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14. Oksana Grigorieva
Is it possible that one single woman effectively destroys your career who you have built over decades and decades?
Yes, yes it is. Oksana’s friend confessed to the journalists that she was looking for her “baby daddy” or “sugar daddy” long before she met Mel Gibson.
She refused his offer of 15 million dollars and subsequently received $750,000.
Oksana Petrovna Grigorieva, born 23 February 1970 in Saransk, USSR is a Russian pianist and singer-songwriter. She studied music in Moscow and completed conservatoire studies in Kazan, before moving to London.
She began dating Mel in 2009 and couple of months later, their daughter Lucia was born on October 30, 2009.
The turbulent relationship ended after just one year, and soon Grigorieva obtained a restraining order against Gibson, stating he had physically assaulted her and producing tapes of their heated arguments over telephone.
Mel Gibson broke his silence about the whole thing in 2009: “I’ve never treated anyone badly or in a discriminatory way based on their gender, race, religion or sexuality – period.
I don’t blame some people for thinking that though, from the garbage they heard on those leaked tapes, which have been edited. You have to put it all in the proper context of being in an irrationally, heated discussion at the height of a breakdown, trying to get out of a really unhealthy relationship.
It’s one terribly awful moment in time, said to one person, in the span of one day and doesn’t represent what I truly believe or how I’ve treated people my entire life.”