Mel Gibson quitting US? Facts don’t fit story

Mystery surrounds the immediate plans of the disgraced film star Mel Gibson following a widely disseminated report that he is selling up his homes in the United States and is poised to quit the country and return to his native Australia.

The report, which appears to have originated in the Mail on Sunday, claims that Gibson, facing allegations of violence from his Russian former girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva, has sold his mock-Tudor Old Mill Farm in Connecticut and has also put his Malibu home, Lavender Hill Farm, on the market. The evidence for the latter comes from a property newsletter.

At the same time, the Mail says, Gibson has "told friends" that he wants to move back to his native Australia with his ex-wife Robyn, who has publicly defended him against the charges of violence levelled at him by Grigorieva during a custody battle over their baby daughter Lucia.

However, the Mail report fails to make clear that Old Mill Farm was actually sold back in April, having been put on the market three years ago, soon after the actor and his wife Robyn first separated in 2007.

As for Lavender Hill Farm, it was indeed listed by the property newsletter The Real Estalker - more than four months ago, on March 4, long before Gibson and Grigorieva went to court over Lucia.

Nor does the Mail report explain that these are just two homes in the multi-millionaire's varied property portfolio.

What does appear to be accurate is that amid the allegations of violence, and the latest revelation of tape-recorded threats, coming on top of the news that his agents have dropped him as "untouchable", one of the few people to come to the actor's defence is Robyn, the mother of his seven older children.

"Mel never engaged in any physical abuse of any kind toward me before, during or after our marriage," she told the California judge overseeing the custody fight over Lucia. "Mel was a wonderful and loving father."

Whether this endorsement of his fatherly qualities should be seen as a sign of a reconciliation between Robyn and Mel Gibson is open to debate. According to People magazine, Robyn had wanted to stay out of the court case but felt that she had to make the statement in order to quell any speculation that Gibson might have misbehaved when the family was together. Their divorce proceedings remain "ongoing".

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