The drama of the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives (SLOMW) continues as Vanderpump Villa star Marciano Brunnette files a defamation lawsuit against Demi Engemann. The lawsuit claims that Marciano’s reputation has been damaged due to the alleged unwanted touching and claims that he is a sexual predator.
Trip to Italy
While the Mormon Wives filmed a crossover episode in Italy, Marciano claims he kissed Demi, one of the Mormon Wives who has been happily married to Bret Engemann since 2021. She insists that any physical contact between the two was “unwanted” and inappropriate. Marciano alleges in the legal documents that their kiss off-camera was consensual, and that Demi “reframed the obviously consensual interaction as one of sexual misconduct and then as sexual assault” to create a scandal for her reality TV show.
Alleged Assault
Marciano and Demi’s stories match when they say they kept in touch after the trip to Italy. They texted back and forth, had hours-long phone calls, and multiple DMs on Instagram, all of which were submitted as evidence in the lawsuit. Marciano adds in his legal documents that Demi shared her location with him, which indicates “That behavior confirms a continued relationship, not a person reacting to sexual assault.”
However, Demi insists that her allegations are the truth, and “Everyone is going to handle these kinds of situations different.” She went on to defend herself on Season 3 of Mormon Wives, saying that “You never deserve unwanted touch. No matter what it looks like, no matter what your relationship was like before or after, unwanted touch is unwanted touch.” Demi’s representative is standing behind her through this legal battle and told E! News, “As a woman, it distresses me that what happened to Demi is being minimized.“
Mormon Wives Reunion
In the Season 3 Mormon Wives reunion, Demi shared that the alleged incident brought up uncovered past trauma for her and has blown up her life. She shared details of the tension with her co-stars and the difficulty she is facing with not being believed by the group of women who once considered her a sister. It is a hard truth to face when other women do not believe you and choose your alleged abuser’s word over your own. Demi became vulnerable throughout the last season, but there seems to be far more going on behind the scenes than what is shown.
“I will never put myself in a situation like that again, and that sucks, especially when you’ve been in that situation, and it brings up old stuff,” Demi said during the SLOMW reunion. “Then you start really blaming yourself for what they did. It’s more painful to not [be] believed and to say it and have to go over it and over and over and feel the pain of bad things than to just say, ‘F–k, yeah, we kissed. F–k, yeah, this happened.’”
The Original Scandal
When the scandal was first revealed at the end of Hulu’s SLOMW Season 2, the drama was between Jessi Ngatikaura, another member of Mom Tok, and Marciano. He alleged that the two had an emotional and physical affair. At the time, fans did not know what to believe and accused him of clout-chasing. When the truth unfolded in Season 3, Marciano’s story switched, and Demi became the topic of conversation. He claims he was put up to it by Demi, and he was lying about his physical affair with Jessi.
We may never know the truth about what happened or did not happen in Italy. One true thing is that Marciano rose to fame through these Mormon Wives and is being open and honest on the internet. The day after his lawsuit was filed, he posted a TikTok admitting this is all about getting even with Demi. He posted himself with the voiceover that says, “Somebody do something to me, I’ll do something to them, this is common sense,” followed by, “So you believe in getting even? Hell to the yeah.“
