From Alison Boshoff and Clemmie Moodie
MAKE no mistake, this is the tawdriest of celebrity marriage break- downs. sex tapes, infidelity, blackmail, abuse, violence — every deadly sin is to be found here. And now, following Mel B’s accusations that her husband stephen Belafonte subjected her to years of violence, forcing her to have threesomes, filming the encounters and then using the videos to blackmail her into obeying his every command, comes his side of the story.
We can reveal the American producer fiercely disputes the 41-year-old former spice Girl’s claims he forced her to take part in tawdry sexual exploits — and says he has given his legal team films showing her willingly participating in the couple’s debauched sex games.
As for Mel’s claim he made their nanny — Lorraine Gilles, 26, a beautiful, blonde German — pregnant, before apparently suggesting all three of them live together in a twisted menage a trois, and then making the nanny have an abortion, Belafonte, again, has a very different story. He is set to make explosive allegations about his wife’s sexual preferences. Last night, a friend of Belafonte said: ‘By the sounds of it, things are about to turn incredibly nasty between Mel and stephen.
‘He wants his day in court. stephen insists all their sexual exploits and threesomes were completely consensual and sometimes even instigated by Melanie.’
together, the couple have a daughter, Madison, five, while Mel has two daughters, Angel, ten, from her previous relationship with actor Eddie Murphy, and Phoenix, 18, from her first marriage to former dancer Jimmy Gulzar.
Belafonte has also told friends the couple originally agreed to divorce amicably to protect the children. sadly, it seems there is little chance of that now. News of Belafonte’s fightback comes as sources also disclose that Mel’s uK relatives have long had worries about the marriage —with particular concern for ‘what it was doing to the children’.
their fears reached fever-pitch when, the source says: ‘they heard stories about all sorts of things going on with Mel and stephen, including sex parties, and they wanted to get Phoenix out of there.’
Last summer, in the midst of talks about another spice Girls reunion, Mel’s former bandmate Geri Horner was so worried that she offered for Mel and her family to come to live with her in London.
A source close to Mel says: ‘Both Geri and former spice Girl Emma Bunton were very concerned about Mel, her state of mind, when they spent time with her. It was obvious things had gone badly wrong between her and stephen.’ so who’s the real guilty party? Just six weeks after giving birth to Angel in April 2007, Mel was dating Belafonte. Whirlwind? More like a hurricane.
Belafonte, now 41, was a film producer, who claimed (erroneously) to be related to legendary singer Harry Belafonte. Within weeks, he had married Mel.
Mel now explains her behaviour in court papers filed this week, which sought a restraining order against Belafonte, saying: ‘ At the time of our marriage in June 2007 I was exactly two months from the birth of my second child.
‘At the time I was vulnerable. I was giving birth as a single mother, my self- esteem was very low and my hormones were way out of balance due to the pregnancy.
‘Respondent [Belafonte] rushed in to help me in every way . . .
‘However . . . he became controlling, manipulative and abusive. He proposed to me after a very short relationship. In hindsight I believe this kindness was in essence his way of “grooming” me given his recognition of my vulnerability stemming from my recent pregnancy.’
It soon came to light that Belafonte hadn’t declared his previous marriage to a woman known only as Nancy, who had the marriage annulled after less than 12 weeks amid claims he had been ‘emotionally abusive’.
A criminal conviction also emerged. In 2003, Belafonte was convicted for battering his former partner Nicole Contreras, mother of his young daughter. He was spared jail after taking part in a ‘Domestic Violence Batterers’ Programme’.
When these details came to light, Mel defended her husband, claiming the conviction was a misunderstanding. she said: ‘Everything I stand for is about being a strong, independent woman, so for him to be seen as a wife beater is devastating for me because he’s not — he never has been.’
In court documents this week, though, she wrote that she had been deceived. ‘At the time of our marriage I was unaware that Belafonte was not the Respondent’s legal surname, nor was I aware that he had been previously married.’
Regardless, Belafonte, it seems, quickly got to work — and arranged a vow renewal ceremony in Egypt in 2008, sponsored by OK! Magazine to attract maximum revenue.
But all was reportedly not well behind the scenes — and, according to Mel, her husband began blackmailing her to have threesomes with other women.
Mel said: ‘ When I threatened to leave, Respondent [ Belafonte] informed me that he has videos of our sex life and other private moments . . . I have lived the past decade in fear that Respondent would release intimate videos of me that would embarrass me and damage my reputation and my career. Once Respondent made the threat of releasing videos it became impossible to say no to him, giving him complete control.
‘ Respondent often times demanded that I participate in sexual intercourse with him and random women that he brought back to our hotel rooms. If I objected to participating, he would threaten to release compromising videos of me.’
Other debauched sex reportedly took place in the Playboy Mansion, with Belafonte apparently ‘badgering’ Mel to have threesomes there.
In a therapy session filmed for Mel’s 2010 reality tV show, It’s A scary World, Belafonte said: ‘I’m a super freak, I need to have certain amounts of sex,’ adding that withholding dalliances was equivalent to ‘taking my food and water away from me’.
such a relationship is at odds with Mel’s image of a strong, independent female. Previously, she has been frank about her love life, stating: ‘People call me lesbian, bisexual or heterosexual, but I know who’s in my bed and that’s it . . . I have a huge libido and a great sex life.’
Lady Victoria Hervey is one reported lover of both Mel and Belafonte. Both Belafonte’s brother, Jeremiah stansbury, and Mel’s ex husband Jimmy claim the couple were ‘obsessed’ with porn. Others say theirs was an open marriage.
such a woman, you might imagine, would not let a man humiliate her. Yet Belafonte reportedly did just that. After he hired their German nanny, Mel claims he ‘ would degrade me in front of her . . . telling me how much younger and better looking she was. I later discovered that Respondent was having sex with Lorraine and was paying her inordinate amounts of money’.
After the apparent shock of the nanny’s reported pregnancy, Mel then claimed Belafonte ‘ used money earned by me to pay for Lorraine’s abortion, and he used money earned by me to pay for Lorraine’s hotel stay while she recuperated from the procedure’.
Mel also says Belafonte would regularly call her a ‘f***ing monkey’, ‘stupid’, ‘fat ugly and old’, ‘dumb’ and a ‘derelict’.
One can only wonder how Mel — a self-made woman with a £40 million fortune, and a successful career as a pop star and television presenter of the X Factor and America’s Got talent — can have borne such treatment for so long.
Indeed, she seems to have been brought so low that death appeared to be the only escape.
When she took an overdose of aspirin after being abused by him in 2014 while filming for the X Factor, shockingly, she claims Belafonte turned away an ambulance, locked her in a bathroom and told her ‘die, bitch’.
When her driver came the next morning, he took her to hospital rather than to the studios.
‘I was badly hurt,’ she said. ‘I had security standing outside my hospital door with a picture of [Belafonte] so they knew to keep him out.’ those heady days of ‘Girl Power’, of being a woman so in control, seem so far away.
SEXUAL BLACKMAIL — WHAT SHE CLAIMS . . .