Mel B’s ex-husband, Stephen Belafonte, has leveled new accusations against her in court as their custody battle rages on.
Belafonte and Mel B finally finished their contentious divorce back in December 2017, but they are still not done taking shots at one another. The former couple is back in court asking a judge to help work out the detailed boundaries of their custody arrangement, and in new court documents obtained by The Blast, Belafonte claims that Mel B has a racial bias against African Americans.
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“Simply put, I believe Petitioner is simply upset that I hired an African American nanny and that Madison has African American friends when she is with me,” read Belafonte’s latest filing about the former Spice Girl.
As evidence, Belafonte pointed to a text messages he and Mel had exchanged. In one, she referred to one of their daughter’s friends as “a black boy,” and in another she suggested that the boy’s family had “needles and glass pipes” lying around their house. In addition, Belafonte himself claims to have been on the receiving end of racist remarks when he was with Mel B. He said that she once yelled at him to get a job, calling him “lazy like every other black man.”
Belafonte made the argument that their daughter was in danger of inheriting this type of thinking. Madison is six years old, and the parents currently share joint custody of her on a court-appointed schedule.
“I am concerned Petitioner will try and pass her racist agenda off to our daughter (as Petitioner believes she is Armenian,)” Belafonte finished.
No major rulings were made at the hearing, which is the last one for Belafonte and Mel B until next month. The former couple went back to court last month when Mel B accused Belafonte of trying to keep their daughter from video chatting with her while she was in his care. At first, Belafonte denied these accusations, while Mel B said that they were a form of emotional manipulation.
The singer claimed that Belafonte was “doing this in an attempt to either alienate Madison from me and get her to believe that I am not thinking or caring about her.” Belafonte countered that he was not preventing the calls, but that Mel was failing to make them and then blaming him in order to make him look like a bad parent. Their custody battle is now back in the air.
