Nigella Lawson and Charles Saatchi - Dating, Gossip, News, Photos list. Help us build our profile of Nigella Lawson and Charles Saatchi!
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(September 3, 2003 - July 31, 2013) (divorced)
Lawson married art collector Charles Saatchi in September 2003. Lawson was not always happy for unspecified reasons and admitted in 2012 that she sometimes said, "Please God, get me through the ordeal that is today."
In June 2013, photographs were published by The Sunday People of Lawson being grabbed around the neck by Saatchi, during an argument outside a London seafood restaurant. According to a witness, Lawson was very distressed by the incident. Saatchi later described the pictures as showing only a "playful tiff" and his trying to emphasise a point. After a police investigation of the incident, Saatchi was cautioned for assault, and it was reported that Lawson had left the family home. Lawson said in court Saatchi subjected her to "intimate terrorism", that he threatened to finish her unless she cleared him in court. Subsequently, while giving evidence Lawson claimed casual cruelty and controlling behavior by Saatchi which made her unhappy and drove her to occasional drug use. She cited as examples that Saatchi prevented her entertaining at home and punished her for going to a birthday party of a woman friend. She was not beaten but was left emotionally scarred.
Saatchi announced his divorce from Lawson in early July, stating that he had "clearly been a disappointment to Nigella during the last year or so" and the couple had "become estranged and drifted apart". Lawson made no public comment in response; however, court papers showed that it was Lawson who filed for divorce, citing ongoing unreasonable behavior. On 31 July 2013, seven weeks after the incident, the pair was granted a decree nisi, ending their ten-year marriage. They reached a private financial settlement.
Assistants' fraud trial
On 27 November 2013, a trial of the former couple's two personal assistants, Italian-born sisters Elisabetta and Francesca Grillo, began in R v Grillo and Grillo. The Grillos were accused of fraudulently using the credit cards of Saatchi's private company. During court proceedings in early December, the sisters claimed that Lawson had permitted their use of the credit cards in exchange for their silence regarding her drug use. Questions regarding Lawson's drug use were allowed by the judge as part of the sisters' "bad character" defense. Lawson admitted to taking cocaine and cannabis but denied she had been addicted, stating, "I found it made an intolerable situation tolerable." On 20 December 2013, the two sisters were acquitted. Scotland Yard said that Lawson would not be investigated over the drug allegations.
Charles Saatchi was alleged to have started a drug smear campaign against Lawson in the British media, through PR man Richard Hillgrove, before the trial was over. Lawson's lawyers demanded that Hillgrove remove comments about her made in his blog. Lawson claimed in court that ending her marriage to Saatchi had created tolerable conditions for herself and her family, describing Saatchi as "a brilliant but brutal man."
Lawson maintained she was "totally cannabis, cocaine, any drug, free" after the divorce.