Halle Berry’s Daughter Nahla Defends Her as Custody Battle With Olivier Martinez Escalates

Halle Berry’s increasingly bitter custody dispute with ex-husband Olivier Martinez has taken another turn, with her 18-year-old daughter, Nahla Aubry, submitting a court declaration defending her mother against allegations that she abused her 12-year-old son, Maceo.

Martinez recently asked for sole custody of Maceo and obtained a temporary restraining order after alleging that Berry physically assaulted their son during a Sept. 26 confrontation. He claims Berry jumped on Maceo, put her hands around his neck and choked him. Berry strongly denies the allegations, with her attorney calling Martinez’s filing “entirely meritless and deliberately misleading.”  

A judge granted Martinez a temporary restraining order covering both him and Maceo and temporarily limited Berry’s parenting time to specified daytime visits ahead of an Oct. 16 hearing. The judge denied Martinez’s request for sobriety monitoring, citing insufficient information. The temporary order does not amount to a finding that Berry abused her son.

Nahla Is Standing Behind Her Mother

Now Nahla, Berry’s daughter with Gabriel Aubry, has entered the case through a declaration filed in Los Angeles Superior Court. She described Berry as a loving, supportive and devoted mother who can be strict when necessary. Nahla also said she had never seen Berry hit, slap, choke, grab or otherwise physically abuse Maceo, and had never witnessed her place her hands around his neck or restrict his breathing.

That distinction is important because Nahla did not issue a glossy celebrity statement to PEOPLE or post one on Instagram. She submitted a declaration in a legal proceeding involving the mother and brother she has lived with for years.

None of us witnessed what happened on Sept. 26, and pretending otherwise helps nobody. A teenager becoming angry during discipline does not automatically prove abuse, but neither should serious allegations simply be dismissed because parenting adolescents can be difficult.

What does bother me is how quickly some people appear willing to treat Berry’s guilt as settled fact. What bothers me is how easily some people recycle the old “crazy” or “difficult” labels around Halle, largely because of her relationship history, as though a woman having several partners somehow proves something about her character. None of that is evidence of abuse.

Parenting a teenager can involve conflict, particularly when rules, phones, gaming or boundaries become battlegrounds. That does not mean every argument amounts to abuse.

Nahla’s declaration also deserves consideration precisely because she knows Berry as a mother rather than as a celebrity headline. She may not have witnessed the specific Sept. 26 incident, but Martinez did not witness it either, according to his own account; his allegations rely in part on what Maceo later told him.  

The court now has to sort through two radically different accounts. Until it does, there is nothing unreasonable about Nahla defending the mother she says she knows and nothing responsible about the rest of us declaring Berry guilty before a judge has even held the full hearing.