Karl Stefanovic’s ex-wife Cassie Thorburn can’t have it both ways with the media
Karl Stefanovic’s ex-wife Cassandra Thorburn wants to get on with her life and be left alone by the media. But appearing on morning TV and signing up to a reality show isn’t helping her sympathy case, writes Susie O’Brien.
Susie O'Brien
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Cassandra Thorburn says she wants to get on with her life and be left alone by the media.
But every time she talks publicly about her former husband Karl Stefanovic, or appears on a TV news show, she fuels media interest in their breakup.
She can’t have it both ways.
Cassie appeared on Studio 10 this morning, putting the spotlight firmly back on her as her ex and his new wife start their honeymoon in Aspen.
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First she said New Idea had made up quotes claiming she called Stefanovic a fake and a narcissist.
Fair enough. Fake news like this is never acceptable.
But she kept going, wailing about media intrusion in her personal life
“After 2½ years, I’m not a news story,” she said. “I’m just a mother who’s divorced from my ex-husband, and I’m trying to find my place back in the world.
This constant harassment, every time my ex-husband’s in the news — which is often — they then come looking for me, my children, my mother.
“It’s not OK, and I don’t think as a society we should be accepting it.”
So why is she using the media, then, to put forward her claim for victim status?
I’d be more sympathetic, but Cassie has talked at length about her most private moments; today she even revealed her two youngest children were forced to go to their father over Christmas.
The subtext is that the oldest would be with her because he was old enough to choose, but the younger two were stuck with their dad.
This appears to be a horrible thing to do to her kids, who have been with their father in Mexico.
Cassie is so determined to get back at him — but keep the high moral ground — that she treats her children the way she accuses others of treating her.
She rats on them in public.
Let’s recap some of the things Cassie’s said about Stefanovic in public.
“The children still have a father but I don’t have a husband. He really is dead to me and no, we won’t ever be friends again,” she said a few months ago.
In August, she said she and their kids “feel like we’re dead to his family and almost anyone from our old life.”
It’s the kind of news you share with your best friend over a glass of wine; it’s not something a smart woman and loving mother should share with the country’s biggest-selling magazine, sparking dozens of headlines.
She also admitted to going through her ex husband’s phone.
There are no winners in nasty, public divorces, but there are often many losers, starting with their children. As I’ve said before, Cassie has stopped being the one people feel sorry for, and has started being just as bad as her ex-husband.
As someone who’s been through divorce myself, it makes me sick.
I wish they’d all just go away and work it out in private in the best interests of the children.
Cassie, let’s not forget, is so shy of the limelight that she’s spending next year appearing on Dancing with the Stars.
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