While Mel B physically recovers from her wild injury that led to a severed hand and broken ribs, she’s also mentally and emotionally recovering from her previous relationship.
As she promotes her new autobiography Brutally Honest, Scary Spice chatted with E! Online about the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) she has been suffering after getting out of what she claims was an abusive relationship with her ex, and why she’s on a “mission to shed light and bring awareness” for others.
Related: Mel B Is Resting Post-Severed Hand Injury
Mel first opened up about allegations of abuse against her ex-husband Stephen Belafonte, and shared:
“I thought I was hiding it so well. My work was my savior because he couldn’t come to my work.”
But she also shared that part of her PTSD means not being able to remember much of what she endured, including alleged verbal threats and alleged physical battery, so she had to ask close friends and family “a lot of stuff” while writing her book, since she had blocked much of the alleged incidents out.
Now that she and Stephen have officially split, and they are in the midst of a custody battle over their daughter Madison, she’s focusing on her recovery first and foremost:
“Very few people make it out without the serious damage of the scars on the inside and outside. I am adamant to talk about it and I am adamant to be on my road to recovery and healing.”
While she can’t change her past, she opened up that she hopes to use her position to share about the dangers of domestic abuse as she heals, and:
“To shed light and bring awareness to being in what she claims in court filings was an abusive relationship or what an abusive relationship is and what it looks like, and what the signs are to look for so you can catch it early before it’s too late.”
Following her interview, Stephen issued a lengthy statement about his ex:
“She was good at hiding things because she was an addict and she needed someone to blame. If you look at Melanie’s book, Melanie takes no responsibility. Melanie needed to make these lies up because Melanie is an addict. I challenge Melanie Brown to bring her original accusations and her deposition that she filed in court, and her hospital records that we’ve tried to get her to show, because now she has changed her story to mental abuse because it’s very hard to sue for mental abuse.
Melanie has come up with this lie about gas-lighting where the abuser supplies you with alcohol and drugs and then yells at you about doing alcohol and drugs. But once again, contrary to the video and text messages that I have, not only am I telling Melanie to stop doing cocaine around the kids and to stop drinking, Phoenix is on these videos too telling her mother to stop.
When the true victims of domestic violence find out that Melanie is lying to sell books—as an example, Melanie talked so much in her deposition about a Domestic Violence organization that she was championing saying it was her favorite organization the world [sic], when asked by lawyers at the deposition she didn’t know the name of [the organization]. She also didn’t know the name of the woman who ran it who she said was her best friend.”
To get help for yourself or someone you love, call The National Domestic Violence Hotline, 1-800-799-7233.
[Image via Mel B/Instagram.]
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