Earl Charles Spencer and his wife, Karen Gordon, are getting divorced.
“It is immensely sad,” Spencer, 60, told The Mail on Sunday on Saturday, June 8. “I just want to devote myself to all my children, and to my grandchildren, and I wish Karen every happiness in the future.”
Neither Spencer nor Gordon, 52, have further addressed the split, with the British outlet also reporting that the now-estranged pair initially confirmed the breakup news to Althorp House staff back in March.
Spencer and Gordon met in 2010 on a blind date in Los Angeles. They wed one year later on the Althorp grounds. The earl and Gordon, a philanthropist, had previously been candid about their relationship.
“Karen and I both appreciate what the other does and look after what we have,” Spencer told The Sunday Times in 2020. “Neither of us has found happiness like this before.”
Spencer and Gordon, who coparents two kids with a past partner, share daughter Charlotte, 12. Spencer is also father to six older kids. He shares Kitty, 33, twins Eliza and Amelia, both 31, and Louis, 30, with ex-wife Victoria Lockwood and Edmund, 20, and Lara, 18, with ex-wife Caroline Freud.
Spencer is the younger brother of Princess Diana, who died in 1997 at the age of 36 following a fatal car crash. He has continued to mourn his late sister in the years following her death.
Spencer wrote about Diana and their mutual upbringing in his March memoir, A Very Private School. He told the Mail on Sunday that writing the book “deeply affected” him and led him to seek “residential treatment for trauma” late last year. In the book, Spencer also claimed that he was a victim of sexual abuse when he attended boarding school as a child.
“We were locked away. We were like prisoners. We were prey to very bad people’s worst instincts,” he alleged during a March appearance on the Today show, claiming he first publicly detailed the assault at age 40 while speaking with a therapist. “He said, ‘Whisper to me one thing you’ve never told anyone.’ And I said, ‘I was sexually abused by a woman as a child.’”
Spencer’s former school, Maidwell Hall, noted in a statement at the time that they notified local authorities to investigate possible crimes against children.
According to the Mail on Sunday, Gordon did not attend any of Spencer’s book launch events earlier this year.
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).