Princess Diana’s brother Earl Spencer reveals ‘immensely sad’ divorce from third wife & reason behind marriage breakdown
PRINCESS DIANA’S brother Earl Spencer has revealed the “immensely sad” divorce from his third wife and the reason behind the marriage breakdown.
Charles Spencer said he wanted to devote himself to his children and grandchildren.
Charles, 60, told the Mail on Sunday: “It is immensely sad.
“I just want to devote myself to all my children, and to my grandchildren, and I wish Karen every happiness in the future.”
Karen Gordon, the Countess of Spencer, and Charles wed in June 2011 after they met having been set up on a blind date at a Los Angeles restaurant the year before.
The pair married in the grounds of Althorp, where Diana is buried, four months after Charles proposed.
They had one daughter together, Lady Charlotte Diana Spencer, who was born in 2012 and has been raised at Althorp.
It is believed their marriage broke down in recent years with the strain of the Earl’s memoir, A Very Private School, where he detailed the physical and sexual abuse he suffered while at boarding school.
In the book he claims he was abused by an assistant matron at Maidwell Hall when he was a child in the 1970s.
He described his school life as “an absolutely hellish experience”.
Karen, a Canadian philanthropist, is the founder of the Whole Child charity and the mum to Emma and Kate from a previous marriage to Mark Gordon with the couple being married between 1997 and 2003.
Charles is father to Lady Kitty Spencer, twins Eliza and Amelia Spencer and Louis Spencer, Viscount Althorp, with his ex-wife Victoria Aitkin.
The Earl, is also dad to Edmund and Lara, who he shares with his second wife Caroline Freud.
Charles, who is the 9th Earl Spencer, is the uncle to Prince William and Prince Harry.
He works as a historian, journalist and broadcast as well as managing the Althorp estate, the Spencers’ ancestral seat in Northamptonshire.
Karen was absent from Althorp in March for the book’s launch events, and the Earl later revealed that he had admitted himself for residential treatment for trauma late last year.
Charles told The Sunday Times in 2020: “Karen and I both appreciate what the other does and look after what we have. Neither of us has found happiness like this before.”
The Earl told the MoS the five years spent working on his book had deeply affected him and led him to undergo residential treatment for trauma late last year.
It’s thought he was especially traumatised by his discovery of a schoolboy diary dating from 1976, in which the assistant matron he says sexually abused him, had written a long-forgotten message.
The diary was found on the high shelf of a room at Althorp that was being refurbished after he had finished most of the book.
Charles wrote he had been “rocked” by the discovery.
In the memoir, the Earl also revealed the trauma of his mum leaving him and Diana when he was just three years old and also wrote about the impact of being brought up by a succession of nannies had on him.
In an interview with the Therapy Works podcast in March Charles said that being abused as a child had a huge impact on this choice of romantic partners in adulthood, adding he was left susceptible to women who were incapable of loving him.
He told the podcast: “I think I went for good-looking people who weren’t really into love.
“I’m having a good look at myself and everything around me and I think I would be a lot easier to live with now than I ever have been in the past.”
Karen’s first husband was millionaire Hollywood producer Mark Gordon, whose credits include Saving Private Ryan and The Day After Tomorrow.