When she married at 32, one-time It-Girl Lady Isabella Hervey dared to believe that her ‘fairytale dream of a happy family life’ was finally coming true. But now, a decade later, it’s bitterly apparent that it was never more than a mirage.
Indeed, her union with Belgian millionaire Christophe de Pauw heralded, instead, the beginning of a descent into appalling physical and psychological trauma.
The story is disclosed in graphic and unsparing detail in a 38-page judgement just delivered in a court in Portugal, where Isabella, 42, lives in the Algarve with her three children by de Pauw: Victor, who was named after her late father, the thrice-married 6th Marquess of Bristol; a younger son, Patrick; and a daughter, India.
The judgement should bring her some peace of mind, a year after her older sister, Lady Victoria Hervey, 48, drew attention to her plight by posting a series of photographs online, each of them showing Isabella with severe facial bruising.
‘Christophe is indicted for domestic violence and child abuse,’ Isabella’s Portuguese lawyer Patricia Cipriano discloses to me, adding that the judge has issued a restraining order against de Pauw forbidding him from coming within 300 metres of his estranged wife or seeing their children without third party supervision.
When she married at 32, one-time It-Girl Lady Isabella Hervey dared to believe that her ‘fairytale dream of a happy family life’ was finally coming true. But now, a decade later, it’s bitterly apparent that it was never more than a mirage
Her union with Belgian millionaire Christophe de Pauw heralded, instead, the beginning of a descent into appalling physical and psychological trauma
Isabella tells me: ‘It is a big relief the restraining order is put into place, for me and for my kids because it means we can be in our garden.
‘Before we literally barricaded ourselves in our house when we’re alone. So now I don’t feel like we are prisoners in our own home.’
She adds: ‘However, I’m still scared. Restraining order or not, I don’t think that’s enough to stop the guy.
‘So in one way I’m relieved, but in another way I’m always still watching my back. I’m often still in fear and I don’t go outside with the kids after dark.’
It’s a crushing end to Isabella’s hopes for a happy family of her own – hopes perhaps largely inspired by the death of her father just a day after her third birthday.
By the time she met de Pauw through mutual friends in London in 2011, her glamour and athleticism had earned her an appearance on Celebrity Love Island and the accolade of being voted one of the world’s sexiest women by lad mag FHM.
But this masked the eating disorder bulimia, for which she had just completed three months treatment.
The court judgement discloses that de Pauw had also been undergoing treatment – a full year for ‘addictive behaviour with alcohol and drugs’.
Within six months, they had moved to his house in Belgium. When he proposed in 2013. Isabella accepted. But, even then, there were red flags, as the judgement makes clear, recording that, when Isabella, unfamiliar with Belgian law, hesitated to sign a pre-nuptial agreement, her fiancé called her ‘a slut’, ‘a whore’ and ‘a bitch’.
Worse followed when de Pauw offered her an engagement ring, owned by his family, which had ‘a very large diamond ring’. Isabella asked for something ‘less flashy and simpler’. This, says the judgement, caused a ‘furious’ de Pauw to slap her in the face.
These were just the first in a series of sickening incidents which continued after her marriage in 2014, records the court judgement. Soon afterwards, Isabella, who’d ceased her modelling work when she began her romance with de Pauw, learned that she had Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, which caused her ‘great stress, further aggravating her bulimia’.
When she married at 32, the one-time It-Girl dared to believe that her ‘fairytale dream of a happy family life’ was finally coming true
Far from showing sympathy, her husband, says the court judgement, was persistently ‘intimidating’, telling her that she was ‘a psychiatric patient and that it was entirely her fault for not getting pregnant’.
Later, with the help of fertility treatment, Isabella did become pregnant, only to be advised, on medical grounds, to undergo an abortion, which she did. This, says the court judgement, prompted de Pauw to ‘slap the back of her head’ and ‘pull her hair’, and later punch her ‘in the eye’, and to tell her: ‘You do everything wrong’.
Yet Isabella later gave birth to Victor, in 2016, and Patrick, in 2017. During another pregnancy, in 2018, the court judgement records that de Pauw ‘grabbed [her] head [and] hit it against a metal object’. While Isabella was still recovering from the birth of India, in 2019, de Pauw ‘gave her a violent slap, with an open hand, on the left cheek’.
Days later, de Pauw, while in the presence of their two sons, ‘began screaming at her: ‘Whore’, ‘Bitch’, while spitting in her face and grabbing her with both hands [around] the neck,’ says the court judgement.
Isabella reported her husband to the Belgian police, but was unaware that her allegations had to be ‘confirmed by a formal complaint’.
Isabella, says the court judgment, suffered in other ways, as de Pauw ‘took away her car keys’, and ’emptied [their joint] bank account’.
The stoical Isabella remained unbowed – and might have thought that she had won through when, in February 2021, they moved to Portugal, with de Pauw promising that ‘things would be different, that he would change…because he would be under less stress’.
There was indeed some change: de Pauw, records the court judgement, began an affair in August 2021.
Other things did not change. He bit Isabella’s nose, hit her twice and spat in her face, says the court judgement – and, at Christmas 2021, shut his son Victor ‘inside an aluminium suitcase’ – as ‘a joke’.
Patrick, says the court judgement, was subjected to ‘an unspecified number of spanks on the head’ after accidentally turning off the television.
In the spring of 2023, de Pauw left Isabella and his children, and moved in with his mistress. But, from time to time, he returned. On June 6, he removed almost all the furniture from the house.
He was back the next day to pick up the couple’s two dogs – one of which belonged to Isabella, who tried to rescue the animal from the back of her husband’s car. In the ensuing struggle, de Pauw ‘almost strangled her’, records the court judgment, causing Isabella to fall ‘helplessly to the ground and lose consciousness’.
When she came round, the children crying and screaming, with India ‘trying to wake her up’ and Patrick ‘trying to resuscitate her’.
Let us hope that her nightmare is now at an end; her husband declines to comment.