Spice Girls’ Mel B Back in Court Days After Judge Shuts Down Plea For Sanctions Against Ex-Husband

Spice Girls’ Mel B‘s legal team rushed to court days after a judge shut down her effort to sanction her ex-husband Stephen Belafonte as part of his lawsuit accusing her of lying about abuse, In Touch can exclusively report.

According to court documents obtained by In Touch, a federal judge denied Mel’s plea to sanction Stephen, 49, due to his alleged “blatant abuse of judicial process in filing this action.”

Stephen filed a bombshell lawsuit in May. He accused the singer of spreading lies about him being abusive during their marriage, which lasted from 2007 until 2017.

Stephen denied the accusations. The exes share a 12-year-old daughter named Madison.

Madison has lived with Stephen since the singer’s work visa expired in 2019. In his lawsuit, Stephen said Mel, 49, spent 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 read, “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 [Stephen] 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 [Stephen] in a malicious and vindictive global smear.”

He said that his ex portrays “herself as a domestic abuse victim in order to market and sell a memoir laden with egregious lies.”

Stephen continued, “From lying to the courts and the public about [Stephen] beating her, causing a split lip and swollen face … [Mel] has been profiting off of her public lies as she portrays [Stephen] as a “monster” on global television and media appearances.”

The lawsuit demanded $5 million in damages and an injunction prohibiting Mel from speaking negatively about him publicly. Stephen opposed Mel’s request for sanctions.

Mel called Stephen’s request for an injunction “flagrantly unconstitutional.” In addition, her lawyer denied Mel had lied about the abuse.

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

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,” his lawyer argued in the motion to dismiss the case.

Stephen fired back at Mel’s requests. His lawyer argued, “[Mel’s motion for sanctions] is a vexatious tactic calculated to increase the costs of this litigation and waste the court’s limited and valuable judicial resources.”

His lawyer added, “Contrary to the impression that may have been imparted by [Mel’s] motion, this lawsuit is more than simply an action for defamation. [Stephen] initiated this action against [Mel] following [Mel’s] near decade-long campaign to cause him severe emotional distress and destroy his reputation.”

The judge denied Mel’s motion and allowed the case to proceed. In a newly filed motion, Mel asked the judge to reconsider the decision.