didn’t recognize it as abuse. I took his nasty behavior as his personality, I just thought he was a really mean jerk. He was just rude to people because he’s rude to a lot more people than me.
