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Mel B (Melanie Brown) is back as a judge again on America’s Got Talent and she has been going through a very public scandal with estranged husband Stephen Belafonte. According to TMZ, in April 2017, Brown was granted a restraining order against Belafonte and she made many claims against him, along the lines of severe abuse. Included in these claims are that Belafonte allegedly got their nanny Lorraine Gilles pregnant and that Belafonte physically assaulted Brown on many occasions. In Brown’s legal statement, she said that he “threatened me with violence and threatened to destroy my life in every possible way … destroy my career and take my kids from me.” Additional allegations that Brown has brought into her case against Belafonte include that Belafonte allegedly used Brown’s money to pay for their nanny’s abortion, that he demanded she have threesomes with “random women,” that he threatened to release sex tapes if she did not follow some of his demands, and that he kept a gun in the home.
Belafonte has denied the claims against him. But, when it comes to nanny Lorraine Gilles, The Sun reports that in court documents, her lawyers stated:
Gilles’ sexual and employment relationship with Brown continued for approximately seven years. The couple had sex sporadically, sometimes having sex multiple times in a week and at other times going months without sex … Belafonte was not present during most of the sexual encounters between Gilles and Brown. Indeed, at no point did Gilles and Belafonte engage in any sexual acts without Brown’s knowledge or participation. The only times Gilles and Belafonte had sex was when Brown herself invited her husband to join the couple in the bedroom, at which point Brown would often serve as the ‘camera man’ and record the sexual encounter and/or take part in the menage a trois herself.
Gilles has said that she feels betrayed by Brown’s claims and that she “now feels publicly exposed, ashamed, embarrassed, and violated by Brown’s thoughtless and unnecessary discussion of the abortion in her declaration.”
Sharon Osbourne, who had worked with Brown on The X Factor weighed in on Brown’s relationship with Belafonte, speaking about it on television, saying that:
In the situation that she’s been in for 10 years, it’s not just physical, it’s mental abuse too. Three years ago, in the final two days of “X Factor”, she didn’t make the first day and she was in the hospital. And it was reported in all the papers that said ‘allegedly’ she’s been beaten by her husband. And she came back for the final day and she had a black eye and bruising everywhere, but she made the final … This has been brewing and people talking for a very, very long time. You know what, she’s a good girl. She’s a great mother. She works her bum off.
As for Brown’s fellow AGT judges, Simon Cowell talked about Brown’s sad news on the Today Show that:
It came out in the press that I was advising her, she was with my lawyers – none of that was true, I had no idea … All we were trying to do was support her, because she’s our friend.
According to E! News, Brown has said that Belafonte’s abuse against her started in 2007. And, this is not the first time that Belafonte has been involved with domestic abuse claims. E! reports that in 2003, he pleaded no contest to domestic battery against the mother of his first child, Nicole Contreras. As a result, Belafonte was sentenced to 36 months of summary probation and 30 days in jail.
In March 2017, news broke that Brown filed for divorce from Belafonte after ten years of marriage.
Another tragedy in Brown’s life that happened recently was the death of her father. In tribute to his passing, she posted the below Instagram photo.