Ben Vereen accused of bigamy

Veteran actor Ben Vereen has been accused of bigamy after allegedly spending over 30 years married to two women.
The Tony-award winning Pippin star wed his first wife Andrea Townsley in 1965, when he was 19 and she was 14 years old and pregnant, according to court papers obtained by The New York Post.
The two split shortly thereafter, and Andrea was led to believe Ben took care of the divorce, according to Andrea’s attorney Harold Mayerson.
However, he tells People magazine his client only learned their marriage was not legally dissolved earlier this year (16) when she went to collect Social Security.
“Mr. Vereen told her years ago they were divorced,” Mayerson tells the publication. “But when she applied for Social Security, she found out that not only are they not divorced, but that some other woman is collecting under his name.”
The other woman is Ben’s second wife Nancy Bruner, who the Pippin star wed in 1976 and ultimately split from in 2012. But Mayerson points out that in order to obtain a California marriage certificate, Ben would have had to mention the date of his divorce, which the lawyer notes is “fishy” about the case.
Both Ben and Andrea appeared in a Brooklyn Supreme Court on Thursday (08Sep16), to settle their divorce for good, but the judge urged them to try to work out their differences outside of court, saying they “didn’t want a stranger in black robes to determine their lives.”
Andrea, a Pentecostal minister, is also asking Ben to pay for the divorce, given their drastic income difference.
Mayerson tells People he has high hopes for the case to wind up in their favour, saying, “We’re hopeful there will be a settlement before we go to trial and that Mr. Vereen will come to his good senses and get this settled and have a great twilight to his career,” adding, “we hope he will respect the fact that this woman raised his son and do the right thing.”
Ben’s lawyer John P. DiMascio, stayed fairly quiet on the matter, telling the New York Post, “This is a personal matter, and nothing has been proven yet.”