Meredith Baxter claims she was abused; ex denies the claims.

Actress Meredith Baxter, 63, who pubicly confirmed she was gay in 2009, visited the Oprah show this week. Baxter talked about the release of her memoirs, which talks about her life including the suffering that she endured when she was physically ad psychologoically abused at the hand of David Birney during their marriage.

“It was so sudden and unexpected, I couldn’t tell you which hand hit me, or even how hard,” she writes in her new book. “I do recall thinking, ‘I’d better not get up because he’s going to hit me again.”

Birney, 71, denies all of Baxter’s allegations and called her book “an appalling abuse of the truth.”

The couple had three children together and after their split she went back to the name of Meredith Baxter and took another chance at marriage in 1995 to Michael Blodgett. The duo divorced in 2000 and Baxter has been with partner Nancy Locke since 2005.

Birney told sources that it “is unable to reclaim a single instance of joy or pleasure in all that time, not one occasion of love or delight or accomplishment in our entire life together as we built a family. Not one….Nothing from our first meeting to divorce. Nothing, in sixteen years. Really?”

“This blanket omission, this unrelieved denial of even a single instance of joy or pleasure in the creation of a family, the substance and amazing joy of raising children together, of simply being together with them during that time, is incomprehensible,” says Birney. “And sad.”

Birney claims his ex “conducted a relentless and brutal assault” against him in order “to destroy [the custody] arrangement and replace it with herself as sole custodian.”

“During that time,” he says, “She arrived in court repeatedly with various lawyers and several therapists, ‘recovered memories,’ accusations of abuse — a common charge in custody disputes — and tales of our life together that bore little resemblance to truth — a mean-spirited process that battered us all, especially the children….The court denied her suit on every occasion.”

The duo had shared custody of the children until time for them to go to college, “This current recycled version of our family story is no more credible now than it was then.”

Meredith Baxter is Gay

Meredith Baxter has always been known for playing quintessential TV mom on Family Ties. But recent events (The National Enquirer recently printed pictures of her and her partner on a lesbian cruise) have forced the 62-year-old actress to make a life-altering decision and tell the world that she is in fact a lesbian mom.

During an interview with Matt Lauer on the Wednesday episode of the Today show, Meredith Baxter publicly came out of the closet, leaving some fans shocked considering Baxter, formerly Meredith Baxter Birney, has five children ranging from 20s to 40s, and has been married three times.