Who Is Colbie Holderness? Rob Porter's First Ex-Wife Recounts Domestic Abuse

When the FBI conducted a background check on Rob Porter, an incoming aide to the White House last year, they found he had a history of abusing his wives. As the allegations resurfaced Wednesday, Porter resigned.

One of the women who was interviewed in the process was Porter’s first ex-wife, Colbie Holderness.

She recently came forward with her account of Porter’s abusive behavior, which lasted throughout their marriage, saying his physical attacks started during their honeymoon in the Canary Islands in the summer of 2003, CNN reported.

Holderness remembers being shocked when Porter kicked her thigh during a fight.

"I didn't quite know how to take it," Holderness said. "I had just tied the knot with him."

Holderness, who currently works at the Government Accountability Office in Washington, met Porter when she was a freshman at Wellesley College. Their relationship made a brief appearance in the Rolling Stone Magazine, where Holderness described Porter as an ideal boyfriend.

“For me, I find that the fact that our school is single-sex makes it more of a traditional dating experience,” she told the magazine. “The guy comes to my school, he comes to my door, he picks me up, he takes me out, he makes a real effort to get here. So for me, it just reinforces my conservative upbringing.”

After three years of dating each other, the couple got married. It did not take long for Holderness to figure out the man she married was not the person she thought he was.

He would also frequently throw her on the bed and forcefully push one of his limbs into her body.

"The thing he would do most frequently is he would throw me down on a bed and he would just put his body weight on me and he'd be yelling at me but as he was yelling he'd me grinding an elbow or knee into my body to emphasize his anger," she said.

However, the most “dehumanizing” of all, according to Holderness was the choking that followed. Porter would seldom leave a physical mark on her body, Holderness said, except the one time when he punched her so hard in the face during a vacation in Florence in 2005 that it left her with a black eye.

“He only punched me once, in the eye,” Holderness told Intercept. “He threw me down on the bed and punched me in the face. I think he was shocked that he had lost control to that extent.”

Holderness had taken photos of her blackened eye at the time and emailed them to herself, which she has shared with multiple news outlets.

“Up until then, he had always done it in a way that didn’t leave marks,” Holderness said. “I don’t know if that was conscious or not. He would get angry and throw me down on a soft surface — to his credit, it was always a soft surface like a couch or a bed…”

Holderness said she did not go to the police to lodge a formal complaint against her abusive husband because she feared she would not be taken seriously.

“I was too bewildered by the whole thing… Believe me, not calling the police is something I regret.”

Spencer Paulson, Holderness’ brother, who shared a room with Porter’s younger brother in college, said he had encouraged his sister to go to the police with her side of the story.

“I encouraged her to separate,” he said. “There’s just a very warping effect when you think you can’t say things for career reasons, and that’s very sad, but it’s true.”

Jennifer Willoughby, Porter’s second wife, whom he married in 2009, also came forward with a separate account of abuse she had to face, saying her ex-husband maintained at the time his turbulent behavior was the result of his failed marriage with his first wife.

“…His explanation for his anger was that his first marriage had been very toxic, rooted in arguments, accusations and manipulation and he was carrying over from that relationship,” she told the Mail Online.

Porter in a statement denied accusations by both his ex-wives.

"These outrageous allegations are simply false," he said. "I have been transparent and truthful about these vile claims, but I will not further engage publicly with a coordinated smear campaign."

Holderness married Senate staffer Skiffington Holderness in 2011.