Stephen Belafonte slams Mel B

Stephen Belafonte has accused Mel B of trying to "play the victim".
The 43-year-old producer has slammed his ex-wife for her allegations he was abusive during their marriage and claims she would have done anything to preserve her own image and keep her "addiction" hidden, and blasted her for laying her problems bare in her new autobiography, ‘Brutally Honest’, which could be read by her three daughters.
He told DailyMail TV: "I do not know who I was married to, at all. It is a person who had the capability of probably slitting my throat if it protected her as an addict.
"What she has said to protect her own image, to play the victim was nasty and horrific. I’m dumbfounded.
"She blames me for her cocaine use, she blames me for the sexual stuff, it’s just disgusting.
"I don’t know why a person who cares about their daughters, who is girl power, would ever in a million years want this to be out there for your younger daughters to read."
He also insisted there was no way Mel would have stayed in a violent relationship and claimed she is simply trying to make him look bad to "justify" her own issues.
He said: "Melanie is a Leeds firecracker. Who is Melanie scared of, there was no fear.
"To be honest with you. I feel like Melanie is projecting… she needs me to be this horrible, abusive, controlling, piece of dog crap in order to justify the things that Melanie had going on in our relationship.
"Listen, we had a reality show, we were on Instagram. We had people in our house every day. We had meetings and Melanie was flying by herself. I was running a restaurant, I was making movies, I was doing things and what Melanie described in her book is what real domestic violence looks like.
"She took a snapshot of it and tried to insert it into her life and it doesn’t fit well."
The Spice Girls singer has claimed she was blackmailed by Stephen over sex tapes they made, and in court suggested he had drugged her and secretly filmed them in the bedroom, but he insists that wasn’t the case.
He said: "She said that I had sex tapes, she had the world thinking that I filmed pornography, you know, sex tapes of my wife without her knowing.
"My wife was filming me. I want to show the videos of her filming me…
"I’d have to be crazy to even think about releasing any of the sex tapes publicly and why would I want to subject my daughters to that anyway?"
The businessman denied Mel – who has Phoenix, 19, from her first marriage, Angel, 11, with actor Eddie Murphy and seven-year-old Madison with Stephen – had turned to drugs and alcohol because of their difficult marriage, insisting she had been using substances since she was around 18.
He said: "It’s been going on prior to me. And then I talked to some other people and people got in contact with me and it’s just crazy… to know that you don’t know who you’ve been with for 10 years. And I do not know who I was married to at all."
And though Stephen – who admitted filming Mel while she was on drugs but claimed it was to show her therapist – doesn’t think his ex-wife was a danger to the children when she was drinking, he claims she wasn’t "emotionally available" to them.
He said: "She wasn’t, you know, beating our children. She wasn’t starving them or locking them in a room.
"The biggest problem was just having our children around the craziness that came from Melanie when she would be doing her drugs and drinking."