A little over five years ago, Ioan Gruffudd apparently returned home after a TV shoot and told his wife Alice Evans that he was leaving her. What could have been an enormously sympathetic story for Alice quickly turned, as Alice showed everyone exactly why Ioan was getting the hell out. Alice began a relentless campaign of harassment towards Ioan and his then-girlfriend and now-wife Bianca Wallace. By 2022, Ioan was granted a three-year restraining order and the family court told Alice to stop harassing and threatening Ioan and Bianca. Since then, she has breached the restraining order constantly and maintained her harassment campaign. Ioan has been in and out of court for years now, trying to deal with Alice’s bullsh-t. Well, this week, the restraining order was extended for good cause, and the judge took Alice to task in open court.
Fantastic Four star Ioan Gruffudd won a major victory Wednesday in his ugly court battle with his ex-wife Alice Evans when a Los Angeles judge ruled that a domestic violence restraining order against her will be renewed for five years. Evans, 57, remained calm and subdued as Judge Michael Convey announced his decision, while Gruffudd – sitting at the opposite end of a long table – also displayed little emotion. Neither wanted to comment to the Daily Mail after the ruling.
On the opening days of their trial that started last week, Gruffudd, 52, recounted a years-long campaign of online harassment and abuse waged by Evans, targeting him and his new wife, Australian actress Bianca Wallace, 33, which led them to seek and win a three-year restraining order against Alice in 2022.
Evans confessed on the witness stand Wednesday to bombarding social media sites with denigrating and false posts about her former spouse and his new wife and offered apologies to both Gruffudd and Wallace. She told the court how ‘ashamed and regretful’ she was – and assured Judge Convey that her online trash-talking was a thing of the past.
But Judge Convey didn’t buy her attempts at contrition, citing the ‘multiple’ times she violated the original restraining order, which called for her to stay 100 feet away from Gruffudd and Wallace and not to post negative comments about them online.
The judge granted the Welsh actor’s request to renew the restraining order, and in a 75-minute summing up of the evidence presented over seven days of trial he told Evans Wednesday that she had carried out a ‘concerted, focused, intentional and caustic campaign of denigration’ aimed at Gruffudd and Wallace. Evans’s ‘threats of force and intimidation….caused Ioan to fear for his and Bianca’s physical safety,’ he said. Her ‘pattern of abuse’ isolated him from his children. ‘Her vow to ‘dedicate her life to fighting him’ and ruin his career, threatened his ability to provide for his children.’
Judge Convey said he was particularly disturbed by an incident which happened in front of the children where Evans ‘screamed at Gruffudd at the top of her lungs,’ and told him she was going to ‘Amber Heard’ him, and told the girls, ‘If daddy’s creepy with you let me know.”
‘This is harassment,’ said the judge who cited another occasion, where Evans disclosed online that Wallace suffers from multiple sclerosis, causing distress to Bianca. ‘This is emotional abuse – this is coercive control.’
Of Evans’s expressions of regret in the witness box about her harassment of her former spouse and his new wife, Judge Convey asked, ‘Is it true remorse? I am not persuaded. But it is a positive step forward.’ He conceded that Evans’s online trash-talking ‘has abated somewhat – it’s not at the same level of violence or hate. But there has not been sufficient showing of responsibility.’
The judge, who told the court that he had thought about renewing the restraining order permanently rather than just for five years, said it ‘is incumbent on Alice to get therapy. And he warned her that violating the new restraining order ‘could lead to criminal prosecution.’ He also urged both Evans and Gruffudd, who hasn’t seen their daughters for two years, according to Evans, to ‘find a way to co-parent’ to give him the chance to be a part of the girls’ lives again.
I feel so sorry for Ioan and Alice’s daughters, who have spent the past five years being manipulated by Alice and her insanity, narcissism and need to destroy the man who left her. It sounds like Alice has done the most to completely ruin Ioan’s relationship with those girls. As for what the judge said… I’m glad that the judge didn’t both-sides this issue. This has always been about Alice and her utterly unhinged behavior. I wish the court had done more to protect the girls from Alice, but I think it’s been such a huge mess for so long and the court could only do so much.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid.
