Taylor Frankie Paul: Disney Exalts an Abuser
The Bachelor and the Bachelorette have always been gross displays of people involved in numerous romantic relationships at the same time. The drama of the final episode is cruel: The “lead” is supposed to dump one romantic partner and propose marriage to the final remaining suitor. In the episode prior, three or four remaining romantic partners are invited to spend the night with the “lead” in an essential competition. Afterwards, one person gets dumped and is filmed for TV sobbing in shame and disappointment.
Perhaps the show has contributed to the rising popularity of polyamory, deemed “ethical nonmonogamy,” in which people feel at liberty to carry on multiple romantic relationships. This is despite the fact that the tears, jealousy, and drama of the show — as well as the fact that almost all of the couples break up — would seem to instead send the message that all of this is a terrible idea and plain wrong. Yet the show has largely been able to avoid being labeled as a display of polyamory because of its claimed aim at arriving at a marriage between two people.
The latest eligible bachelorette the show had selected, however, had a history of being happy to engage in sexual relationships with multiple people at the same time. Before Taylor Frankie Paul got a divorce, she and her husband had engaged in what she termed a “soft swinging” lifestyle, in which sexual activity outside of the marriage was celebrated, so long as the other spouse was present. After the divorce, she explained, “We played with fire, and we got burned.” Apparently, she had broken the rules of their arrangement after she “caught feelings” for another man. She said, “We had an agreement, like all of us, and I did step out of that agreement.” Paul added, “No one was innocent. Everyone has hooked up with everyone in this situation.”
Paul’s decision to take on the moniker of a Mormon “swinger” on her TikTok account, and the drama surrounding how that “swinging” destroyed her marriage, rocketed her to fame and fortune. It set her up to be the perfect person for ABC to feature on the Bachelorette. She was, after all, already famous for stepping outside of monogamy. The fact that she had three children with two different men only prepared her more to take on the show’s premise of dating 30 different men at the same time. Cementing her as the perfect person for the role was her decision to seemingly sleep with her ex-boyfriend the night before flying out to film the show. Given, however, that the Bachelor and Bachelorette have tried to position themselves as matchmaking forums for America’s most elite bachelors and bachelorettes, Paul’s prior marriage, “swinging,” and cheating served to make her controversial even given the show’s premise of polyamory.
The only problem for Disney and ABC was that Paul had been charged in 2023 with aggravated assault, domestic violence in the presence of a child, child abuse, and criminal mischief. Police had accused her in no uncertain terms of throwing heavy metal chairs at her boyfriend and, in so doing, hitting her 5-year-old daughter in the head with a metal chair, thus giving her a “goose-egg.” She entered a plea in abeyance to aggravated assault, allowing her to tell suitors on her show that her charges had been dropped.
ABC only canceled her season of the Bachelorette last week after the horrific video of this incident leaked. The company cited the video as the reason for the decision. It was not as though the circumstances of this assault were unknown, however. The police report recounted in full detail exactly what happened in that video. In fact, the video was used as evidence to charge her.
Three years ago, the Herriman City Police Department explained publicly that the cellphone video of Paul assaulting her boyfriend showed her throwing metal chairs from her kitchen island at him. The first chair hit her boyfriend on his “arm and hand.” At this point, police recounted that Paul’s boyfriend warned her that her daughter was right there. She then, according to the police account, taunted him and threw a second and third chair in his direction, the latter of which hit her 5-year-old daughter in the head. Unsurprisingly, the video verifies the police account.
Police also documented the fact that Paul’s boyfriend was left with a “minor laceration” on his neck, scratches on his fingers, and swelling around his eyes. The boyfriend reportedly told police that his elbow had “protracted pain.”
The reason for the fight? Paul wanted to go to a concert, but her boyfriend believed she was too drunk to go.
ABC read all of this in the police report, saw her plea, and yet still selected Paul to headline the Bachelorette. That is, they knew she was a domestic violence offender and decided to give her hundreds of thousands of dollars to star in their production anyway. Apparently, for Disney, having the qualification of being a “Mormon swinger” outweighed a domestic violence criminal record.
Taylor Frankie Paul, putting aside her abuse, would have broken the illusion that the Bachelor and Bachelorette are anything other than a gross exercise of polyamory. But, with her domestic violence, she shows ABC and Disney for what they are: companies that don’t care about child abuse or domestic abuse, companies that will elevate a woman guilty of assaulting her boyfriend — all because she’s famous for cheating on her husband.
Shockingly, or not so shockingly, Paul has been accused since filming wrapped of assaulting her ex-boyfriend on two additional occasions, and investigations are ongoing. But Disney knew exactly who they were getting, and they signed up for all of this.
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