Bachelor alum digs up this season’s secrets
Former contestant takes on the role of investigative journalist
This past May, former Bachelor contestant Ashley Spivey was getting ready to revel in the typical ridiculousness of a new season of ABC’s The Bachelorette, but things took a turn when someone sent her images of Instagram posts that were “liked” by contestant Garrett Yrigoyen.
The posts mocked feminists; joked about throwing an immigrant child over the border; made fun of transgender people; and claimed Parkland, Fla., school shooting survivor David Hogg was a crisis actor.
After confirming with friends who follow Yrigoyen that he did, in fact, “like” those posts, Spivey posted the images on Twitter. “Can we do a better job of social media deep dives on the dudes that try out for #thebachelorette,” she wrote.
A few weeks later, Spivey helped Bachelor blogger Reality Steve confirm a previously unreported fact that contestant Lincoln Adim had been charged and recently convicted of indecent assault and battery.
For the second time in a month, Spivey’s discoveries blew up online — and threatened to overshadow what was actually happening on the show.
Contestants do not typically address off-camera drama while the season is airing, but Yrigoyen released an apology for “mindlessly tapping” on “hurtful, degrading and dehumanizing” posts. (As a result of this unusual step, many surmised that Yrigoyen made it quite far this season and, in fact, he is one of Becca Kufrin’s final two.)
As for Adim, production company Warner Bros. said it launched an investigation into why the “well-respected and highly-experienced” third-party company that does its background checks did not include information about the charges against him, which were filed two years ago.
So how did a former Bachelor contestant not only become a de facto investigative journalist, but nearly upend one of the country’s most popular TV shows?
Spivey, a 33-year-old nanny and North Carolina native who lives in New York, said in a phone interview she got her first tip because she’s a moderator on a Bachelor subreddit. She had heard rumblings Yrigoyen had some personal views “that didn’t necessarily match up to Becca’s,” who is a Hillary Clinton supporter.
Then Spivey received the private message with the Instagram images.
While she has received some cruel tweets from people who accused her of going after Yrigoyen because she is a Democrat, she emphasizes political party is not the issue with the posts he liked.
“I just feel like that’s not even a conservative view and it’s not a Republican view. It’s a hateful view,” Spivey said. “I think that Becca doesn’t seem to be the type of person who would agree with those, and I don’t see how she could look past them or excuse them.”
Spivey did not expect the information she had unearthed to receive such widespread reac- tion. Last year, someone noticed racist tweets from Bachelorette contestant Lee Garrett, who was competing on the season with the franchise’s first Black star, Rachel Lindsay. Even though it was discussed in depth on the “Men Tell All” episode, Spivey felt “people just glazed over it a little bit.”
So she was surprised when Yrigoyen’s Instagram likes sparked such a controversy online. “I really wasn’t expecting it to have an impact on this season,” she said. “But I am glad that people have been more up- set about it. I only wish that production was making more of an effort to edit Lincoln out of this.” (He was sent home on the July 2 episode.) After all, ABC pulled an episode of The Proposal after one of its contestants was accused of facilitating a woman’s date rape. Adim, on the other hand, had been convicted of assault and continued to appear on the show.
Jake Wark, a spokesperson for the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office, has said in statements to the press Adim is expected to register as a sex offender. The court has impounded Adim’s police report to protect the victim’s and witnesses’ privacy, Wark noted, so how did Spivey confirm the arrest and conviction?
It started with a tip. Spivey says Reality Steve, a blogger who publishes spoilers about Bachelor shows, received an email from someone who said they had been in the South Boston courthouse and Steve should look more into Adim. Spivey called the courthouse and, when they said could not share the information over the phone, Spivey sent her sister, who lives in Boston, to go to the courthouse and photocopy all the documents she could. Once Spivey had confirmed Adim was arrested in 2016 and convicted in late May, Reality Steve published and other media outlets followed.
Spivey finds it hard to believe the company doing background checks for Warner Bros. did not find anything objectionable in their screening of Adim, or if they did, did not find it reason enough to disqualify him. “When we were going through our background checks, they asked me about a speeding ticket,” she recalls of the intense screening she went through before competing on Brad Womack’s 2011 season of The Bachelor.
“I think in today’s climate, you should really be paying attention to not only people who have sex offences in their background, but you should be trying to make the best possible match for the show.”