In TV Interview, Josh Brown Discusses Physically Abusing Ex-Wife

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Former Giants kicker Josh Brown admits in a national TV interview that that he physically abused his ex-wife, although, just as he did last fall, he insists he never struck her.

In an interview with ABC's "Good Morning America" that will air Thursday, Brown said: "The world now thinks that I beat my wife. I never hit her, never once.

"I mean I had put my hands on her. I kicked the chair. I held her down. The holding down was the worst moment in our marriage," he added.

When Brown was asked how people are supposed to reconcile that he admitted to physically abusing his wife but not hitting her, he answered: "They're not supposed to. What I did was wrong. Period."

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"Domestic violence is not just physical abuse," Brown said. "We're talking intimidation and threats, the attempt to control, body language," he said. "An abuser is going to abuse to a certain degree to acquire some kind of a reaction."

Brown, 37, said is "fully accountable" for how he treated his wife.

Brown said he hopes to kick again in the NFL. Commissioner Roger Goodell said Tuesday there is still an active investigation underway into Brown's case.

The Giants released Brown in October after police in Washington state released writings by the Pro Bowl kicker in which he admitted to physically and verbally abusing his then-wife, Molly.

In a 2013 email to his wife, Brown referenced a bruise on her leg and said he was "ashamed and disgraced to call myself a husband."

Molly Brown also told police the kicker had gotten physical with her on more than 20 occasions, beginning when she was pregnant in 2009. In one incident, she claimed Brown grabbed her shoulders and pushed her into a door. In another, the football player pushed his wife into a large bedroom mirror, threw her on the floor, jumped on top of her and held her face down on the carpet, she told police.

In May 2015, Brown was arrested in Woodinville, Washington, on suspicion of assaulting his wife by grabbing one of her wrists as she tried to reach for a phone, leaving an abrasion and bruising, police said. Prosecutors did not pursue the case, citing insufficient evidence.

Just before the Giants cut him, Brown issued a statement in which he said then, too, "I never struck my wife, and never would."