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AKARTA: Transgender singer and TV host Dorce Gamalama denied news that her marriage to Asep Maskar fell apart because she was often violently abusive.

“Do you think Dorce would stab someone who she once loved in her own house? It’s a lie. If there was violence, it would have been reported to the police, wouldn’t it?” Dorce told reporters at the RCTI station in Jakarta on Thursday.

The 48-year-old singer, named Dedi Yuliardi Ashadi at birth, claimed that she was depressed by the news.

“I went to Mecca for the umroh minor hajj pilgrimage to avoid you [journalists],” she said, as quoted by kapanlagi.com.

Asep Maskar, who committed to a nikah siri, an unregistered marriage to the singer in 2009, told reporters that he could not endure the marriage any longer because the singer was frequently violent.