Parish, Ex-Wife Feud Is Very Old News And Much Disputed

Court records reportedly show that former Boston Celtics star Robert Parish five years ago denied an allegation by his ex-wife that he beat her.

The allegations of abuse by Nancy Saad initially were raised in a 1990 civil suit she filed against him and resurfaced in an article in this week’s Sports Illustrated.

Saad told Sports Illustrated that Parish physically abused her throughout their 10-year relationship, and specifically mentioned an attack that she alleged occurred at a Los Angeles hotel on June 2, 1987. She said Parish on that day grabbed her by the throat, punched her and threw her to the floor, causing a “closed head injury” that forced her to be hospitalized for a week at a Santa Monica hospital.

Saad made virtually the same allegations in the civil suit in Middlesex (Mass.) County Superior Court, The Boston Globe reported Thursday. The case was transferred to U.S. District Court and resolved in the couple’s divorce settlement, the records of which are sealed, the newspaper said.

Parish, now with the Charlotte Hornets, has refused to comment on the Sports Illustrated story. But in his 1990 court response, he denied ever hitting his wife, adding that if the allegations were true, he did it in self-defense.

Although Parish would not comment this week, his divorce lawyer was not reluctant to discuss Saad’s charges in Sports Illustrated.

“She’s a volatile, unstable woman. I wouldn’t believe a thing she said,” said Monroe Inker, who represented Parish in the 1990 divorce from Saad.

During the divorce “she made a ton of allegations and she didn’t try to prove one of them in court. She never offered any evidence to support those claims, and I have never seen any evidence to support them,” Inker told the Boston Herald.