Celebrity Mound

Christie Brinkley has fired back after ex-husband Peter Cook appeared on “20/20″ with Barbara Walters that aired on Friday, allegedly breaking the terms of their divorce.

“Christie Brinkley initially sought to settle this matter privately,” Robert Stephan Cohen, Christie’s attorney, told Access Hollywood in a statement. “The state of NY is an open court system. It was Mr. Cook who sought to lock the courtroom to the media. Judge Cohen applied the law and Peter’s request to bar the media was denied. This was not Ms. Brinkley’s doing, it was the law.”

Mr. Cook has chosen to breach the confidentiality agreement in the divorce settlement, a provision agreed upon in court to protect the children and allow them to put this ordeal behind them,” the statement continued.

On Wednesday, Christie filed for a restraining order after hearing that Peter had conducted the interview. The judge denied her request.

“My hope is that the world will see that I’m not the scumbag pervert that I’ve been painted to be,” Peter told Walters. “The misinformation that came out during the trial is the elephant in the room. It’s the elephant in the room for my kids. And I’m hoping maybe if I can correct some of the wrongs.”

However, according to Christie’s lawyer, he’s only made things worse.

“This is a tragedy,” Cohen’s statement concluded. “Mr. Cook has proven once again that the court appointed psychiatrist Dr. Stephen Herman was right when he testified that Peter Cook has an insatiable ego and needs constant reassurance. Mr. Cook continues to put himself first, ultimately hurting the children. The court awarded Ms. Brinkley full custody of the children and all decision making concerning them. That decision speaks for itself.”

The statement added added that the supermodel intends to continue to explore her legal options.

As previously reported on AccessHollywood.com, Cook and Brinkley split after 10 years of marriage in 2006, after he engaged in an extramarital affair with an 18-year-old assistant. Their divorce case earlier this year included a bitter custody battle for son Jack, 13, and daughter Sailor, 10, which Brinkley won.

After days of acrimony in court and a night of intense negotiation going into the wee hours of the morning, Christie Brinkley and Peter Cook settled their contentious divorce case.

“It is my pleasure to report to the court that with much hard work … we reached an agreement,” Brinkley’s lawyer Robert Cohen said in Suffolk County Supreme Court in Central Islip.

After Judge Mark Cohen signed off on the deal and Cook left the courtroom, Brinkley hugged two friends and sobbed quietly.

“It’s to me a very bittersweet moment because it really is the death of a marriage,” Brinkley said later, outside the courtroom. “I’m very pleased with the results today. I was here fighting for custody.”

She held an elaborate dinosaur diorama she had helped her son make for a science class that had been used as evidence at the trial.
“It’s everything I asked for,” Cook said as he walked quickly away from the building.

The hard-fought deal’s main sticking point – custody of the couple’s two children, Jack, 10, and Sailor, 13 – was resolved with Brinkley getting sole custody and final decision-making power over the children.

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Cook is allowed visitation and will be consulted regarding decisions about the children.

Brinkley retained ownership of all real estate holdings and her boat Sweet Freedom. She agreed to pay Cook a flat amount of $2.1 million, mainly to cover his legal costs. The rest of the terms remain confidential, the pairs’ attorneys said.

The marathon negotiating session to end their 10-year marriage was held at a Marriott hotel in Islandia and finally ended at 6 a.m. Both sides appeared relieved to have the ugly trial concluded.

The settlement comes after five days of all-out war in the courtroom, where a string of witnesses, including Brinkley, 54, and Cook, 49, painted the model’s husband as a narcissistic horndog who slept with a teenage employee and had a $3,000-a-month Internet porn habit.

When asked why they didn’t settle sooner, Brinkley – wearing a pink, brown and tan skirt, pink sweater over a white blouse and designer high-heel open-toed shoes – said she didn’t “have a choice.”

“I was trying to settle the day I learned about – you know – about the absolute truth, the facts. I wanted to settle but, unfortunately we could not reach an agreement until 6 a.m. this morning,” she said.

Cohen said that after days of bruising testimony, Cook realized that settling was a wiser option.

“Most of you heard what went on in that courtroom – I think it was pretty clear where this case was going and so it was resolved,” he said.

At the center of the trial – where custody of the couple’s two children was at stake along with her considerable assets – was the affair Cook had with Diana Bianchi, a teenager he hired as an assistant for his architecture firm and paid $300,000 for her silence.

Then, two days ago, a court-appointed psychiatrist deemed Cook a self-obsessed egomaniac, and said Brinkley should have primary custody of the children.

(source)

Yet another beauty linked to Peter Cook since his breakup with supermodel Christie Brinkley will be named at his divorce hearing, the Daily News has learned.

Bridget Nisivoccia is a pretty blond interior designer who told the Daily News she was hired to design Cook’s new home in Sag Harbor, L.I.

She is expected to become part of the blockbuster trial this week when another witness discusses Nisivoccia’s connection to Cook, a source close to the case told The News.

The 36-year-old joins a growing list of women in Cook’s life since his 10-year marriage to Brinkley, 54, dissolved in 2006.

The source did not imply that Cook, an architect, and Nisivoccia were romantically involved. Nisivoccia described their relationship as “professional.”
She owns property in New Jersey and has offices in New York, Miami, Los Angeles and the Hamptons.

“We have mutual clients and share a professional relationship and a respected friendship,” Nisivoccia told The News.

Fitness model Carri Lyn Ciamarra, who dated Cook for about six months last year, has been called to testify Thursday along with Cook’s current squeeze, Suzanne Shaw.
Ciamarra, 31, a married mom of one from Westchester County, says she wants no part of the scandalous divorce hearing, and her lawyer vowed to fight the subpoena.

Shaw, on the other hand, spent Independence Day in the Hamptons with Cook and his son and, sources say, she has nothing to hide.

As week two of the Brinkley-Cook divorce trial begins today, both sides will begin the battle over custody of the couple’s kids – Jack, 13, and Sailor Lee, 10.
Last week, the two sides fought over the grounds for the divorce, and sordid details emerged of Cook’s penchant for Internet porn.

Diana Bianchi, who had an affair with Cook as a teenager, also testified that he showered her with gifts and left her money under rocks and behind pictures in his office.

Brinkley’s lawyer Robert Cohen is expected to call on the women as part of his argument that Cook should not get a fifty-fifty custody split because he’s shown “bad judgment” where the children are concerned.

Cohen plans to show Cook, 49, has introduced his son to his new girlfriends and also that he bought both youngsters dangerous motorbikes and drove at more than 80 mph with his daughter in the car.

Recklessness is an “overriding feature of his character,” Cohen told the judge during his opening statements last week.
Cook’s team plans to hit back with evidence that Brinkley has tried to vengefully cut her ex out of her children’s lives and is an “angry, angry” woman who cannot get over the betrayal.

(source)

On the second day of her divorce trial against Peter Cook, Christie Brinkley broke down in tears as she recalled how her ex had an affair with his teenage assistant.

“My world was completely shattered,” she told the court, according to the New York Post.

She said she learned the news after delivering a commencement address at a high school in NYC’s Hamptons area in June 2006.

She said the grads were taking turns collecting their diplomas on stage and Cook and son Jack cheering her on from the front row when the teen’s step-father approached her.

“Suddenly, I heard these words … I heard, ‘That husband of yours just won’t knock it off. He’s having an affair with my teenage daughter and that bastard won’t knock it off and I have to come to you,’” Brinkley, in tears, said.

“I said, ‘What did you say?’ At this point my eyes were fading out at the edges, this tunnel vision in a way,” Brinkley told her attorney.

“I looked at Peter and he was just going ‘no’ and I thought it’s true — he did that,” she continued.

Brinkley also told the court that Cook was suicidal after his adultery was exposed.

“I’m going to plow my car into a tree,” she recalled him saying from his cell phone while driving. She said it was the first time she had heard her husband cry.

On Wednesday, Cook detailed the affair and his mistress, Diana Bianchi, also took the stand, calling their fling was “mutual.”

Brinkley’s attorney also revealed how Cook spent $3,000 on Internet porn sites.

The battle is expected to get more heated as the days continue as both bash each other’s parenting skills in an attempt to win custody of their two children, Jack, 13, and Sailor, 9.

Cook told the Post the sensational trial “is about parenting and remaining in my children’s lives in the same presence I’ve always had.

“I’m not going to let her take my children the way she has with the last two fathers,” he said.

(source)