Cooper dumps 'skinny' squeeze for AVO ex

BAD-boy fashion designer Wayne Cooper has dumped his model girlfriend and reunited with the wife he was convicted of assaulting less than a year ago.

Together again ... Cooper with Marsh (left) and Cooper with Houghting (right).

BAD-boy fashion designer Wayne Cooper has dumped his model girlfriend and reunited with the wife he assaulted less than a year ago.

His reconciliation with long-term de facto Sarah Marsh, mother of his two children, came after she was invited to his Fashion Week show and given front row seats, not far from Cooper's girlfriend Heidi Houghting.

"Yeah, we are back together," Cooper said. "I guess people have started talking about that now. Sarah and I have always had a special connection. We'll just see what happens."

The couple and their kids were spotted last Sunday having breakfast at Bondi before Cooper flew off to Melbourne for The Logies.

During the evening, Cooper talked openly to The Sunday Telegraph about Marsh, with whom he had a 12 year relationship. He also described Houghting, who he pursued after his split with Marsh, as "very skinny".

Marsh said yesterday: "We're very happy. We were a little worried about how people might perceive the situation but we're doing what is best for us."

She said the couple would take it slowly. "The children (Ruby, 10, and Jude, six) really want us to be together and we don't want to disappoint them by not being back together in a good and healthy way," Marsh said.

It is a complete turnaround from their violent and very public bust-up a year ago, which put Cooper in court and precipitated a painful custody battle and a messy division of assets.

Cooper was convicted in Waverley Court of assaulting Marsh after an argument at their home on June 19. He was given a two-year good behaviour bond and an apprehended violence order. The AVO was lifted at Marsh's instigation so she could attend Fashion Week.

Marsh later detailed a litany of aggression by Cooper in a $15,000 paid interview on A Current Affair.

"What happened on June 19 wasn't a one off. It'd happened numerous times in the eight years prior," she said. "And when it kept on happening - him ripping the clothes off my body and pushing me and shoving me to the ground, I knew I had to put myself first.

"I became the voice of domestic violence and the dirty secret came out. It hurt us all but I stand by everything I did and said."

Only last month Cooper hit back at her account in an interview with a magazine. "I put my hand on my wife's shoulder, that's all it was. I was made to come across as a f****** axe murderer."

However, he also told Today Tonight he took responsibility for his actions and regretted "with all my heart what happened".

"I love my wife, my children. It was not anything I wanted to happen," he said.

Houghting, who worked as a house model for Cooper, is said to have precipitated the split when she pressed him to make a decision about their relationship during Fashion Week.

"Once Sarah Marsh decided in the lead up to Fashion Week that she wanted Wayne back, Heidi didn't stand a chance," said a friend of the model.

Just weeks before, the pair were inseparable and he was talking about marrying Houghting on Vomo Island in Fiji.

Asked yesterday how Houghting felt about the split, Cooper replied: "She is devastated . . . well, how would you feel?"

Houghting and Cooper hit the headlines last January when he clashed with her ex-boyfriend, sports presenter David Murdoch, at Bondi Beach. Their altercation was played out in front of beachgoers and the paparazzi.

The split was costly for Cooper. He reportedly walked away with only $100,000 after the sale for around $2.5 million of the couple's Tamarama home.

However, he has now managed to secure the home for himself and has moved back in.

"I am in the Tamarama home we once shared," he said. "Sarah is in her home and we'll just see how it goes. I haven't really had a chance to think about it all because of the recent pressures of fashion week and working 24/7, but it is all going well."