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VOICES OF EXPERIENCE: Wife Lauren Haidon (left) now agrees with online warnings from Stacey Blitsch (center left) and Amanda Ryncarz about her husband, Matthew Couloute Jr. (right). (
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He was branded with the modern-day equivalent of a scarlet letter — an anonymous online trashing he said would forever besmirch his good name.
“Cheated on ALL of ex-girlfriends. Lied and cheated his entire way through his 40 years of life,” one post on LiarsCheatersRUs.com reads. “HE’S SCUM! RUN FAR AWAY!” another implores.
But former prosecutor and Court TV analyst Matthew Couloute Jr. didn’t plan on taking his cyber-trashing lying down.
He vigorously leapt to his own defense, slapping the two women he said were responsible — professional roller-derby queen “Malibu” Stacey Blitsch and Amanda Ryncarz — with a federal lawsuit last year.
Through it all, his wife stood by his side — even going on national television to defend the man of her dreams.
“I thought it was the right thing to do,” explained Lauren Haidon, who married Couloute only months before the first cyber-smear appeared in December 2010. “Where I come from, it’s about keeping your family together.”
But today, the man whose ex-flames famously trashed him online is once again being branded a creep — this time by his wife.
Haidon, 30, told The Post she tried desperately to make her marriage succeed, but was foiled at every turn.
She is now planning to divorce, and has filed for sole custody of their 7-month-old daughter.
“Father abandoned mother/child,” Haidon claims in an Aug. 13 family court filing in Erie County. “Father is mentally, financially, emotionally unstable. Father is emotionally abusive.”
Couloute, 41, promised her the world, but left her with bills and heartache, claims Haidon, who says she and her daughter were booted from their Paramus, NJ, pad because her husband has jumped ship.
The couple’s whirlwind romance began after a friend introduced the two in August 2010, and culminated in marriage just two months later.
“He is very charming. He comes off as very well put-together. He makes you think that you’re the one he’s been looking for his whole life,” Haidon said.
But the curtain was lifted almost immediately, after she found out about Ryncarz, whom she says Couloute broke up with 12 days after his wedding.
“I was sick to my stomach,” she recalled. “I always knew he wasn’t telling the truth, but when you realize that you are married, and you left your own life to have a life with someone else, it’s not so easy to walk away. It truly is embarrassing.”
Haidon said she began to regularly speak to Blitsch, with whom Couloute has a 7-year-old son, and other ex-flames.
“His excuse is that all these women are crazy. Everyone is crazy,” she said.
With little money coming in, Haidon said she’s had to shell out close to $100,000 for rent and bills that Couloute has neglected to pay.
Couloute called the marital dust-up a “private matter.”
“As in the past, I am doing what’s in the best interest of my children, and it is the reason I have custody of one of them,” he said.
Haidon’s Twitter posts echo the online warnings she once dismissed:
“I’ve been patient, forgiving, supportive, taken advantage of, used in his custody battle & used as a bank. Life catches up w/u.”
New York federal Judge Harold Baer threw out Couloute’s lawsuit in February, saying that he did not show professional harm and that the online comments about him were “clearly hyperbolic.”
After he filed the suit, Couloute spoke to The Post to clear his name.
“Women should never be afraid to speak out. But no one should be able to defame an ex-flame because they’re not happy with the way the relationship ended,” he said.