For years, Spice Girls member Melanie “Mel B” Brown has been open about how she endured a decade-long abusive relationship. On Friday, the singer reflected on that struggle while also sharing an empowering update about where she is now.
Brown took to Instagram this afternoon to share a photo of her hand resting atop a set of keys. In a lengthy caption, she explained that the keys are to a new home that she was able to purchase with her own money after enduring years of “devastating” and “vile” financial abuse.
“Im soooo overwhelmed right now… not really able to speak but something has happened to me a few mins ago which is HUGE!!! I want to share it with other survivors like me coz all YOU survivors out there will know how emotional this moment is,” she began her post. “5 mins ago a man arrived at my door with a set of keys. They are the keys to my new home. A house I bought with the money I’ve worked bloody hard to pay for. It’s taken me 5+ yrs to be able to do this.”
Brown went on to recount how, in 2019, following the Spice Girls’ stadium reunion shows, she moved back in with her mom in her hometown of Leeds, England.
“In 2019 I had to come back to Leeds with NOTHING in my bank account. The money from the spice girls tour went on,” she explained. “ENDLESS lawyers fees his and mine. Still being drained by my ex non stop demands for more more more. I had to move into my mums bungalow my kids/ dogs/ low self esteem/ failures/ divorced. From Wembley stadium to my mums.
“This is called FINANCIAL ABUSE and it’s ugly devastating and vile,” she continued. “It’s hard not to crumble. Hard to rebuild yourself on the inside and out. … I share this coz it takes a LONG LONG time to deal with the trauma when see you’ve been left financially at ground zero and everything you nice had was gone. A mans mission was to destroy me mentally spiritually and financially but I wasn’t gonna let that happen.”
She concluded: “This will be my happy home. I’m thinking about my dad I’m thinking about my kids and I’m thinking about all those survivors out there you CAN reclaim your power. Trust and believe.”
Brown was married to producer Stephen Belafonte for 10 years and has publicly accused him of emotional, physical, and financial abuse. She filed for divorce in 2017 and released a memoir the following year, Brutally Honest, that detailed her relationship struggles.
Brown previously spoke about her abusive marriage in an interview with The Daily Beast last year, following her stint on the reality TV show Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test.
“I did [the show] because I’d been in a 10-year really abusive marriage. And I’m about five, six years out of that now,” Brown told The Daily Beast. “During that marriage, I suffered a lot of abuse on every single level. So when you’ve gone through something like that and it’s the person that you’re married to and you’re in love, or was in love [with], and you watch them absolutely destroy you into a million pieces, you only have yourself to piece back together. And that doesn’t just happen overnight. I saw this show as being part of me facing my fears and mending those little bits and pieces that I need to fill within myself.”
In the same interview, she said: “When you’ve gone through abuse, you have to really look at yourself and you’ve got so much shame and so much guilt for not leaving, for not standing up to it. So when I finally left, due to my father passing—I’d promised my dad that I was going to leave my abuser—I wanted to be able to stand strong and stand proud in my own body and my own mind, spirit, heart, and soul.”
Spice Girl Shares Empowering Update After Years of Abuse
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09.02.2024
For years, Spice Girls member Melanie “Mel B” Brown has been open about how she endured a decade-long abusive relationship. On Friday, the singer reflected on that struggle while also sharing an empowering update about where she is now.
Brown took to Instagram this afternoon to share a photo of her hand resting atop a set of keys. In a lengthy caption, she explained that the keys are to a new home that she was able to purchase with her own money after enduring years of “devastating” and “vile” financial abuse.
“Im soooo overwhelmed right now… not really able to speak but something has happened to me a few mins ago which is HUGE!!! I want to share it with other survivors like me coz all YOU survivors out there will know how emotional this moment is,” she began her post. “5 mins ago a man arrived at my door with a set of keys. They are the keys to my new home. A house I bought with........
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