Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
Welcome everyone and thank you for joining this Mishcon Academy Session, part of a series of online events, videos and podcasts looking at the biggest issues faced by businesses and individuals today. I am Kate Clark and I will be hosting today’s event. I am so excited to welcome to the Mishcon Academy, the indomitable force of nature, the fearless and fabulous, Melanie Brown, MBE. Better known to the world.
Applause
Better known to the world as Mel B or too many millions of us who grew up with them, Scary Spice of the iconic Spice Girls. Melanie burst on to the global scene in the 1990’s becoming an emblem of empowerment and individuality as part of a girl group that coined the term, ‘Girl Power’. With her trademark Yorkshire humour and boundless energy, she helped lead a movement that inspired millions of young people to embrace their uniqueness and assert their rights. Beyond the glittering façade of fame Melanie’s journey has been one of profound courage and resilience. Her critically acclaimed bestselling memoir ‘Brutally Honest’ co-written with Louise Ganon who also joins us today peels back the layers of her life revealing the struggles and pain of a working class mixed race girl from Leeds who rose to stardom only to find herself in a battle for her own identity and freedom within an emotionally abusive marriage. This evening Melanie will share with us not just the highs of her incredible career but the raw and unfiltered challenges she faced, the lessons learned and the strength it took to reclaim her voice and life. Her story is one of transformation of a woman who went from ‘girl power’ to ‘girl powerless’ and back again with a fierce determination to support and empower others. So without further ado let us give a warm, heartfelt welcome to a true survivor, a champion for the voiceless and a beloved icon, Melanie Brown.
Mel B
Oh God. That is, that is quite an introduction. I almost think, well where is that girl, she’s not here. God, that’s quite an introduction, thank you.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
Thank you, well thank you for being here. So going back to the very start.
Mel B
Yes.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
Can you share with us what your childhood was like growing up in Leeds and how it shaped your aspirations?
Mel B
Well I mean I was from a family that was mixed; my mum was white you know, blonde hair, blue eyes, proper Yorkshire lady and my dad was from Nevis, the Caribbean. He came over to England when he was 19; his family came over on the Windrush and I was, I think one of the few mixed race babies within that kind of area of Leeds. Er, and it was, I had a really joyous kind of upbringing you know, even though I used to get bullied a lot and chased home from school but you know, that’s what happened back in those days, it’s back when they had the cane, that was available, it’s not so much now – ever. And you know I look back on my childhood and my parents did the best that they could you know, my dad worked the same job that he did since he was 19 until the day he died, doing morning shifts, afternoon shifts one week and then late night shifts. He would ride his bike to work, he was a copper welder and my mum worked in C&A, you know, she was a sales assistant. So it was very humble like you know, very humble beginnings and then I was just full of energy so my mum was like distraught with me. They used to call me the wind because I would just run, not because of that bit, because I would just run and just cause a draught and so my mum found out down the street there was like um, a dance college, well dance school at the um local Society Club for 10p a lesson so she would ship me off there and I began to fall in love with the, the entertainment and the arts world. I don’t think my dad really appreciated that because he was all about education because he didn’t come from education back in Nevis and so my dad, if I got like a C or a D in my maths or English then my dance classes would get cut so I really wanted to keep on with my dance classes but also education was not for me, it was like a world that I just didn’t really understand.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
So what were your, what were your dreams and hopes and ambitions and when you, when you found fame with the Spice Girls, did it… was it what you imagined?
Mel B
Well I never really was seeking fame. I just wanted to be heard, you know I was very spiritual at a young age which my parents thought that was like the oogie boogie world and they didn’t really understand it.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
Because you’re a Reiki Master aren’t you?
Mel B
Yeah I am yeah, I am.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
Yeah, yeah. I didn’t know that until reading the book so.
Mel B
And I was just always asking questions. Do you know like the 5 year old that goes, but why, but why. Well that carried on throughout my whole entire life and so my mum and dad really didn’t have explanations for me so I used to think very big and you know, when you’re from Leeds you don’t go to London because that’s the big bad world you know, I remember when I first used to go to London on the National Express bus to my auditions um, for six hours that would take and my mum would go, ‘keep hold of your purse because people in London they’re pickpockets and they can stab you and there’s lots of dangerous things that happen in that world’ and yet I, I, you know, I became a Spice Girl and I travelled the whole entire world but fame, like I said before, that wasn’t part of my like knowledge, not like these days you can become like an Instagram star overnight. You know, I just wanted to be heard and knew I had a voice and I knew it wasn’t like everybody else’s but it was different and different to me was fine, I never used to braid my hair, I used to just wear my hair out to my mum’s horror. She would be like, ‘oh my God you’re going to school like that again’ and I’m like ‘but it’s me’ and I was just always on my own like little path without any guidance really and without anybody saying that that’s what you are meant to do.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
So sort of taking that little girl in Leeds and going to the dance classes and you meet these other four girls and you become the Spice Girls, how did…
Mel B
Well there was a long journey…
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
A long journey yeah.
Mel B
…before that. I was a dancer in Blackpool.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
Yeah.
Mel B
With feathers thinking I was fabulous, I’ve made it um to my dad’s horror when he showed up at the Horseshoe Bar in Blackpool and realised I was fishnets and a G-string, everything covered but you know, I was doing my thing. My dad was like, ‘God education, education’ and um I just had such a passion for expressing myself through dance and through singing and I wasn’t very good to be honest. I got better with time.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
Yeah.
Mel B
Yeah.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
So, so you meet these girls and you become the Spice Girls but so tied up with the Spice Girls was the concept of Girl Power.
Mel B
Oh that was our, that was our mission.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
So how did that, how did that come about and what did it mean to you when you were in the Spice Girls?
Mel B
Well Spice Girls, nobody wanted to sign us.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
Yeah.
Mel B
You know, nobody wanted to listen to our music even though we wrote every single song um, we would go in the car park and like stalk all the record producers and sing acapella and they’d be like, ‘oh God who are they?’. Girl groups don’t work, it was all about boy bands and we just kept on our mission and we were just fundamentally you had five girls that were just from the misfits of life that really didn’t fit in anywhere else apart from when we came together it was like we found our tribe and we were all from different backgrounds, apart from me and Mel C, we were very similar, Posh was very posh.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
Yeah.
Mel B
She got driven to school in a Rolls Royce. I didn’t, I had to catch the bus, two buses and take my sister.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
Yeah, well we know, we know it definitely was a Rolls Royce now don’t we so thanks David. Um, so you were given, you given the names Sporty and Scary and Posh by a journalist or…
Mel B
No we weren’t given the names, it was a lazy journalist…
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
A lazy journalist yeah.
Mel B
…That just said well I can’t be bothered, I think he just thought I can’t be bothered really to name them all, there’s two Mel’s, which one’s Mel um he just was like, well that one looks sporty, that one looks you know posh and he just gave us these names by accident really and they just stuck.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
What, what name would you have given yourself if your record label had said, ‘we need to give you names, people aren’t going to be able to remember you’.
Mel B
Well for a start I wouldn’t listen to the record label but um, I would have stuck with my name because I think there’s a bit of scary in everyone when you get like pumped up and you, you’re defending your, your female friends or you are defending yourself. I think us women we all turn into a little bit of scary, we have the confidence to do that.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
And what lessons did you, do you feel that you learnt from being in the Spice Girls that, that stay with you today and have kind of carried you through the rest of your life?
Mel B
Oh God I mean I’ve loved my time with the Spice Girls and we are still Spice Girls er, God I mean they gave me a lease of life, they gave me a belonging, they gave me something that felt like home no matter where we were in the world and you’ve got five young girls from the age of what, 18, 19 that were just glued together because we wanted to be together because we wanted to not just prove our point to the boy bands or anything else. We wanted to prove our point to ourselves that we could actually do what we wanted to achieve even though our parents were like ‘when are you going to get a real job? Go to the job centre and actually register for a real job’. We were like ‘no we’re going to make it’ but fame wasn’t part of that, it just kind of happened and we were a force to be reckoned with and I guess we, well hopefully we still are.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
Of course you are, definitely. Um, I want to talk to you about your book, ‘Brutally Honest’ and it really is brutally honest.
Mel B
Yeah.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
So you wrote it in 2018 and you’ve added three extra chapters um, this year. Why did you decide to write the book and speak out about your experiences?
Mel B
Well that’s a weird kind of um, I am going to answer it in a weird kind of way because I never really wanted to publish a book um, I wanted to understand what had happened to me within those ten years of my life so I called up Louise randomly, I said, ‘hey do you want to LA because I want to figure out what’s gone on and do you want to write this book for me?’ and she was like, ‘okay yeah’. Louise is a very established writer, she’s amazing er, yeah, she’s family now unfortunately for you Louise but you are. And she actually pieced together my life but she was unaware of the level of abuse – so was I – and so she actually went away and did her research because whenever she’d come and visit me in LA she’d put the little recorder in front of me and she’d ask me question and I would go, ‘I don’t want to talk about that’, yet I’m the one that made her come over here to help me write this thing of my life to piece my life back together and so she went on this incredible journey, got like about fifteen or sixteen people’s witness statements that had, that I had actually forgotten about because I was suffering from a lot of PTSD and she pieced back my life together so when she would put a chapter in front of me that was based off what the make-up artist saw, what Simon Cowell saw or what the accountant saw, I would go, ‘no that didn’t happen’ because I was in such denial but I was so open to understand because I, I came out of that ten year abusive relationship just flawed like what has happened. I was on the biggest show in America - which I am about to go back to – for seven years, America’s Got Talent. I was in XFactor. I was doing all these amazing like very highly public out there shows for people to watch and see yet I’d lost myself.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
Yeah I think one, one of the questions that I am sure a lot of people have for you is, how this happened and how it happened to someone like you from the outside you know, Scary Spice, mega successful, so confident but when you met your ex-husband you were in quite a vulnerable place and you talk a bit about how…
Mel B
Yeah.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
…like the abuser finds you.
Mel B
Yeah it’s not like you wake up one day and go oh I live with an abuser…
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
Yeah, yeah.
Mel B
…or I didn’t want to marry an abuser.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
When he came into your life you had just had your daughter, Angel um, and your relationship with her father Eddie had broken down um…
Mel B
Yeah.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
…and so you were in a particularly vulnerable place in your life.
Mel B
I mean I always say abusers they find you, you don’t look for them and that’s their job you know, I am sure we are all good at our jobs here and that job of an abuser is their job you know, they want to kind of find that women, especially if they are at the top of their game, if they have lots of money, if um, they are feeling vulnerable or if they have something that can benefit their life and they don’t stop abusing. They go from relationship to relationship and this is what I always say, um, abuse doesn’t just happen like immediately you know, it’s like a… if an abuser’s really good which they are as we know, they kind of love bomb you, you know they appear like your knight in shining armour and you just think ‘oh my God this guy is amazing, this guy is amazing how, how, how is this happening to me’ and you just fall for it and then the cracks start to happen but they do it in such a way where you’re, you’re not even aware of the red flags, you’re not even away of what they are doing so before you know it you’re isolated from your friends and family; say you booked a lunch with your mum or your friends, then that would be cancelled because you’re abuser wants to take you out for dinner and so you think ‘oh great’ and then you forget about your friends for a split second and then that starts to happen time and time again so the things that you actually loved and appreciated that were your confident people by your side, they start to slip away you don’t really realise why. Then the abuser abuses your friends and your family unbeknownst to you so you become so isolated and so kind of confined to just relying on the abuser that you don’t have, or you don’t feel like you have a way out.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
Because you, the back of the book you’ve got the fifteen warning signs of domestic abuse.
Mel B
Yeah.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
And you read those and I think Louise showed them to you which…
Mel B
Yeah Louise put the in front of me…
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
…are from Women’s Aid and…
Mel B
…and she said, ‘so what do you think of that?’ and I was like, ‘well you know, that’s just a timeline of my marriage’ and Louise said, ‘no, this is like the red flags from Women’s Aid that people go online and look at and if they can tick one or two of them you know, they have to realise that they are in an abusive relationship’ and I was like ‘oh fucking hell I tick all fifteen of them, what does that make me?’ and my world started to crumble because I think when people think that when you leave that kind of abusive relationship - which by the way took me about seven or eight times to leave – they think that your world is like perfect but you then have to learn how to function again because you constantly had somebody by your side telling you all the time what to wear, how to act so you are living on flight or fight mode, you’re walking on eggshells so you don’t even really know what reality is so when you get into your own reality you have to kind of start from scratch which is really hard to do.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
And what were the sort of first red flags because there’s just like, you describe this sort of drip, drip of control that you don’t notice and what was the point at which you started to think, ‘no this isn’t, this isn’t right and I’m not…’.
Mel B
Well I think as a women you have that gut instinct but when you’ve got kids involved and you’ve got a career and when you are constantly being told you are a bad mother, you’re this, you’re fat, you’re ugly you just think in your brain you know, maybe over time I can make him love me, it’s my fault and then you know, the walls just come crashing in and it wasn’t until my dad died that that gave me the strength to leave because I don’t think you know, if my dad hadn’t have died in such a horrible circumstance due to cancer, would I have actually left? I don’t know.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
Because you, you tried to leave seven times.
Mel B
Yeah.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
And it’s incredibly moving in the book when you talk about your dad’s death and how that gave you the strength and it almost feels like because you made that promise to him.
Mel B
Well by the way I hadn’t seen or spoken to my family in like nine years.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
Yeah, yeah. Can you just tell us about sort of what happened that gave you the final strength to leave?
Mel B
Well my… I knew that my dad was suffering from cancer, he would go into a really bad state with his cancer, then he’d recover and get treatment and then be fine and then at this point my sister, I was doing Broadway in New York, Chicago and my sister was calling me in between my dance thingies on stage saying, ‘dad is in a really bad state’ but I hadn’t really spoken or seen my family for so long but I knew that I had to go and see my dad, my dad was my world, he’s my everything you know and walking into that hospital you know, seeing my dad how I saw him, he wasn’t the man that I remembered him being like and everybody was fanning around him and round him and I moved him to palliative care and my sister would, I mean I was staying in the room with him every single night and I was wondering, the nurses would come in and say, ‘so you know usually when somebody is at this point in their life they are obviously going to pass, there’s nothing else that we can do for him you know, just be mindful of when you go and get a coffee or you go to the rest room that they are probably just going to die when you’re not there because they don’t want to put you through that’ so we and my sister would wait outside the room and go ‘dad you can die now’ and we’d go in the room and go ‘oh God he’s still alive’. So we got him a haircut, we bought him new shirts and he still wasn’t passing, it’s like he was just holding on and then in the back of my mind I’ve got my abusive marriage you know, the abuser still saying to me, ‘when are you home?’ der, der, der like tracking my every movement, hacking my phone and this that and the other and I was like, ‘no I am just here with my family’ because that’s the worst thing for an abuser to have is you go and visit your family that you haven’t seen for God knows how long. And then I remember I just leant over um my dad’s face when he was lying down in bed and I just said, ‘look if it helps you pass on you know, just know that if you leave now it’s fine and I promise you I’ll go and divorce that abuser’ and I had already flown my, I call her Black Grandma because that’s, Black Grandma and White Grandma. Black Grandma flew over from Nevis, she was there, there was a whole room full of the family and my mum too, even though my mum and dad were divorced and he just looked at me and took his last breath and I was like, ‘oh’ and I am in a room full of family and nobody else noticed that and so I was like, damn now I’ve got to…
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
I’ve actually got to do it.
Mel B
…I’ve promised my dad, I’ve got to go and do that. I got the next plane home with Phoenix and I left.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
But I mean, as you talk about once you leave that’s when you’re particularly vulnerable as well so…
Mel B
It’s not vulnerable, you literally have to start over.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
Yeah.
Mel B
It’s almost…
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
And you have nothing.
Mel B
…as worse being with an abuser because I’ve spoken to many survivors about this and because I am very direct and very northern as you can tell, when you leave that kind of relationship you are so like used to being told what to do and told how to act and told what to wear and like I said, that happens over time, that you are at a loss, you literally wake up. I mean it would take me hours to decide what to wear, my mum – because I lived with my mum in 2019 because that’s the only place that I felt safe and obviously I’d been financially abused – and my mum would go, ‘why is it taking you so long to get ready’ and I am like ‘because I can’t decide what to wear because I’m usually being told what to wear’ and that was a big thing for me and then I started realising that, oh my God I really have to build myself up again from the ground up, remember who I was before I had that abuse which is very hard to do because you can’t undo or unsee what’s happened to you.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
How, how did you do that? How did you find the strength to do that?
Mel B
I think because Women’s Aid really helped me a lot. I ended up having therapy there down the street at the local Refuge and I felt like I was amongst my people because we’d all been through the same thing and similar stuff so there was no judgment, there was no ‘well my abuse was like this or my…’, it would just, we just had like a, we all, us survivors, we have an understanding and a respect and er, sympathy and empathy and I think if it wasn’t for meeting those kind of army of women I wouldn’t be sitting here still talking about it because I know my voice helps all of them so even if I am having a shitty day, I know if I don’t speak then what’s going to happen to them.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
And do you think um, when I think of the fifteen signs of domestic abuse is, is such a sort of simple thing but so important for people who don’t realise that’s what’s happening to them that, do you think there is anything that, that could of, that anyone could have done or any intervention or…
Mel B
No. No because I didn’t realise that there were helplines, I didn’t realise there were places that you could go and find refuge when you’re in that world you think, ‘I’m the only one, it’s happening to me, I’m so embarrassed, I’m so ashamed, I’m so guilty, who’s going to believe me and um, do I really want to admit that to anybody because if I admit it to anybody else, I’m going to have to admit it to myself’ and that’s a rollercoaster and that’s actually, and that’s where the trauma actually kicks in because then you have to realise what you’ve lived and what your kids have seen and how, how did you even get there.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
Yeah and I know obviously you’ve been awarded and MBE, you are so vocal…
Mel B
Er can we just say that a bit like louder and slower.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
M.B,E. By the Queen
Mel B
Uh huh.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
Yeah and so you are working with Women’s Aid, you’re working with the Police.
Mel B
Which by the way was a total accident but Louise is kind of witchy woo. She put it in the book like and she quoted something along the lines of you know ‘charities like Women’s Aid that are mainly from volunteers’ and then I ended up being Patron so you kind of called it before I even…
Louise
You manifested it.
Mel B
…but take credit you put it in the book. Yeah you put it in the book and I mean the only reason I’ve had quite an interesting relationship like I said before, she’s happily married, great kids, great husband and she had no idea what abuse even looked like, what it sounded like but she saw that my walls would go up and I’d known Louise for years and she couldn’t really understand why I’d invited her over, not to write the book but to piece my life back together but why whenever she put the tape recorder down I would completely freeze and I would go, ‘I’m not here for your entertainment’, I’d turn in to proper Scary Spice then and she was like, ‘what is going on’ and then you found by like just being with me, like going in the car to different like meetings and stuff, just being in my world and then when it came to publishing it we couldn’t find anybody that was willing to publish it because back in 2017/2018 it was like ‘oh God we don’t talk about that, you’re a Spice Girl let’s talk about Spice Girl stuff’ you know, it’s like we don’t want to talk about that dirty taboo, dirty secret.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
But do you, has that changed since you sort of put the new chapters in? Have you noticed a change since.
Mel B
Well 2017 when I first brought it out and finally got somebody to publish it, they only ordered like a couple of hundred books or so and then when I mean I thought it was going to literally end my career and if it wasn’t for Louise and my mum and my daughter who also wrote their own chapter in the book, if it wasn’t for them saying you know, ‘Melanie think about how many other people you can help’.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
Yeah.
Mel B
But you have to understand I just thought it was happening to me because I didn’t know anybody else that had gone through that and basically how many people are in this room right now, say 100, 150 or so, so there’s going to be at least a third or if not more that have witnessed abuse on some level or that knows somebody that’s been through it and so we are living in a generation, we’re living in a world where those statistics are not, are not going down, they’re going up.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
Yeah.
Mel B
Which is really, really sad and if we don’t speak up about it and do something about it, then what, why are we all living in this world and trying to make ourselves feel better and our, our kids feel better. We have to make a difference, we have to make a change.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
And, and that’s why your main motivation for, for speaking so you know, clearly and powerfully…
Mel B
I am not sure I am speaking clearly today.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
…and honestly about it…
Mel B
But hopefully you get my point.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
I mean in, in this room there are lawyers, and non lawyers and therapists and Judges…
Mel B
Judges!
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
…and family lawyers.
Mel B
Really, let’s talk about Judges shall we. I’ve been in and out of Court for the last seven years and no disrespect…
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
What’s your message, but what’s your message.
Mel B
…no disrespect to Judges but, but I mean my petition which hopefully you all signed is about educating the Judges…
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
Yes.
Mel B
…because I’ve been in front of so many Judges and they take the perpetrator’s word and then I just seem crazy and then they just go with it and then they rule against me and I’m thinking all I want to do is protect myself and protect my children yet you’re handing my kids over to an abuser and making me drop my kids off to the abuser when I have like whatever Orders I have in place like where’s the sympathy, where’s the empathy. I mean we all have a job to do but Judges need to do it better and you can’t just actually say to yourself which you have said Judges, ‘we’ll just do our own um research, we’ll do our own um…
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
Training.
Mel B
…training on courses’. What, what…
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
So tell me what your petition is about then, yeah.
Mel B
...what course, what course are you going to do if it’s not verified by people that have been through it, that are actually going through it right now.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
How…
Mel B
Raise your hands Judges, as I’d like to see actually, no I am just curious, I’m not going to go like ape shit on you but I just want to see. Any Judges?
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
There are some here.
Mel B
I mean I judge all day but I’m not a Judge. Any Judges. Oh you’re a Judge and you’re a female, good, good, good. Is there anybody else, is anyone going to back her up, brothers and sister? Please. Anyone else dare to raise their hand?
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
Obviously, they are obviously not brave enough to come.
Mel B
So we have one Judge in the room and I am guessing your job is really, really hard because you have to listen to both sides and there is so much paperwork. I had a Judge that divorced me and my ex-partner and I had to drop my domestic violence charge because I believed my ex-partner that he was going to give me a quick divorce and I would have full custody but I should never have done that. But to go through you know, a whole trial of domestic violence and this is why I am so proud to be a UK citizen, not an American citizen but UK citizen because there’s no um, what’s the word? There’s no…
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
Limitations? Statute of Limitation.
Mel B
Yes, so I can report a crime five or ten years on where in America you have like three or five years to, to kind of get it like filed but you know what, maybe it’s going to take me ten or fifteen years to actually admit to myself what I’ve been through.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
Did you find writing the book with Louise, did you find that cathartic? Has that helped you to, to feel that you are helping others and speaking out and has it made a difference to you?
Mel B
Okay so I found it cathartic, yes but I still can’t read that book more than two chapters at a time. Like I couldn’t do the voice audio for it because I wouldn’t have given it enough like um, passion. I would still have been hiding behind or still be in denial but I know that book is there for life and I know my kids are going to read it. I know that other women are going to read it that I’ve been in this kind of situation and I know, thank God that I have helped a lot of people and it hasn’t, it hasn’t ended my career, it’s actually benefitted my career but that was a risk that I took.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
But you didn’t know that when you were…
Mel B
No I was like this is going to end my career and do you know what, I’d rather just go out on a bang with honesty, brutally honestly yeah rather than just trying to still hide behind what I’d been through because you know, it can’t have just happened to me and then when I realised there’s a whole epidemic of this and that’s why I’m so like thankful that I can speak like this but I can speak to big companies like Netflix and Apple and YouTube because I can enforce in their work environment, I can put HR on alert where they can spot the signs of domestic violence because at work that for me was my safe place you know, I’d go on America’s Got Talent with Simon Cowell, throwing water on him for ten hours a day and then I would be terrified to go home so my work was my safe place and for a lot of women we are the bread winners because we make the world go round um, you know, that’s our comfort space and you know abuse can happen to anybody, it’s not just the person from a Council estate, even though I am from a Council estate but I now live in a mansion thankfully, I’ve got my own money but it can happen to anyone, there’s no race, there’s no age, there’s no social like divide, it can happen to anyone. When an abuser wants to get you they will get you no matter what. They will come find you and they will not stop.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
Did, did that experience, that ten years of being in that abusive relationship, did that, how did that change you. Did that change you?
Mel B
Oh completely I couldn’t, I mean for about two or three years and I still get it occasionally if a door slammed I would jump out of my skin or if somebody yelled it would just take me back into that mode and I had to work so hard on myself and there’s a period um, for the survivors that are here, that you go through that nobody talks about. It’s like when you give birth they go, oh it’s beautiful, it’s wonderful, you forget about the pain. Then they forget to tell you that you have to go through giving birth to the placenta and it’s all like ugh, ugh, ugh you know, they forget to tell you that when you leave an abuser you have to almost go through, well you do go through that whole horrible disgusting stuff and that’s why a lot of women, which I did, they go back because in some ways in your brain it’s easier because actually remind yourself of what you’ve been through and then start over again and try and decide what you are going to wear, how you’re going to speak, because you’ve been so analysed and judged and criticised you know, you are starting from ground zero. I mean my mum, because I happened to be living with my mum in 2019 and then Covid hit so I was with my mother which now looking back was a God send because my mother you know, she’s a proper Yorkshire lady. She builds walls and she can like make a garden pretty and she does artexing you know, she’s a proper man/woman kind of thing and she’d go to me, ‘oh stop your crying you’ve left him now’ and I’d be thinking, yeah you’re right I have left him but you have no idea the fear that I’m feeling every single day now that I’m without him that I have to actually decide stuff by myself and this is a better place that I’m in because I know what that is because if I stay there I’m going to die and I always say to people that go back, the road is dark, you will die, you will. There’s no ifs or buts about that, the statistics have it you know, that’s exactly what will happen to you so you have to get out and I just wish there was a word and I wish there was a community that would help us people going through that, you know we have, you know if we’re an alcoholic we can go to Alcoholics Anonymous, we can go to a drug rehabitation, we can get what’s it, alanon where your family can then go and support and understand what you’ve gone through. There’s nothing for survivors. There’s nothing for somebody that’s just walked out of an abusive relationship where they can go and say, ‘mum come along to this so you understand me’, there’s nothing and why isn’t there? That’s up to us women to make a stand and make a change and make a difference because I am sure we’ve all got kids and if your kids are girls, you know just beware, it’s a horrible world out there for them and until we change it it’s not going to change. I just went through a um situation that I know we can’t talk about but she represented me pro bono and really made me feel safe in my new home and I cannot thank you enough. She works above and beyond and she took me at my word and put certain things in place and I am very truly grateful so thank you and thank you for coming here today. And this is the first time we’ve met in person
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
Oh thank you for coming, I’m really glad you’re here.
Mel B
Yeah so my friend’s better than your friend.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
Um, does anybody have any questions for Mel?
Mel B
Wait have we finished our questions, I feel like I’ve just started.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
Well, I know I feel like we’ve just started as well but I’m, I’m being told that we need to ask some questions.
Mel B
Oh never listen to when people tell you stuff.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
Is that my, is that my first mistake?
Mel B
Honestly.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
Okay sorry guys so we’re going to carry on for a little bit longer um, I now feel bad for this lady with her hand up. So do you want to ask a question.
Audience
In the wannabe rap you say, ‘and as for me hi you’ll see’. What are we going to see from you?
Mel B
Oh God I think you’ve seen it all haven’t you. Er, well I wrote that wrap in the toilet when I was with the Spice Girls and I was about 19 so I think I wanted to give a lot and show a lot of myself which I have done indirectly and directly but I’m a very honest person so what you see is what you get, there you go, is that your answer? It’s a really good question actually. What are you going to see?
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
Er yes?
Audience
Hi Mel um I just wanted to say thank you firstly for just being such an amazing voice for forever in my life I feel like so I just want to say thank you for that. Um I also work for domestic abuse charities so I just wanted to thank you for everything you are doing.
Mel B
What charity is it?
Audience
It’s called Hestia, we support about 4,000 women in London, women and children.
Mel B
And have you had your funds cut or is it still?
Audience
It’s yeah, it’s incredibly tricky especially as you described…
Mel B
Right.
Audience
…where um we work with women for about six to nine months in refuge and then um, but their journey to recovery is so much longer than that.
Mel B
Oh it is, it is, it really is.
Audience
Um, so thank you first and foremost um but I just wanted to ask a question, you talked about how finding yourself again was an important part of the journey back to being you and recovering from your experiences and we are realising a lot of the time that women tell us there’s like a turning point moment you know, may be in refuge when you know, they’ve gone through, we’ve got them to safety, they are starting to feel safe again and they are getting that sense of self back. Do you have any moment in time or experience that may be just you recall thinking okay, I’m me again um that I can share maybe and inspire a few women like you’ve been doing for such a long time now?
Mel B
I mean I had flickers of hope always but then it comes crashing down with, ‘oh my God I’m so embarrassed, I put my kids or did my kids see this or did my make-up artist see this and what did Simon Cowell…’, there’s so much that goes on in your brain but I mean, I mean I just did a course at Leeds Beckett University on um trauma – and I passed by the way – um trauma informed care which was really hard because the, even the word trauma is really popular it is actually such an important and significant word to survivors because it not only just encompasses what you’ve been through and that the past can creep up, it also has to do with your childhood, it has to do with your processing and unless somebody guides you on that path you can live in complete denial for the rest of your life and then when you’re 70 you are going to have like a whole meltdown and remember what happened to you in that relationship or that marriage so the flicker of hope that I had which is a really hard line to walk is I’m just going to own it. I am going to admit everything that I’ve done like in my book, Brutally Honest, I admit that I self medicated, I admit that I um wasn’t that much of a good parent, but I was in my eyes because I was protecting my kids so that I’d make sure that that abuse would happen in that room with the door closed so you have to kind of navigate the truth and the facts but also don’t get swayed by the perpetrator which is always going to come at you until they are stopped they will never stop and you have to have a sense of self-worth like you’re not just put here like if you’ve survived it, like if you’ve not been killed by your partner, that’s the number one thing so you, you’re not – I don’t believe in luck – you are fortunate and you’ve managed to navigate yourself out of that so that is the flicker of hope that you should always hold on to and then you can meet other survivors in your community, I mean I meet survivors from when they’ve just first left, when’ve they’ve been, when they’ve left for like ten, twenty years and everybody is at their own stage of um recovery and what I always say to any survivor is, you can’t undo it, that is always going to be there, that’s part of you now, you can’t just erase a scar you know what I mean so you have to learn to live with it. I will live with my abuse side by side for the rest of my life so I have to learn to understand it, I have to learn what tools I can use to make that voice quieter, or to make it go louder and understand it and not shut myself away or block myself off from people or flinch when somebody comes to give me a hand shake because I think they’re going to come and like attack me. It’s one of those roads which you just have to understand, it’s never going to go away and it never will. Not that you have to embrace it, you just have to accept. You know life is shit and that’s the route I happened to take but I’m a survivor so I am going to keep on keeping on. I’m saying that to myself as well as I am saying it to you.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
Um we’ve got a question over here.
Audience
Yeah, I might not need the mike, well we’ll try it.
Mel B
Well you’re from Leeds aren’t you.
Audience
I’m from Bradford actually.
Mel B
You’re from up north so I can tell.
Audience
West of Bradford.
Mel B
There you go.
Audience
My name’s Sam, I’m a Barrister and I’m involved…
Mel B
Oh you didn’t put your hand up, well you’re not a judge are you?
Audience
Not a Judge, I’m not a Judge.
Mel B
Right, right, right.
Audience
Um, I’m involved in a few domestic abuse initiatives and I’m patron of Wirral Women’s Refuge and my question is, having been through the system, what can we do as lawyers to avoid the process, re: traumatising survivors? Big question.
Mel B
That’s an interesting question. Yeah.
Audience
Big question.
Mel B
I just, because I just passed you know the TIC, Trauma Informed Care so it’s, it’s about having that sense of empathy and having that, just going that extra mile to be able to say to your client, okay do you feel comfortable and knowing the signs of when somebody twitches a little bit like that or just goes like that, that’s a sign that they’re not comfortable that you need to maybe address them in a different way because you are re-traumatising but as a survivor you know you have to get that story out 50,000 times whether it be your GP, your lawyer, you lawyer’s assistant, then the Judge, then the Barrister and all that kind of stuff so it’s just about, it’s really about understanding, understanding that this, this kind of epidemic and this flurry that we’re experiencing which we have experienced for many, many decades but now it’s up at the forefront, we have to just kind of understand and find a way and each survivor is different. We have to understand a way how we can relate to that person and woman to woman, you can relate to a woman in general but don’t forget I’m coming from extreme fear, intimidation. You’re going to judge me so you have to just find that, even if you talk about a cup of tea, as simple as that, just let that woman feel relaxed because then she will go hell for leather and tell you exactly because it’s full of anger and it’s full of fear and it’s full of injustice.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
We’ve got a question over here.
Audience
Hello and thank you very much for sharing your story um I read your book and it is brutal but something that I think everyone in the room should read. Um, I’ve got a question, as a mixed race woman and as a mixed race girl back in the day what is the most valuable lesson that you have learned on your journey so far?
Mel B
Oh God, that my mum and dad got together in an era when it wasn’t really seen for them to get together and I remember my mum telling me a story that she would have to hand me as a young baby to my dad who was black so that my dad wouldn’t get beaten up on the bus so I, I understood those things growing up but also my parents didn’t like let me take sides so it wasn’t like, well I’m this colour so I’m just going to stick to that colour or I’m too light skinned so I can just pass as white. I was very informed from both sides of my parents that you are mixed race and it used to really piss me off that there was nothing on, you know, when you land in a different country, there was nothing that you could put that would say mixed race. Now there’s a whole friggin plethora of stuff, it’s confusing to me but it was either black or white and I’m mixed race, I will always be mixed race because I come from black and white and I would never deny either side of my, my heritage, my culture, my everything you know what I mean. I mean my mum is blonde hair, blue eyes and people would go, ‘so that’s your mum?’ and I’d go, ‘yeah’ because my mum married a black guy and then because my mum’s one of seven um so when I’d go camping to Wales I’d have to explain the reason why I’m her cousin is because my mum was the only one that married a black guy, that’s why I’m the colour I am but she is my cousin and even though I really want to look like her, I am what I am. But what was your question again now I’ve forgotten?
Audience
It was the most valuable lesson you’ve learned?
Mel B
Just to be who you are. I think parents and school teachers have such an influence on the children of today as they always have done and you know, I mean in schools now we celebrate Ramadan, we celebrate Fasting but you also have to celebrate that the fact – whose phone is that – the fact that you know you have a black mother or father and a black um mother or father and you have to be able to embody that and be proud of that because I had so many friends growing up that would just say I’m – oh please – that would just say, ‘well I’m black’ or ‘I’m white’ and I would go, ‘but your mum’s Scottish how can you deny that?’. Because we just want to fit in in school and I never fit in and I was fine with that. Alright whose is that, is it time for us to stop? Oh sorry Big Ben carry on, carry on. That’s hilarious Louise, still going, how many more bongs?
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
We did start a bit late so I think we’re okay, I think Charles has got a question.
Mel B
Well now I can open up to them but I was on tour with them and it was my fault why that tour um came to a, like a halt because I was with then my, my then husband and I just couldn’t hide it anymore. I think Gerry, I think I write about it in the book where Gerry found me in the shower and I was just crying compulsively and she didn’t have anything that she could say to me. She knew what was going on but that’s what you do when you’re in the midst of that, you deny everything, you become really good at lying and really good at faking everything and yet you’re dying inside and even if one of the girls would have said, ‘Melanie’ you know, ‘it’s me and we’re all girls together’, I would have still gone ‘yeah but you know he’s fine’ because I wanted to protect him because the flip side of that if I didn’t protect him then it was going to be another form of abuse and I didn’t want to go through that and I was already going through it anyway. Yeah, but now I mean yeah, the girls have been in tears like with me, just saying, ‘what could I have done to have helped’ but it takes you know, it’s your process to leave and maybe if they would have literally like stood together and done like an intervention I may not have gone then but at least I would have known in the back of my brain I do have somewhere to go. Oh there’s a man asking the question, there’s a man.
Audience
Hi Mel. Thank you so much for coming in.
Mel B
Hi.
Audience
Um, you’ve been such a positive role model for millions of people across the world, people you will never meet er, especially those of us who had kids in the 90’s, including myself who then you know, saw your messages of going for it and doing it and achieving your dreams and becoming what they wanted whether it was lawyers like us or doctors or…
Mel B
You’re a, what kind of lawyer are you?
Audience
Employment lawyer.
Mel B
Oh.
Audience
I can’t help sorry. Let me know if you want to hire someone or fire someone. Um but firstly I just want to tell you that you know, you made a real difference to so many people’s lives but secondly, how does it feel to know that when you see it like 20, 30 years later and those people were affected by you and the messages of empowerment.
Mel B
Well it’s not just me you know, I’m one of four other people in a group so I don’t take it that personally, I take it as that’s what we’ve achieved and it’s spread throughout the five of us. Even though all five are kind of very different, you know it was a thing and still a thing hopefully that we enjoyed together and we were doing it together. I couldn’t have done that by myself you know, so I am very like grateful that I got to go on that journey and I’m like one in five people that can call themselves a Spice Girl.
Audience
But you hear stories from everyone presumably about the changes you made and the impact you had.
Mel B
Yeah but I don’t do that for me, I do that because of a need and there’s um an immediate change that needs to happen and I’ve been through it so I can talk from my own experience and I can talk from a level of frustration when it comes to Judges and the Justice system and how abusers constantly get away with it and you know, let me just tell you, abusers don’t like switch up their game, they have one like black hand guidebook and they do the same thing every time so us as intelligent people, if we know what they’re doing we can stop them so why aren’t we stopping them, why aren’t there laws in place and why isn’t there more support.
Audience
Thank you.
Mel B
You’ve got great hair by the way.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
Um, I think we’ll do one more question if that’s okay so I think you had your hand up first.
Audience
I wanted to say thank you for a very powerful talk. I wanted to ask you after your experiences with the legal system what kind of suggestions do you have for reform to make your experience or the experience of other women better?
Mel B
The legal system is just, sorry to say, it needs to be completely changed. It’s, it’s awful and I’ve been through it constantly for the last seven years and I am about to go through it again. It’s just so bad and so stone age and so just misogynistic, it just doesn’t give room for people that need help, that’s why a lot of women don’t go to Court they just give up everything, they give up their custody, they give up their house, they just… it’s just such a massive like angry monster that they’re going to have to kind of try and fight and there’s no winning, there’s no winning still to this day so I don’t have a word of hope unless they actually, you all sign that petition and we can actually educate the Justice system or at least try and I always say to my kids because they go, ‘why are you still trying mum?’ and I go, ‘well it may not happen in my lifetime but at least I’ve set the wheels in motion’ you know what I mean because it’s just something that, I mean it’s the Justice system, I mean I want to still believe in that, I believe in justice, I was got brought up so morally correct believe it or not by my mother and father that I want to still have hope. If I report something to the Police I want them to take me seriously. I don’t want them to say to me, ‘oh my hands are tied, you need to have two or three more incidents’. Well what happens if that second incident is actually my death? So what, then are you going to listen? And why is the law where if my partner kills me on the street, as opposed to kills me in, in my home, there’s a significant difference in the jail sentence. That doesn’t make any sense like, we are all smart people here right, we can all add 2 plus 2 I think, well I can hopefully but it doesn’t make sense a dramatic thing needs to change because this epidemic is not slowing down, it’s getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
Audience
So you would say though the starting point should be educating?
Mel B
Educating the educated and educating our kids from young, from young because even if they’ve grown up in like an abusive household, they need to go to school and feel safe and know what is right and wrong and know that there are helplines that they can reach out to or get that kind of support or get that understanding rather than just then being isolated and then them repeating what they’ve seen because that’s all they know.
Audience
What I was going to say is kind of…
Mel B
Put your mike up to your mouth. Okay.
Audience
Here we go.
Mel B
Not that you’re a singer Anthony but go on.
Audience
I was going to repeat the educational piece that the Barrister brought up actually er, I think that’s really important you know to, to sympathise with the client and talk to the client and understand what they are going through because we’ve had a lot of this in LA right where you know, we’re talking to the lawyers and they don’t kind of understand how emotional it is for you and so yeah, I think that, that would be my response to that.
Mel B
Is that it?
Audience
That’s it I’m afraid yeah.
Mel B
Alright so we’ll pass it on to Louise now. Louise you can do the ending speech. I just think it’s really important to understand what us women go through and I am saying it is predominantly, it’s a woman’s problem because to even have the confidence to then go and hire a lawyer which costs money or a solicitor, you know I mean hopefully you all do a little bit of pro bono work and you can actually understand because it’s infested with just such like stuff that doesn’t even make sense to me.
Audience
Okay so if you’ve got a magic wand, what would you do in this room now?
Mel B
You’re meant to do the ending speech, you weren’t meant to ask me a question that heavy.
Audience
I thought I was asking a question.
Mel B
Er well what would you do right now based on what you’ve seen me go through?
Audience
I think it is really important, I think you, you could all employ Women’s Aid to, because they have a programme for lawyers and they literally…
Mel B
And Judges and Barristers.
Audience
…painstakingly go through um their programme of what helps people in a really systematic way and one of the things Melanie didn’t say when somebody was asking how could you make it easier, you often talk about and I know this because you know, we talk about it a lot of times but you have to sit in a Court room right next to the guy.
Mel B
Yeah which I don’t understand that.
Audience
Which you, which I think is really traumatic.
Mel B
I was two seats down from him and he’s staring at me so do you think I’m going to actually be that confident? No because that’s going to put me right back into that front room or living room when he was doing whatever he did so I’m crumbling. And then even when a woman has to sit behind a screen, you feel like a vic, you feel like a victim or like an outsider or a criminal.
Audience
And I also want to say that way back in 2017 when we were writing the book I was standing in the kitchen probably clearing up Tupperware with her or whatever and Melanie looked at me.
Mel B
One of my many OCD problems.
Audience
First of all I’d gone through the pain of explaining that there was a coercive abuse sort of storyline in the Archers and Melanie was like, ‘what’s the Archers’ so I am like, ‘it’s a really big British radio show about farmers’ and she was like, ‘farmers what are you on about’ um then I was saying to her you know, she said, ‘I want to be standing up in the Houses of Parliament, I want to be sort of speaking to people like lawyers like you’.
Mel B
I want to go to University.
Audience
I want to go, I want to do all these things and I, the book has to do that for me and I am sort of thinking, ‘Ugh God I don’t know’, nobody even wants to publish it at the moment Melanie but let’s see um that’s happened, you’ve spoken in the Houses of Parliament, you’ve spoken you know, you’ve to Kier Starmer, you know you put questions to Rishi Sunak, you continued doing it. I don’t think any of us, another person that I would say that you’re going to be the Boadicea of, of domestic violence and you’re like ‘who’s she’ and I’m like… which is true but you are and I think that’s one thing you’ve done that you can never under estimate in 2017, people didn’t want to publish the book because so many people said you can’t write about domestic abuse until you’ve gone through it and you’ve got over it and you’re at the other side and one of the things when Melanie was saying you know, the introduction to a lady called Teresa Parker at Woman’s Aid, she just looked at me and she said, ‘well that’s ridiculous, nobody gets over it, nobody gets over it’ and there will be people in the room who’ve been affected by it yourselves or their families or a friend or somebody and they don’t get through it and you know, I’ve been with Melanie on a very big journey of ups and downs but one thing you’ve been consistent about, you do talk about it, it’s hard, you were super stressed out before you came here, you always think it’s always going to be awful and you’re going to fail and you never do and what you’ve done is change things for so many people which I think everybody here really appreciates which is why the room is so bloody full and hot. So well done.
Mel B
Aw thank you, thank you. Is that it now?
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
Thank you so much Mel.
Mel B
Thank you.
Kate Clark
Partner, Head of Family, Mishcon de Reya
If you’ve been, thank you for being so honest and thank you for being so wonderful and true to yourself speaking to us, I know it’s made a difference and we will all remember your words and read your book I’m sure.