The other half of the Laughing Samoans, Eteuati Ete has admitted to being a wife beater.
He old Stuff New Zealand, “Publicly, people thought I was a funny guy, a great guy. But privately, I was a guy with anger issues,” .
“I thought I’m going to become a really old man, a sad old man, if I continue to live in a controlling and violent way. And I thought no, life’s got to be better than this.
Two decades ago, Eteuati Ete punched his wife Mele Wendt so hard while she was driving that she ended up with a black eye.
“There was a violent side to Ete,” Wendt says. “But to the rest of the world he was this charming, effervescent person.”
Ete, now 55, rose to fame as half of the comedy duo the Laughing Samoans. But he now admits he struggled to manage his controlling personality, and the anger that came with it.
His wife, Mele Wendt, daughter of novelist Maualaivao Albert Wendt, said the first time she got whacked badly across the face by Ete when she was 25, “I was totally shocked.”
In their first few years of marriage there were seven incidenta of violence.
Ete was eventually convicted of assault and ordred into counseling. His wife tooklout a protective order the the coupl; lived apart for eight months,. Ete and Wendt says their children never saw the violence.
For the past ten years they have been back living together happily and want others to see that changing a violent situation is hard but possible,.
