Spice Girls’ Mel B Fighting Ex-Husband Stephen Belafonte’s $5 Million Lawsuit And Effort to Gag Her

Spice Girls star Mel B fired back at her ex-husband Stephen Belafonte’s lawsuit accusing her of lying about abuse during their marriage, In Touch can exclusively reveal.

According to court documents obtained by In Touch, Mel B (whose real name is Melanie Brown) asked the court to sanction Stephen for his “blatant abuse of judicial process in filing this action, which lacks any colorable basis in fact or law.”

Her lawyer said Mel, 49, “endured [Stephen’s] physical and emotional abuse during their tumultuous decade-long marriage.”

The attorney said Mel “escaped [Stephen’s] all-encompassing grip on her life with the help of the courts. And after the couple divorced in 2017, [Mel] devoted herself to protecting vulnerable women around the globe using the most powerful tool available to her — the same one that made her a star — her voice.”

Back in May, Stephen filed a bombshell lawsuit against Mel in federal court accusing her of a ten-plus-year campaign to ruin him with lies about him being abusive.

In her response, Mel’s lawyer wrote, “Displeased with [Mel’s] exercise of her constitutionally protected freedoms, [Stephen] filed this baseless SLAPP suit to litigate plainly time-barred matters in a foreign forum that lacks personal jurisdiction over Brown.”

He added, “And as if that were not bad enough, [Stephen] reveals his bad faith by asking the Court to enter a flagrantly unconstitutional injunction that would prevent [Mel] from ever speaking publicly about her memoir or Belafonte for the rest of her life. Although dismissal is both warranted and necessary, the only medicine strong enough for this vexatious lawsuit is an order sanctioning [Stephen] and his counsel.”

Mel asked for the case to be dismissed and that Stephen be on the hook for all her legal fees. In the suit, Stephen accused his ex of spending the “better part of the last decade engaging in a deliberate and wide-ranging campaign to cause him severe emotional distress and destroy his reputation.”

His lawsuit said, “[Mel] has stopped at nothing to falsely charge [Stephen] with crimes and horrific offenses, including physical beatings, rape, financial abuse, emotional abuse, sex trafficking, and illegal gun possession.”

Mel and Stephen got married in 2007.

The Spice Girls singer filed for divorce in 2017 and then obtained a temporary restraining order against him. In court documents, she accused him of beating her viciously during their marriage and threatening to release sex tapes he filmed of them.

Stephen has denied all of the allegations.

The temporary restraining order was eventually dropped.

The exes share a 12-year-old daughter named Madison, who has lived with Stephen since Mel’s work visa expired in 2019. In his lawsuit, Stephen claimed, “The long-brewing harassment orchestrated by Ms. Brown began with a fraudulent claim of domestic violence in 2017.”

He said, “Despite claiming that “Mr. Belafonte would and could hurt me and my children,” intending for such statements to be broadly disseminated to the international gossip press, [Mel] soon dismissed her own baseless claims, gave Mr. Belafonte primary custody of their minor child, and was forced to pay out over half a million dollars.”

He added, “[Mel’s] campaign of abuse has continued to the present day with the 2024 re-publication of her best-selling book about her marriage to [Stephen], wherein [Mel] has leveraged her thirty years of fame to attack Mr. Belafonte in a malicious and vindictive global smear.”

His suit continued, “From lying to the courts and the public about Mr. Belafonte beating her, causing a split lip and swollen face, to fabricating a jealous attack over the recording artist Usher during filming as a judge on the reality competition series The X Factor, to incredible stories of Mr. Belafonte cutting off her funds, leaving her with no credit cards, no internet, and only $936 in her bank account, Ms. Brown has been profiting off of her public lies as she portrays Mr. Belafonte as a “monster” on global television and media appearances.”

Stephen said his reputation has been ruined as a result and demanded $5 million in damages.

In addition, he asked for an injunction prohibiting Mel from publishing further defamatory statements about him. A judge has yet to rule.