Billy Ray Cyrus Claims Wife Firerose Physically Abused Him in Latest Divorce Case Salvo
Amid an ugly divorce case, Billy Ray Cyrus is now claiming in new court filings that he was abused physically, verbally and emotionally by his soon-to-be-ex-wife, Firerose.
A week after Firerose (Johanna Rose Hodges) accused Cyrus of “psychological abuse” during their short-lived marriage, the singer fired back with his own filing on Monday (June 24) — not only “vehemently” denying her allegations, but leveling his own claims of abusive behavior against his estranged wife.
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“Defendant’s allegations of abuse were only made to sensationalize her false complaints by using the word abuse,” Cyrus’ lawyers write. “While the plaintiff would acknowledge that he was certainly vocal, frustrated and angry with the defendant in May 2024, it is the plaintiff who, in fact, has been abused. Not only verbally and emotionally by the defendant, but PHYSICALLY.”
Cyrus filed for divorce on May 22, citing “irreconcilable differences” and “inappropriate marital conduct.” The pair, who first started dating in 2022 after years of friendship, were married for only seven months before the split.
The proceedings have since turned nasty. In a June 13 filing, Cyrus filed an emergency motion accusing Firerose of making nearly $100,000 in unauthorized “fraudulent” credit card charges and seeking a temporary restraining order to stop her. Her attorneys later said the accusations were “untrue.”
Then in a June 14 response to the complaint, Firerose claimed that she had been the “victim of extreme verbal, emotional and psychological” abuse. She claimed that Cyrus had been “unpredictable and volatile” due to substance abuse and had filed for divorce just a day before she had been scheduled to undergo a preventive double mastectomy.
In his response filing on Monday, Cyrus argued that Firerose had scheduled the “elective” surgery as part of an ongoing threat to use the surgery to “ruin his longstanding career in the entertainment industry” if he chose to file for divorce. He claims that she at one point made the threat explicit, allegedly saying: “If you even think about divorcing me right now, I will tell everyone that you did it because of the double mastectomy, and your career will be over.”
In a statement to Billboard, an unnamed spokesperson for Firerose called the latest claims from Cyrus “false” and said they underscore “the kind of cruel manipulation” he allegedly subjected her to: “This filing is simply another abusive tactic to distract away from the serious, true allegations brought against him, backed by an abundance of evidence.”
UPDATE: This story was updated on June 25 at 7:13 p.m. ET with a statement from a representative for Firerose.
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