Mel B: ‘When I showed up with a swollen lip, people began asking questions’
MEL B’s court documents details tale of her ‘prison’ of a marriage and claims the nanny who slept with her husband also spied on her.
FROM the nanny who spied on Mel B and laughed in her face when she sacked her, to a husband who slowly, methodically, physically and mentally beat her down, the former Spice Girl’s bombshell court documents are a horrifying account of years of alleged abuse and control.
Her staggering claims of how she suffered at the hands of estranged husband Stephen Belafonte are contained in the statement she lodged to get a restraining order against him.
It cites a litany of blackmail, hurt, humiliation and heartbreak on the part of Mel B, full name Melanie Janine Brown. It reveals a woman controlled by even her 25-year-old nanny, and whose ‘Scary Spice’ persona was used against her by Belafonte, who allegedly told her repeatedly that nobody would believe her if she tried to get help because everyone already thought she was “crazy”.
Belafonte, who has been called “evil” by Mel B’s sister and denies the abuse claims, overnight filed his own response to the divorce petition, disputing the date of their split and seeking spousal support from the singer and TV host, TMZ reports.
According to the court documents, there were constant reminders, not just from Belafonte, but also from the couple’s nanny — German woman Lorraine Gillies, who Belafonte installed into their home and bed, according to Mel B — of what would happen if she tried to escape the prison of mind control and manipulation that was her marriage.
When he couldn’t be watching her, Mel B claims, Ms Gilles — Belafonte’s lover, and his “agent” was doing it for him.
Belafonte denies all the claims, saying he’s shocked by them and has been set up to look like a bad guy. In a lengthy statement to TMZ, he “vehemently” denies the claims of “domestic abuse, threats and exploitation”.
“When the Court determines the truth, it will become clear that this entire charade was nothing more than a smear campaign intended to cover up Ms Brown’s own conduct during the marriage in light of her current involvement with a family television show, and in an effort to unfairly gain leverage both financially and with respect to custody of the children.”
THE ABUSE CLAIMS
Mel B’s painful account alleges the quick decay of a marriage as Belafonte took control of her, and her life.
He told her she was “worthless”, nobody knew “how really stupid” she was. She was “fat, ugly and old”, a “derelict” and “no-one else would want her”, she claims.
She says he’d put his face inches from her’s, and scream insults.
According to the court documents, as she smiled for the cameras, make-up artists were covering her bruises.
When she banned him from TV sets, fearful of another outburst and his rudeness to those around her, her phone would light up constantly as a jealous Belafonte peppered her with calls and text messages.
He’d demand she participate in threesomes. If she objected, he’d threaten to make compromising videos of her public, she claims. She’d beg him to delete them.
He first got physical, she claims, just months after their wedding, placing both hands around her neck, “choking me ... then slammed me down on the hardwood floor”.
He’d hurt her. And hurt others. And then make her cover it up.
In July 2012, while filming X Factor in New York, with artist Usher, she claims Belafonte flew into a jealous rage, accusing her of flirting.
He punched her in the face, splitting her lip, she claims in the court papers.
“When I showed up on set with a split lip, people began asking questions,” she states.
She lied, saying it was an allergic reaction.
A month later, she was lying again, after he allegedly attacked her in Prague, punching her and pushing her face into the carpet.
He made her pay for the medical treatment in cash, so it couldn’t be traced, she claims.
She couldn’t hide the bandage on her face, but she hid the cause.
The Twitter explanation she posted about falling over running in heels, she claims, was forced by him.
Belafonte is “a large, extremely aggressive, hostile and violent individual,” Mel B says in the documents.
She’d tried to leave him many times, but each time, he “threatened me with violence and threatened to destroy my life in every possible way”.
All, she claims, so Belafonte could “gain and keep control over me and my finances”.
And he did, for almost a decade.
In the end, she was just waiting fearfully for the next attack. Still is.
“I fear for my safety and am in fear of being irreparably harmed,” she writes.
THE NANNY
The court document details the humiliation Mel B felt when Belafonte brought Gilles into the family’s employ in 2010, and she discovered the pretty blonde wasn’t just caring for their children.
She claims he’d degrade her in front of Gilles, saying the nanny was better looking and younger.
He set Gilles up as her rival, and the nanny answered to, and reported to Belafonte, Mel B says.
“I later discovered that Respondent (Belafonte) was having sex with Lorraine and was paying her inordinate amounts of money,” Mel B alleged.
In July, 2014, Belafonte and Gilles told Mel B Gilles was pregnant, Mel B says. “(He) told me he wanted to have the baby and all three of us live together. I was shocked and in disbelief.”
By the time Mel B travelled to the UK for X Factor duties later that year, with the children and Gilles “there was no pretence that Lorraine (Gilles) was anything but an agent for (Belafonte), and there to keep tabs on me for (Belafonte),” Mel B alleges.
‘DIE B***H’
By the time Belafonte joined them in the UK in December 2014, the “mind games” were overwhelming, Mel B alleges.
Emotionally and physically exhausted, she downed a bottle of aspirin, then regretted the action, and tried to call 999 (England’s version of triple 0) for help.
She claims in the court documents that Belafonte stopped her, locked her in a bedroom and said “die bitch”. She busted the lock, and as she begged him to let her out to get her stomach pumped, claims he slammed the door on her head.
An ambulance called by a friend was turned away by Belafonte, she alleges.
The next morning, a driver collected her to take her to work, took one look at her, and took her to hospital instead. She was there for two days, with security guards outside her room stopping Belafonte seeing her.
She claims he took the nanny and children to Germany at this point and sent Gilles back to London when authorities started asking questions.
“It is my further understanding that London authorities issued a warrant for Respondent’s (Belafonte) arrest,” Mel B claims in the court documents, saying he instead flew to Los Angeles to “evade law enforcement”.
“I am informed and believe and thereon allege that due to a warrant being issued ... he was ultimately banned from England,” she alleges.
BRUISES GO PUBLIC
Mel B had missed filming for X Factor UK as she recovered, and the media storm was gathering.
She returned to work, but on television, no amount of make-up could cover the swelling and bruises on her face and arms. Still frames of Mel B, and her injuries, flooded the internet.
She was injured, but defiant.
“During that performance, in defiance of Respondent’s continued abuse, I stood on stage with my hands up so that it was clear I was no longer wearing my wedding ring,” she states.
“I wanted to send a message to Respondent that I was no longer going to let him abuse me”.
HE TRIED TO PAINT ME AS CRAZY
In response, she claims, Belafonte tried to paint her as crazy.
She alleges Belafonte sent her therapist, Dr Charles Sophy, to London to “check up” on her, and tipped off paparazzi, so pictures of Dr Sophy visiting her would “spin” the story of him beating her — already running like wildfire — into a suicide attempt.
She claims she didn’t tell Dr Sophy about her injuries — “I was still protecting my abuser” — but refused Belafonte’s “demand” that she release a press statement that she had attempted suicide.
With Mel B back in LA, he “continued in his efforts to paint me as crazy” to Dr Sophy, “without admitting his abuse” according to the court papers.
He threatened to tell X Factor and the press she had attempted suicide. Eventually, she claims, she told her employers she had, in an effort to “escape from my husband and his abusive conduct. They offered assistance to get me away as far as possible from my husband”.
‘FIRING’ THE NANNY
Mel B first tried to sack Gilles in January, 2015. Belafonte, she says, went “ballistic".
He screamed that Gilles raised their children “far better than I ever could”, that she was his “ride or die bitch” and “the only woman that completely” had his back.
“How dare you fire her,” Mel B says he raged over three hours. “No matter what she will always be in my life.”
Mel B claims he instructed her to give Gilles her job back, with a raise, threatening “Lorraine could be a witness against you and give a story to the press and tell Child Services. Your career will be ruined”.
Mel B folded. “The old fears emerged,” she says.
“I rehired Lorraine and fell back into the same old pattern”.
She claims Belafonte now treated Gilles as his wife: “I was second rate”.
Gilles “felt empowered” and became manipulative and demanding, knowing Mel B couldn’t sack her, she says.
In June, he insisted a family holiday in Ibiza include the nanny. She’d leave the boat daily to escape the name-calling, and to get away from them.
After the trip, Mel B again gave Gilles notice she was being sacked.
The nanny laughed in her face. Belafonte, she alleges, again went ballistic.
But Mel B stuck to her guns.
When she was gone for good, Mel B claims she discovered he’d paid from her bank account — as well as $300,000 for three years “nanny services” — another $60,000 to a company for which Gilles was a promotions manager.
SYDNEY, 2016
Mel B claims she banned Belafonte from coming to Sydney for The X Factor Australia last year.
He bombarded her with phone calls and texts. When he couldn’t get her, he harassed the new nanny. If that didn’t work, he harassed security.
When she tried to spend several hours on a boat with friends, he somehow got the captain’s number, and rang repeatedly.
“The captain became so annoyed, he took us all back to shore,” she claims.
She claims similar harassment happened in November in London, especially when she took the children to see her mother.
Belafonte, she claims, “had a huge resentment against my family ... and would do anything to keep them away form me,” she writes in her court papers.
“They had expressed concern about Respondent’s physical and emotional abuse and they had seen the bruises in the media”.
ENOUGH
The death of her father, and Belafonte’s alleged actions around it, were the final straw.
Mel B’s father was dying of cancer, but work contracts were keeping her in the New York.
Once the contract was over, she contacted Belafonte in LA, asking him to send her passport so she could fly straight to her father’s bedside.
She claims he said he couldn’t find it.
“I believe Respondent took my passport so as to intentionally delay my travel such that I would not see my father prior to his death,” she alleges.
She got an emergency passport and made it to Leeds, England, and her father, on February 28, 2017. Mel B’s father died on March 4.
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