My EU-hating ex physically abused me... it’s why I had to leave him
Attacks gave me courage to take No10 to High Court over Article 50 vote ...and to defy rape and death threats after my historic victory BOMBSHELL CLAIM OF BREXIT LEGAL CHALLENGER ... AND OUTRAGED DENIAL BY HER EX
THE former model who blocked Theresa May’s Brexit plans was embroiled in an extraordinary row last night, claiming she was inspired to take on the Government after defying her abusive anti-EU ex-husband.
Gina Miller said she was given legal protection after being physically attacked by Jon Maguire, who stood on an anti-Brussels platform at the 2010 General Election.
Mrs Miller said businessman Mr Maguire abused her before their marriage broke up 13 years ago. It gave her the strength to defy the online rape and death threats she received as a result of her historic Brexit court challenge, she told The Mail on Sunday.
Last night, Mr Maguire, 55, accused Mrs Miller of ‘lying’. He vehemently denied attacking her and claimed she had had a ‘drink problem’ since she was a teenager.
In a counter attack, Mrs Miller, 51, said the drink allegation was totally false, adding: ‘That is funny because that [drink] is his problem. Speak to anybody in the City who knows him.’
She stood by her claim that Mr Maguire had abused her, saying: ‘He threatened me on many occasions.’ She alleged that Mr Maguire was given a police caution after she accused him of attacking her, and had been ordered by a court not to contact her.
The war of words came after a candid interview with this newspaper in the wake of the High Court ruling that Parliament must have a vote on leaving the EU, throwing Mrs May’s Brexit timetable into disarray.
A barrister, former model, philanthropist, and financier, Mrs Miller took on the media, a hostile establishment and Downing Street – and won. Sitting in her office near fashionable Sloane Square in Chelsea, West London, on Friday, she told how, as the lead claimant in the case, she survived a ferocious online hate campaign by Brexit supporters.
She calmly reeled off the insults: ‘Gang-rape her, she’s a witch, stay in the kitchen scrubbing floors, black women shouldn’t show their face in public, throw acid in her face.’
Fellow claimants withdrew through sheer terror, but not Mrs Miller. She believed it was her destiny. ‘I am fairly fearless because of horrific experiences in the past. I’m a victim of domestic violence,’ she said. She claimed that ‘someone’ was second husband Mr Maguire, whom she met in the late-1990s after breaking up with her childhood sweetheart, with whom she had a daughter Lucy Ann, now 28.
‘Having survived that it makes you fearless… I survived for a reason – to be who I am now and to speak up when I don’t think things are right.’
Mrs Miller, who has two children aged 11 and nine by her third husband, multi-millionaire hedge fund manager Alan Miller, said that Mr Maguire was cautioned by police in Wiltshire, where the couple lived.
‘He was called in [by police] on quite a few occasions. Once when I ran away from the house and went to the police station [after] he had attacked me.’
She said a Family Court in Wandsworth, South London, issued an order preventing Mr Maguire hav- ing contact with her or her daughter Lucy Ann. ‘He used my daughter to get in contact with me and they ruled he couldn’t have contact with either of us.’
The court claim was denied by Mr Maguire. Mrs Miller scoffed at Mr Maguire’s claim that she had a drink problem after being sent to England from her native Guyana, a former British colony in South America, by her parents when she was 11. ‘That is quite funny because that is his [Mr Maguire’s] problem.’ Mrs Miller said friends would confirm her account of her abuse at the hands of Mr Maguire.
Shortly afterwards, two individuals – a man and a woman – contacted The Mail on Sunday. A man, who gave his name but agreed to be quoted in return for anonymity, said he worked with Mrs Miller and Mr Maguire when they were married.
He said: ‘Jon was a charmer at first, but over time it was clear he was a heavy drinker. Gina would sit there in tears telling me what a hard time he was giving her. I saw him belittle her in front of people.’
The man added he had not seen Mr Maguire be physically abusive to Mrs Miller, although Mrs Miller had told her he was.
A woman, who declined to give her name, said she had seen bruises on Mrs Miller’s arms that Mrs Miller claimed had been inflicted by Mr Maguire. Mr Maguire strongly rejected both individuals’ claims.
As the Government prepares to attempt to overturn the Brexit ruling by appealing to the Supreme Court, Mrs Miller denounced critics who said she had no right to meddle in the matter because she was ‘not even born here’. She was born in Guyana, formerly British Guyana. Her father, Doodnauth Singh, was Guyana’s Attorney General.
She said: ‘Britain is my home, my children are British. There’s a lot of hypocrites out there. Some of the partners and parents of MPs who have criticised me aren’t British. I’ve been here longer than some of them. My parents had an incredible reverence for Britain. We had pictures of the Queen in the house and held up Britain as the greatest country on Earth.’
She says her parents sent her and her elder brother Gary, now a GP in East London, to the UK when they were children because Guyana was a dictatorship and they wanted them to grow up in safety. It led to them living unsupervised in a flat in Eastbourne, East Sussex, while Gina went to a local private girls’ school, Moira House.
‘We couldn’t get any money out of Guyana so my parents bought a flat and said, “You have to be grown up.” I was 13 and my brother was 15.
‘I had to work part-time in Eastbourne – the school didn’t know about it.
‘I tell my children, “Mummy used to come home from school, go to a charity shop and buy the highest shoes I could find to pretend I was 16 and get a job as a chambermaid to earn money to buy food. It makes you tough.”’
She said her 11-year-old son prompted her to launch her legal action when he burst into tears at the family’s £7million Chelsea home on discovering the referendum result. Committed Remainer Mrs Miller said she rapidly worked out that the Government could not leave the EU without a vote by MPs.
She is adamant the Government will lose its appeal to the Supreme Court, to be heard next month. ‘I don’t understand why MPs are so frightened of a debate in Parliament. If they don’t believe in representative democracy, they should all give up their jobs and go home.’