It’s about to get a whole lot dirtier!
She says he made her join in threesomes and got the nanny pregnant. But now Mel B’s husband is to hit back in their lurid divorce with explosive claims of his own ...
As well as strongly denying all Mel’s accusations, Belafonte says it is he, not she, who is the wronged party in their marriage.
As well as an affair with their nanny, he claims Mel had flings with other men behind his back, including one with a well known, married British actor.
The Hollywood source also says he will claim in court some of their more vicious arguments stemmed from her excessive drinking. while the pair did not sign a prenuptial agreement prior to their marriage, a Hollywood source said yesterday: ‘stephen says all he wanted was a quick, amicable divorce and that they had originally agreed he would get around £10,000 a month plus half the proceeds from the sale of their house which is standard practice under Californian law.’
‘Just’ £10,000 a month would sound like a good living to many. As reported yesterday, Mel filed her divorce papers in the nick of time — just 11 weeks before their tenth wedding anniversary, after which date she would have been required by law to pay him spousal support in perpetuity.
she is now likely to only have to pay him for half the length of their marriage.
indeed, she’s already drawn attention to money being a contentious issue, claiming he paid $325,000 of her money without her consent to support his child by his ex partner. Mel claims she asked her accountants to require her say-so for spending over $5,000 — only to apparently later learn Belafonte used her email account to review and approve his expenditure requests. Mel’s mother Andrea was dismayed when she heard her daughter had married Belafonte in 2007. she said: ‘i think she’s made a big mistake. How can you fall in love that quick?’ Both Andrea and Mel’s sister Danielle attended the couple’s vow renewal in egypt. But during that four-day celebration, they fell out with Belafonte, whom they found intimidating.
By the following year, relations had deteriorated. Andrea and Danielle even backed Mel’s first husband Jimmy Gulzar in one of many suits filed by him when seeking access to daughter Phoenix.
when Danielle flew out to los Angeles in 2009 to try to talk to Mel about Belafonte, Mel refused to even meet her and told her she was just jealous and to ‘butt out and mind your own business’.
even a serious family illness didn’t reunite them. in 2011, Danielle’s son Hendrix was desperately ill in a london hospital, but there was still no contact from her sister. Then 16 months old, he was battling Kawasaki syndrome, a rare illness that attacks the immune system. His life was saved by blood transfusions.
Danielle said: ‘it sounds terrible, but . . . it would feel better thinking that maybe Mel is mentally unwell in some way. i’d like to think there was an excuse, a valid excuse for why she has cut off her entire family through all of this pain. That would be almost forgivable . . .
‘i thought [Hendrix] was dying and i never got a phone call.’
Then, last month, it was reported Mel’s feud with her family was over. she invited them to los Angeles, spurred to do so by the death of her father, Martin, earlier this year, and the reported behaviour of Belafonte at the time.
in her court filing, Mel says Belafonte told her to ‘suck it up. if he’s going to die, he’s going to die’.
she also believes he took her passport to delay her return to the UK. she arrived in leeds on February 28. Her father died on March 4. ‘After my father’s passing i made the decision to separate and divorce Respondent . . . Respondent again threatened that if i did not separate in a manner acceptable to him, he would ruin me by releasing videotapes he claims to have made of me.’ Mel also claims Belafonte insisted on coming with her to spice Girls meetings last year about a possible reunion. ‘while i was there Respondent became angry and began screaming at me. He . . . threatened to send the other spice Girls compromising videos of me.’
This wasn’t the first time Belafonte reportedly humiliated her while she was working. she claims he physically attacked her in November 2007 after she had been on the Dancing with The stars finals and said: ‘i would come to realise that Respondent’s beatings and abuse would coincide with my career success. when something good would happen for me, he would beat me down to let me know that he was in charge.’
Another reported attack came in 2012 after recording for the X Factor in sydney and, later that same year, Mel says he ‘punched her in the face with a closed fist’ after the spice Girls performance at the Olympics closing ceremony.
But it was while filming X Factor in london in 2014, she says, that the abuse became ‘overwhelming.’
when Mel eventually appeared on television, her injuries ‘could not be concealed, even with heavy theatrical make-up’.
simon Cowell introduced her to divorce lawyers — yet she still did not move against her husband.
As this week’s explosive allegations have shown, the gloves are finally off.