Wife is ‘not expecting him home’
LORD Sewel’s humiliated wife let it be known yesterday that he was ‘not expected’ to return to their marital home.
As excruciating photographs emerged of her portly husband in a prostitute’s orange bra, she was keeping a dignified but low profile at their £1million home in Scotland.
Jennifer Sewel, 54, the third wife of the 69-year-old peer, opted not to discuss news of his sex and drugs shame with two call girls.
Instead she sent a friend to the door of the whitewashed house, who said pointedly: ‘Lord Sewel is not here and is not expected.’
Fifteen years the peer’s junior, she was a director of Aberdeen University until a few weeks ago.
Sewel’s children have also retreated from the limelight by locking down their social media accounts. They are said to be horrified by the sordid revelations involving him.
Kate Sewel, his 36-year-old daughter from his first marriage, is a former senior researcher at the Ipsos-Mori polling organisation in Glasgow.
Her 2011 study examined ‘what helps young people cope when they are victims of crime’. Neither she nor her elder brother Tom, 38, were available for comment yesterday. He appeared to have changed his name online, removing the word Sewel and becoming ‘Tom Sorrel’ on Twitter.
Their mother, Rosemary Langeland, 69, who became Sewel’s first wife in 1968, politely declined to comment at her home in Edinburgh. They married in Malvern, Worcestershire. Their children were not even teenagers by the time he married wife number two.
His second marriage, to divorcee Leonora Harding, 70, a clinical psychologist, lasted 14 years and produced no children.
She too lives in Edinburgh, and was not making any comment yesterday.
They divorced in 2002, and three years after that, Sewel married for the third time.
He appears to have met Jennifer Hartley – now Lady Sewel – through his academic work at Aberdeen University, where he was a professor and she was director of policy, planning and governance. A spokesman said she had now moved to Durham University. Her two children, Charlotte and Victoria, took Sewel’s name and became his step-daughters.
That was ten years ago, and according to a neighbour of the couple yesterday, they seemed ‘a very nice, comfortably off family’.
But on Sunday, it emerged that, in addition to snorting coke with prostitutes, Sewel claimed to have slept with 13 women at his London flat, including a Labour politician.
The neighbour said: ‘It’s a crying shame for his wife and daughters. What must they be going through? They keep themselves pretty much to themselves but you see them going about.’
David Clyne, a fellow former Labour councillor, said: ‘He had a reputation with women but not for prostitutes. The women used to form an orderly queue. He was very much in demand.’
A former colleague at Aberdeen University said: ‘I’m surprised to hear this but not shocked. He had a bit of a reputation as a lady’s man during his time at the university. I feel really sorry for his daughters and wife.’
‘A reputation with women’