Should I Watch That ‘Bachelorette’ Star’s Domestic Violence Video?

Harmony isn’t exciting. Conflict is — the more toxic, the better — and reality television producers know this, often plying their subjects with alcohol or depriving them of sleep and provoking high-stress, conflictual situations that can rapidly escalate to unsafe levels.

But producers don’t seem to be concerned as long as voyeurism fuels high ratings, even broadcasting highly traumatizing violence. “America’s Next Top Model” producers recently found themselves in hot water as Season 2 contestant Shandi Sullivan’s “cheating” storyline was reexamined in the Netflix docuseries “Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model.” Between Sullivan’s testimony and the alleged and implicit factors influencing the events of that storyline, it comes across as a sexual assault televised for shock value. The effects of trauma on Sullivan were evident, even 2 decades later, tears rolling down her face as she relived the violation.

Most recently, ABC is mired in similar controversy after TMZ released a video of reality star Taylor Frankie Paul assaulting her ex-boyfriend, Dakota Mortensen, pulling his hair, screaming, and hurling metal barstools at him in the presence of her 5-year-old daughter. One stool appears to hit the child, as Mortensen shouts at Paul to stop. The video’s release prompted ABC to cancel the upcoming season of “The Bachelorette,” featuring Paul, who also starred in the series, “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.”

The video raises a multitude of valid public health questions flooding social media:

What is “reactive abuse” versus self-defense? Do those terms even apply to Paul’s case? Men too are victims of domestic abuse.

Why do we scrutinize victims of domestic abuse almost more intently than we do alleged perpetrators? For instance, why is Mortensen being characterized as “attention-seeking” and manipulative, and blamed for the timing of the video’s release before we have complete facts?

Why was Paul’s (appropriate!) cancellation so swift, while male perpetrators of domestic or sexual violence often enjoy second chances?

However, I want to focus on this question: Should you watch that video?

Inside a Flashback

I’ve written at length about my experience as a victim of domestic abuse who now treats abuse patients. It’s a curious line to walk. While exploring this case, I made myself watch the TMZ footage — I can’t write about something I haven’t seen.

I don’t recommend watching it, especially if you’ve survived abuse.

While physical abuse wasn’t a daily reality for me (though it was a part of my experience), Paul’s erratic violence terrified me, and the fear I had during my own abuse hit me full force. The video lasted about 3.5 minutes, but the experience felt interminable. I was frozen in my chair, heart pounding relentlessly. The line between reality and my own experience blurred, and transiently, the act of watching someone else’s pain became a vivid re-experiencing of my own life. I suddenly saw flashes of memories I try so hard to keep at bay: a bag of frozen corn being flung across the room, bursting open; a shoe thrown at me, hitting my leg; him shouting: “Apologize to me like you mean it!”

Snapping back to the present, the screams of Paul’s little girl in the background of the video brought me to tears and a chill ran through my body. I couldn’t stop shaking; my breathing was shallow and rapid. I’m not sure how long I sat there.

The classic symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) — nightmares, intrusive memories, hypervigilance, avoidance — are highly distressing and functionally impairing. I’m particularly concerned about the effects of this video on patients with histories of abuse, both male and female. TMZ prefaces the footage with a content warning, but it does not remotely prepare the viewer for the aftereffects of shock.

Your body remembers abuse; mine overrode all the cognitive controls I’ve spent years carefully constructing to protect my mind. Volitionally inducing a flashback is decidedly against my professional recommendations.

Witness Versus Voyeur

Yet, I’m torn on the ethics of releasing the video. In an ideal world that supports survivors without the insidious phenomena of DARVO (Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender) and institutional betrayal compounding the adverse mental health effects of trauma, I would argue that the video’s release amounts to crass sensationalism for covetous voyeurs, carrying unequivocal risk of harm with no benefit. Like exploitation films that capitalize on senseless, often sexualized, violence, it would have no substantive purpose.

However, we don’t live in an ideal world. We live in one that viciously interrogates survivors of sexual and domestic abuse, forcing them to defend themselves repeatedly by reliving the most egregious violations of their persons. Our world often gives an abuser the benefit of the doubt, allowing redemption even when their abuses are evident, and demanding a survivor’s forgiveness. We worry about ruining the abuser’s life, with little regard for the survivor whose life is irrevocably altered by abuse.

I hate that it takes mass consumption of videos like Paul’s assault on Mortensen or Diddy’s infamous brutalization of Cassie Ventura for the public to acknowledge the pernicious reality of intimate partner violence, and I wonder if there is a benefit to forcing people into seeing what I see and feeling what I feel every time a survivor shares their trauma in my clinic. I wonder if it can possibly shift our conceptualization of abuse from skepticism of survivors and empathy for the abuser to compassionate support for survivors with harsh, unyielding social sanctions for the abuser. If you ask most trauma patients, myself included, what would help them heal best, they’ll likely tell you, “Justice.”

Unfortunately, I don’t believe ABC used Paul’s previous arrest for assault in 2023 as a key plot point on “Mormon Wives” out of altruism. I believe that — like the producers of “America’s Next Top Model” — they used it because controversy is ratings gold. This is an unethical disservice to abuse survivors, whose trauma narratives — if shared with the public — should be honored with gravitas, not sensationalized for corporate media greed. We owe our patients who have survived abuse the respect of being witnesses to their pain, not voyeurs.

Chloe Nazra Lee, MD, MPH, is a resident physician in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York. The views above reflect only the author’s and are not shared or endorsed by any institution with which she is affiliated.

If you or someone you know has been abused, call 1-800-799-7233 (SAFE) for the National Domestic Violence Hotline.