Courtney Stodden faked her 2016 pregnancy and miscarriage, her ex-husband Doug Hutchison has claimed.
In his upcoming memoir, the 59-year-old writes the couple agreed to make up the whole thing as a way of getting paid for interviews and hopefully reality shows.
He said the plot was cooked up by Courtney, now 25, as they were desperate for cash after being blacklisted by Hollywood over their controversial marriage, having tied the knot when he was 50 and she was 16.
“I’m not proud to admit this, but again, this book is about the truth… I don’t justify it in my book. I’m actually ashamed that we did it,” he told Fox News. “I think that in some ways it was immoral. It was very unfair to those people out there who sincerely suffered from miscarriages. But at that point in time, we were completely broke.”
In “Flushing Hollywood: Fake News, Fake Boobs”, to be released on March 10, Doug details how he “couldn’t get a job to save my life in Hollywood anymore”, that he had burned through all his savings and was bankrupt.
“So Courtney came up with a strategy,” he said. “I’m not trying to blame her, but it was her idea… She wanted to convince the public that she was pregnant so we can get paid for interviews and possibly a reality show.”
“It was all about survival. It was all about a way to make rent, to pay the bills. It was desperation. I was an accomplice. I felt at the time there was no other choice in order to survive… We didn’t think about the consequences, the future.”
“But if you’re not pregnant, then what? Then came the faux miscarriage. And that part to me hurt the most,” he said.
“Here we were going to the press, going to our families, our friends and announcing we lost our baby. We gained a lot of empathy. And the sad part is a lot of women came forward on social media saying how sorry they were because they went through the same thing. The press bought it, the public bought it, the family bought it — everybody bought it.”
The messages of support they received, he said, were “devastating to me.”
“I didn’t want to look at it. I just stuffed it all down,” he went on. “I don’t want to speak for Courtney, but I almost feel she became a poster celebrity and was able to give those people comfort. I know that sounds twisted, but that was the mindset.”
“I supported it to justify this horror – the horror of what we were going through and the horror of what we were putting people through,” he said, adding his “heart drops” every time he reads an article about the miscarriage.
“So enough. It’s time to reveal the truth, as difficult as it is,” he said. “I’m not proud to admit this chapter at all. But all I can say is desperation is the mother of invention. And the invention was unfortunate… We maintained an illusion that we were living large. But it was far from the truth.”
Courtney’s rep Johnny Donovan did not confirm or deny the accusation, but pointed out she was “just a kid” at the time.
“She didn’t know what the repercussions were,” he said. “There was a lot of abuse from Doug who is an alcoholic.”
“This led to a sequence of events that spiraled out if control, rape, debt, suicide, manipulation etc. And she’s learning how to come out of it on the other side now as her own woman.”
He said Courtney would soon tell her version of events in a memoir of her own.
“The Green Mile” star” and Courtney wed in 2011 — with her parent’s blessing, despite the 34 year age gap.
Courtney filed for divorce in March 2018, and did not ask for spousal support, claiming she was the breadwinner in the relationship; there was no prenup.
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