My advice to Salim’s lover — get out while you can
For all her beauty and self-proclaimed confidence, Missy Tysoe is already on the losing end of her relationship with Salim Mehajer before it really begins, writes Claire Harvey.
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WHAT is she thinking?
Can’t she do better?
What’s with the lips?
All those are reasonable questions to ask of Salim Mehajer’s new girlfriend, model Missy Tysoe. But the wave of abuse Ms Tysoe is copping over her relationship suggests we’re failing to understand one critical thing about the ‘flamboyant property developer’ and his history with women.
Salim Mehajer is not a clown. He’s a criminal — someone who has threatened rape and wished his ex-wife dead, who has been convicted of intimidating his ex-wife and cheating electoral laws, someone who breaches the bail conditions imposed upon him (that’s why he’s back in prison) and someone who seeks out — and boasts about — connections to heavy-duty baddies including bikies.
And that makes Missy Tysoe a victim. Already. For all her beauty and self-proclaimed confidence, she is on the losing end of this relationship before it really begins.
A man who records a video and then sends it to his wife, in which he threatens to rape her mother and wishes her dead? That man doesn’t deserve the love of a woman like Ms Tysoe. That man doesn’t change.
“Aysha, you’ve got five minutes to give me a call,” Mr Mehajer says in that horrific video, first published by A Current Affair.
“If you don’t call me in five minutes, I’m going to rape your mum, your mum and your f---ing dad. Call me now”. Later, he adds: “Aysha, I hope you die you slut.”
It is Mehajer’s vanity and hubris that brings him undone.
Most of Australia would never have heard of him — and he’d still be taking care of business as the deputy mayor of Auburn — if he hadn’t staged that bombastic 2015 wedding.
In our Sunday Telegraph newsroom that day, we got a couple of tips that “something big” was happening in a suburban street — and when our team arrived on the scene, they were flabbergasted to see helicopters, bikies on motorcycles, a fleet of luxury cars — all to celebrate the wedding of someone I, at least, had never heard of, embracing a bride who looked more like a hostage.
The media’s inquiries began with whether this mysterious Mr Mehajer had permission to block off his whole street for the festivities. The story has now become the demise of not just that ‘fairytale’ marriage, but his entire life.
In the syrupy videos made by Mehajer and Ms Tysoe, there are chilling reminders of the cutesy-pie videos he once made with his ex-wife, April Learmonth, now known as Aysha Learmonth.
It’s remarkable to see an adult man cavort like that — and even more surprising that any woman would find it appealing — but Salim never seems to have struggled to find girlfriends.
Ms Tysoe says she was “horrified” by that video directed at Aysha.
“I confronted him, and he said: ‘It was a few years ago and she broke my heart’,” she said.
Ms Tysoe this week revealed that since their relationship became public, she’s been bombarded with vile insults including suggestions she should kill herself and wishes for her to get cancer.
“Salim what are you doing Aysha was much more beautiful! She looks like a transgender man,” wrote one, according to an Instagram story posted by Ms Tysoe.
Ms Tysoe claims she doesn’t care. “Never judge a person on what you hear — but rather, how they make you feel,” she wrote on Instagram. She says Mehajer is “romantic” and looks forward to a life together post-prison.
Missy Tysoe seems like a nice person. She’s certainly handling the abuse better than most of us could — and she bats away insults about her body by candidly admitting she’s got fake lips and breasts.
But I hope she spends a little time away from Instagram, reading the words of the woman she most resembles: Aysha Learmonth.
Police had Mehajer charged with breaching Ms Learmonth’s apprehended violence order by sending her 400 social media messages after she left him and when she was in hiding from him, fearful of violence. He was ultimately convicted of sending an Instagram message that read: “Aysha, I hope this message finds you well. I mean it from the bottom of my heart. Consider it a friendly congratulations on your new business.”
Mehajer’s barrister said that was a warm and friendly message about her new salon. Ms Learmonth said it was a deliberate attempt to terrify her.
It worked. “Salim tends to find out what I’m up to,” she said. Let that be a warning to you, Missy.