Garvey’s Ex Vows to Block ‘Tough Love’ for Daughters

The ex-wife of former baseball great Steve Garvey said Friday she will block any attempt by Garvey and his new wife to impose “tough love” disciplinary measures on her two daughters.

Cynthia Garvey, who was jailed overnight Monday for refusing to comply with a court order giving her ex-husband visitation rights, said she is furious about comments made during her brief jail stay by Garvey’s second wife, Candace.

The new Mrs. Garvey, who wed the ex-slugger Feb. 19 after a six-week courtship and lives with him in Del Mar, had said she agreed with the jail sentence because “the judge needed to let Cyndy know she was not above the law and she should not have let her children think they were above the law.”

Candace Garvey also said she thought her husband would have to be stern in reconciling with his daughters, Krisha, 14, and Whitney, 13.

“I think it’s going to take tough love. It will be no different than taking a child out of a cult situation or getting a child off drugs,” Candace Garvey said.

“Tough love” is a term commonly used to describe strict, unyielding parental supervision. Advocates of “tough love” say it is a last-ditch effort to cope with drug abuse and other child-rearing crises.

Cynthia Garvey said she could not discuss the 131-day jail term imposed on her by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Frances Rothschild because “I’m in a state of appeal right now.”

Despite impassioned pleas from her attorneys, she was abruptly taken into custody in court Monday but was freed the next day after an appeals court ordered her released on her own recognizance.

Garvey did say, however, that she “went into a state of shock” during her stay in the Sybil Brand Institute for Women and that she believed the sentence “is exactly what Steve wanted.”

“He’ll do anything, he’ll grab at any straw to stay politically afloat. By putting me in jail, he thinks he shows he was right,” she said.

Describing the “tough love” approach as “a terrible form of love, just terrible,” Cynthia Garvey said her teen-age daughters would be subjected to it “over my dead body.”

“The premise of ‘tough love’ is that you just keep coming at children, and you put them in isolation. If she (Candace Garvey) thinks she’s going to impose tough love on my kids, she has another thing coming.”

Referring to Candace Garvey as “this new player, whoever she is,” Cynthia Garvey said: “This woman should have just shut up and (admit), ‘Hey, I don’t know anything, this is between Steve and other people.

“She’s obviously out for what I call her Warhol moment in the sun,” said Cynthia Garvey, referring to artist Andy Warhol’s aphorism that, in the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.

Garvey, an occasional TV talk-show host, also said she has decided to drop her ex-husband’s last name and resume using her maiden name, Cynthia Truhan, because “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life answering for Steve’s actions.”

She said her two daughters might follow suit because they have wanted to break ties with their father since reports surfaced that he impregnated two former girlfriends.

“They don’t want to be around Steve Garvey. They’re afraid of him. He has lied to them,” she said.

“And now he has really crossed the line. You don’t put a single woman in jail whose kids are sitting at home waiting for her,” she said.