Real Housewives Of Orange County’s 8 Biggest Scandals
Published on June 21, 2016. Updated October 27, 2016Bravo’s reality series known as the Real Housewives of all about the drama! The show was first created to showcase the lives of wealthy, career-driven women, whereas now it’s all about cat fights, wine drinking (sometimes wine tossing) and A LOT of scandal. As the original show in the series, The Real Housewives of Orange County has been on air for 10 seasons! Season 11 will premiere in a few weeks and since the show began back in 2008, there’s been plenty of drama and scandal that has happened on and off screen. Here’s a look at the 8 biggest scandals on The Real Housewives of Orange County:
8. The Bathtub Scene
During season 6 of the RHOC, Tamra was in the process of divorcing Simon, had moved out and her hot new boyfriend Eddie Judge made his first appearance. The two were extremely public with their affection, and definitely didn’t seem to be shy around the cameras. However, at times it was a little too comfortable! Eddie and Tamra filmed an extremely intimate scene of the two taking a bath together and many viewers didn’t respond well to her racy behavior. Some fans even got mad at the network for letting it go to air! One of the biggest issues people took with the scene was the fact that she is a mother with young children who will be exposed to it and the fact that her divorce hadn’t been finalized yet. She was openly separated from Simon and the two were taking steps to get divorced, but technically she was still married to Simon. Tamra has openly stated that looking back she completely regrets filming that scene and has “talked with her children” about it in order to smooth things over with her family life. Unfortunately, the controversial steamy bathtub scene will forever be etched in our minds!
Bravo TV7. Gretchen Rossi Cheating Scandal
Former housewife Gretchen Rossi suffered a huge blow to her image when ex-boyfriend Jay Photoglou created a campaign to trash her in the media. He alleged that he was involved in an intimate relationship with Gretchen while she was with to her former fiance, Jeff Beitzel, who has since passed away. When Gretchen first joined the cast in season 3 she was immediately dubbed a ‘gold digger’ by the other women on the show because she was much younger than her fiance, who also happened to be terminally ill. Things got even worse after he passed away and allegations came to light that she had been cheating on him with Photoglou. Gretchen fought back by filing a 3-year restraining order against Photoglou and then suing him for $500,000 for assault, stalking and infliction of emotional distress — she was granted both.
Source: www.starcasm.net6. Tamra Judge Suicide Attempts
During an episode of The Real Housewives of Orange County, Tamra Judge revealed she had made numerous attempts at suicide many years ago. When she was only 21-years-old she took a bunch of pills and drank an entire bottle of NyQuill after suffering through an extremely painful divorce from her first husband, Darren Vieth. The second time she took a bunch of prescription pills while she was in a bad relationship. She said, “I took a bunch of prescription medication that I found in my mom’s cupboard, then my mom found me and they took me to the hospital. They admitted me into a mental hospital.” The vicious cycle continued when she was again caught in another abusive marriage to Simon Barney, but things have turned around for Tamra! She’s now happily married to fan favorite, Eddie Judge, and the two run a successful business together.
Bravo TV5. Gretchen Rossi’s Photo Leak
In 2009 before the premiere of season 5, some pretty raunchy photos of Gretchen Rossi were leaked on the internet. There were photos of Gretchen lying naked on a bed with a vibrator, some of her topless in a car and even some of her on the toilet. The pictures were released on the site Dirty.com, but have since been removed. Gretchen Rossi addressed the topic of the photos briefly and said they were made public without her permission or knowledge and she is embarrassed by them. The photos were taken when she was in “a dark place” mourning the death of her former partner, Jeff.
KCR/REX4. Tamra Judge Child Abuse Scandals
During the first few seasons of The Real Housewives of Orange County, Tamra was married to Simon Barney. Simon was featured on the show with Tamra and the two were often caught bickering about things and in one of the most raw real-life moments caught on camera, Tamra finally came to her wits end and asked Simon for a divorce during a fight. Their divorce became extremely public and quickly got nasty when they started fighting over custody of the kids. Tamra stayed with the show while Simon left and he now uses the show to exploit her and win primary custody of their children. There’s been a lot said about both parents, but the worst has most definitely been Simon’s child abuse allegations against Tamra. During last seasons reunion, Tamra broke down and was completely honest about the fact that her eldest daughter Sidney requested to be under the permanent custody of her father and now has an estranged relationship with Tamra. There were court documents filed that she refused to bring their 13-year-old son to the doctor after Simon “found a bug” in the hair of their 8-year-old daughter, Sophia. He also claimed they do not receive nutritional meals and experience a deterioration in their school work while under her care. Tamra has of course denied all of these allegations and Simon has been accused of domestic violence and even been arrested a few times.
Matt Baron/BEI/REX3. Shannon Beador’s Husband Cheating
Shannon Beador joined the cast of The Real Housewives of Orange County in season 9 and right out of the gate her marriage was hit with a very public infidelity scandal. Her husband, David’s relationship with his mistress came out in June while filming and totally rocked Shannon’s world. The secret of his infidelity became a storyline on the show as Shannon would confide in her friends about it, while others heard about it through gossip around town. Eventually Shannon had to address it head on and just go public with the whole thing. Since then, all of their dirty laundry relating to this incident has been laid out including their marriage counselling, David threatening to leave, the name of his mistress and details about it all like the fact that it went on for eight months, the lies he told Shannon and even that he thought he was in love with his mistress. Now, the couple is doing much better and have documented their progress on the show, but it’s still a heated topic and one of the biggest scandals to have been uncovered on the show.
Charles Sykes/Bravo2. Lynne Curtin’s Daughter in Adult Entertainment
It seems Lynne Curtin’s life is never drama-free! She joined the cast of The Real Housewives of Orange County in season 3 and right off the bat her family was put through a very public scandal of financial issues, eviction and immense debt. She continued to shock viewers when she got plastic surgery alongside her teenage daughter and left her husband after she realized he’d been hiding her financial problems from her. She got fired from the show and returned briefly to make guest appearances, but other than that she’s been focused on attempting to build a career selling handbags and jewelry. In 2014 the drama continued when it was discovered that her 22-year-old daughter, Alexa had launched a career in adult entertainment. Reportedly, she was working for money to have plastic surgery and, in an interview with the National Enquirer, Lynne said she wasn’t aware and was under the impression that her daughter was a lingerie model. However, in reality her daughter had gone as far as creating an entire career under the name “Jayden Taylors” with the impression that she could do a few movies, no one would find out: “She thought she could make a few movies under an assumed name, get her nose and boobs redone, and nobody would recognize her. She’s wrong. She now realizes this will follow her for the rest of her life thanks to the internet.” Lynne is adamant that her daughter no longer does porn, but not long after Alexa tweeted out that she’d like to win an Adult Video News Award and there is speculation that her other daughter, Raquel is now also involved in the industry.
Broadimage / Rex1. Brooks Cancer Scam
The past few seasons of The Real Housewives of Orange County have been focused on Vicki Gunvalson’s tumultuous relationship with former boyfriend, Brooks Ayers. Their entire relationship was an uphill battle right from the get-go. Things seemed to be okay when she first brought him around, but once the girls, especially Vicki’s daughter began realizing things were ‘off’ about him, it wasn’t long after the rumors began swirling. There were multiple scandals around Brooks over the past little like failing to pay child support, cheating or exploiting Vicki for fame and money, but the worst was last season when he is thought to have lied about being ill with cancer. Throughout season 10 Brooks and Vicki fought tooth and nail against the other women to prove he was in fact battling stage-3 cancer, but things weren’t adding up. Brooks even went as far to provide medical records of his treatment at cancer hospital, City of Hope. After some investigating by the other women and the media, Brooks finally admitted to faking his medical records, but remains adamant he is battling cancer. Later on the reunion show, Vicki admitted she wasn’t sure if he was sick and that she was duped along with everyone else. Brooks has stated he would like to keep his health private and will not discuss the topic publicly.
Source: Bravo TV