The original post: /r/television by /u/AmethystOrator on 2024-09-17 19:50:08.
Entertainment Weekly wrote a story today about some of the history of the “winner” of the most recent season: ew.com/bachelorette-devin-strader-arrested-2017-b…
Among the details, the contestant:
was arrested on accusations that he burglarized an ex-girlfriend’s Louisiana home in 2017. According to legal papers obtained by Entertainment Weekly, his ex also had a restraining order against him at the time.
The woman also alleged to police that Strader had “come to her house banging on the door several times and screaming at her,” and that she had since filed a restraining order against him. “Later that evening, [Strader] made a fire out in the street with what appeared to be the actual restraining order,” the affidavit further alleged. “She also had a tire flattened in her vehicle and when it was getting changed, [Strader] came outside and began laughing at her.” Strader was subsequently arrested on burglary charges. He ultimately pleaded guilty to charges of criminal trespass and simple criminal damage to property of less than $500, and received one year of unsupervised probation.
EW has obtained the now-unsealed Petition for Protection From Abuse, which was filed by Strader’s ex-girlfriend on March 22, 2017. The document features the woman’s handwritten account of alleged abuse by Strader, including that he “spit on me and threw his drink on me at Pelicans game in front of everyone in the crowd,” and “put me in a chokehold covering my mouth.”
According to another site (Reality Steve) which covers Bachelor content, this contestant also has a DUI conviction, though that’s not mentioned in the EW story.
ABC and Warner Bros., the studio that produces the Bachelor franchise, run background checks on their contestants — so how did they miss this? A source close to production tells EW, “We take the safety of our contestants very seriously and make every effort to conduct thorough diligence. As exhaustive as our vetting process is, this protective order did not surface in our searches.”
The fact that WB & ABC don’t do more to investigate these contestants’ backgrounds deserves some attention.