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CONSTANCE BRISCOE SUED BY MOM OVER MEMOIR: Carmen Briscoe-Mitchell claims daughter's accounts of child abuse are fiction.
*British author Constance Briscoe, who wrote a popular book recounting a childhood of emotional and physical abuse, is being sued for libel by her mother, who says the claims are fantasy, reports the Associated Press.
Briscoe, the child of Jamaican immigrants, defends the veracity of her book, "Ugly" — the nickname she says her mother threw at her as a child.
In the book, Briscoe alleges that her mother regularly beat and starved her before abandoning her when she was 13. She claims her stepfather once stubbed a cigarette out on her hand, and says that as a teenager Briscoe needed surgery on her breasts because of trauma caused by her mother's assaults.
Her lawyer told London's High Court on Tuesday that the book contained some errors but was "quite properly put in the biography section of the bookshop, not the fiction section."
Her mother, Carmen Briscoe-Mitchell, 74, insists that the harrowing incidents described in the book are fiction. She is seeking damages from Briscoe and her publisher, Hodder and Stoughton.
Briscoe-Mitchell's lawyer, William Panton, told the court the allegations of abuse were "nonsense" and said that as a child Briscoe had not complained to police, social services or teachers.
"There were opportunities to complain about ill-treatment — if that ill-treatment had in fact taken place," he said.
"Ugly" has sold more than half a million copies in Britain since it was published in 2006. It was followed by a sequel, "Beyond Ugly."
Briscoe, 51, grew up in a poor part of London but went on to become a lawyer and one of the first black women in Britain to be appointed a recorder, or part-time judge. The court case is expected to last two weeks.
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