Princess Diana’s brother, Charles Spencer, and wife Karen divorcing after 13 years of marriage: ‘It is immensely sad’
Princess Diana’s brother, Charles Spencer, announced he and his wife, Karen Gordon, are divorcing after 13 years of marriage.
“It is immensely sad,” the 9th Earl Spencer, 60, told the Daily Mail Saturday.
“I just want to devote myself to all my children, and to my grandchildren, and I wish Karen every happiness in the future.”
In April, the pair reportedly announced their split to the staff at Althorp estate where Diana, who died in a car crash in August 1997, is buried.
Spencer and Gordon, a Canadian philanthropist, first met on a blind date at a restaurant in Los Angeles in 2010. They got married in June 2011 on the Althorp estate.
The exes share a 12-year-old daughter named Charlotte Diana, whose moniker pays tribute to the Earl’s late older sister.
Spencer also has four children from his previous marriage to his first wife, Victoria Lockwood, and two children with his second wife, Caroline Freud.
Karen is also mom to two daughters, whom she welcomed in her previous marriage to Hollywood producer Mark Gordon.
The Daily Mail claimed Spencer and Karen’s relationship fell apart as he was writing his memoir in which he details losing his virginity to a sex worker at age 12 and the traumatic physical and sexual abuse he suffered as a child in boarding school.
Spencer said he was sexually abused by a female nurse assistant at the school, who he referred to as a “master of manipulation,” when he was 11.
The “White Ship” author claimed she would touch and French-kiss him.
“The effect of what she did to me was profound and immediate, awaking in me basic desires that had no place in one so young,” he wrote.
“This woman’s control over mesmerized boys was total, for we were starved of feminine warmth and desperate for her affection,” Spencer’s writing continued.
The outlet reports he also claimed that his five years of writing his upcoming memoir, “A Very Private School,” greatly affected him and pushed him to seek residential trauma treatment last year.
In a March interview with People, Spencer opened up about how “supportive” Karen had been throughout his healing journey as he recalled the traumatic details of his childhood.
“I think it was very challenging for her to have a husband going through what was essentially four and a half years of the most profound therapy with very difficult undertones to it. And she supported the idea of me doing it,” he said.
“I think she always hoped I would come out happier and healthier and that seems to be the case very much. So, I’m grateful to have her standing by me while I went through this, what I now realize was an essential process.”
