She shot to fame as another feisty cast member of Geordie Shore but, last week, Marnie Simpson’s behaviour took a worrying turn when she admitted she’d been violent towards her fiancé, former TOWIE star Ricky Rayment.
The 20-year-old said: “We argue over stupid things. One time I kicked him in the stomach and I felt really guilty.” After being criticised for the comment, she defiantly Tweeted Ricky: “I keep you on your toes.”
But with statistics revealing one in three victims of domestic abuse in the UK is a man, has Marnie trivialised domestic violence?
Mark Brook, chairman of the ManKind Initiative – a charity that supports male victims of domestic abuse – tells Closer: “If you reversed the genders, it’d never be trivialised. It’s a real concern when celebrities speak about violence where the man is the victim and it’s made to seem as if it doesn’t matter.
"There are double standards and if we want to live in an equal society, that’s totally unacceptable.”