Ex Spice Girl
Mel B opens up about her 10-year marital trauma
© ALBERTO PIZZOLI / Getty Images
Four years after her divorce from Stephen Belafonte, Mel B is still reeling from the trauma she suffered from the abusive marriage. With open words about her own experiences, the singer now wants to raise awareness of domestic violence.
Mel B, 46, divorced her ex-husband, film producer Stephen Belafonte, 46, in 2017. He abused her emotionally and physically. She documented the terrible events she experienced during the ten-year marriage in her book “Brutally Honest” in 2018. Now the singer is opening up again about the trauma of the abusive relationship, which she’s still trying to process.
Mel B: “The trauma of abuse can last a lifetime”
As part of the #NoMeansNo campaign of the “Sun” and “Women’s Aid”, Melanie Brown, as her real name is, speaks about the ten traumatizing years in her life – to create visibility. She told The Sun that things happened that she still can’t remember properly because “trauma after abuse can last a lifetime.”
But almost five years after the relationship ended, Mel B still wakes up in the early hours of the morning and has “terrible fragments of noise and images in his head”. Things that she’s been trying to suppress “come to the surface — things that can still fill me with shame, sweat and fear.”
As a patron of the non-profit organization Women’s Aid, Mel B shares her story to help those affected because she knows “that many women who are raped and abused in a relationship feel powerless and invisible.”
Singer thought that no one would believe her
She too felt the same way: Despite her fame and fortune, the former “Spice Girl” feared that she would not believe what happened to her. “My ex had drilled into me that no one would ever believe me, that I had no proof and that because alcohol, drugs and sex were part of our relationship, I would be branded for life.” But she decided to write her book because she knew millions of other people are going through the same thing.
© Future Image / imago images
During the research, she and her co-author found out how much Melanie’s daughter, Phoenix, 22, saw of the abuse. “Knowing what my daughter saw is killing me.” Phoenix is now also involved in the campaign, visiting schools to educate young people about domestic violence and sexual consent.
“We need to talk about it”
During their marriage, Mel B turned to alcohol and drugs to numb her pain. “I was completely detached from being filmed having sex – one of the most humiliating things I’ve endured in my abusive relationship,” she reveals. The Brit has lost all sense of self-esteem, telling herself that if she does everything, it will change.
Through talking to other sufferers, she has realized how many women have gone through the same thing. That’s why it’s so important to her to change something: “As ugly as this situation is, it once again highlights the massive problem of abuse of women in the home. We have to talk about it, deal with it and do everything in our power standing do to see justice done.”
Source used: thesun.co.uk