Jonathan Majors Had a History of Abuse in Relationships, Women Say

MS. DUNCAN AND MS. HOOPER’S RELATIONSHIPS with Mr. Majors briefly overlapped, though neither initially realized it.

When Ms. Hooper and Mr. Majors began dating, she said that he quickly expressed deep love for her but also became controlling, dictating where she could go, who she could socialize with and how she could behave. She was “not allowed to speak to anyone about their relationship, isolating her from a support system,” according to the pretrial statement. She became a shadow of herself, a Yale classmate said.

Ms. Chaudhry described Mr. Majors as “young and insecure” at the time of his relationship with Ms. Hooper. “Looking back, he is embarrassed by some of his jealous behavior,” she said.

Ms. Hooper got pregnant a few months into the relationship. When she told Mr. Majors that she had scheduled an abortion in two weeks, he insisted that she do it sooner, she said in the statement. Mr. Majors dropped her off at the clinic, where he was advised that Ms. Hooper would need an escort home, she said. But when she called him afterward to pick her up, he said he was heading to a rehearsal. Because she believed that Mr. Majors wouldn’t tolerate her discussing the situation with anyone, the statement says, she couldn’t call a friend; she feigned an escort and walked herself home. “I felt trapped and alone,” she said later in an interview with The Times.

Ms. Chaudhry said that because both Mr. Majors and Ms. Hooper were in the same show, they agreed they could not both miss the rehearsal, and that she would find her way home after the procedure. Ms. Hooper said they were not in the same show at the time.

“That deeply sad event is still a painful memory for Mr. Majors,” Ms. Chaudhry said.

In 2015, when Ms. Hooper confronted Mr. Majors with evidence that he was having an affair, he threatened to kill himself, her statement says. A year later, after they had split up and Mr. Majors learned that Ms. Hooper had a brief relationship with someone he knew, he phoned and berated her, her statement says, calling her a “whore” and saying, “I hope you die; kill yourself” and “I’m going to rip you out of my heart the way they ripped our baby out of you.”