14 DAY TRIAL // Charles Saatchi has announced his decision to divorce his wife of a decade Nigella Lawson in a statement to the Daily Mail. In it, he stresses he was never violent to his wife and that the recent photo scandal was just a misunderstanding.
He also blames Nigella for not speaking up in his defense and words his statement in such a manner as to make her the reason he was pushed to file for divorce, various voices online are saying.
“I am sorry to announce that Nigella Lawson and I are getting divorced. This is heartbreaking for both of us as our love was very deep, but in the last year we have become estranged and drifted apart,” Saatchi says.
However, that’s not what prompted the divorce.
“I feel that I have clearly been a disappointment to Nigella during the last year or so, and I am disappointed that she was advised to make no public comment to explain that I abhor violence of any kind against women, and have never abused her physically in any way,” the statement reads.
“The row photographed at Scott’s restaurant could equally have been Nigella grasping my neck to hold my attention – as indeed she has done in the past, although not in front of Scott’s with a photographer snapping away,” Saatchi says.
He goes on to say that he and Nigella are “extremely tactile people” but they’re never violent. He concludes his statement with kind words for his wife, whom he describes as the most incredible woman to whom it was an honor to be married all these years.
Speaking with the Mail, Saatchi also says that, while the pictures looked very bad, the real story behind them was that they were having a fight and he was trying to get her to pay attention to him by grabbing her by the neck.
They’d been having problems but things never turned violent. When her PR suggested that he came out to apologize for the abuse and Nigella agreed, he asked her to pack her bags and move out of the house because apologizing was a lie: he had done nothing wrong.
Lawson’s publicist also issued a statement to say that it is true she’d corroborated her husband’s story to the police. There was no need to say so publicly as well.