Bachelor in Paradise’s sexual assault allegations are a byproduct of reality TV’s blurry ethics

The news about why Bachelor in Paradise shut down its fourth season mid-production started as a trickle of rumors, and has since became a full-on flood of increasingly disturbing information.

While production studio Warner Bros. conducts “a thorough investigation,” reports have emerged of a possible sexual assault occurring on set — along with, allegedly, an inexcusable lack of in-the-moment crew intervention when some contestants realized the woman involved may have been too drunk to consent; according to the LA Times’s reporting, a producer seems to have filed a formal complaint after the fact, which is what halted production. (The two contestants in question have since released statements vowing to get to the truth of the situation, with both requesting access to the video of the incident, which Warner Bros. has so far not released to either the contestants or ABC.)

By all accounts, whatever happened on the Bachelor in Paradise set was horrifying — but taken in the context of what reality shows of its type often encourage of their contestants in the pursuit of drama, it’s unfortunately not entirely shocking, either.

To be very clear (so clear that I would skywrite the following if I could afford it): In no way does this mean an assault could have been avoided if only the alleged victim or her alleged assailant hadn’t had so many drinks. Being drunk is not and will never be an adequate excuse for one person assaulting another.

But reality shows like Bachelor in Paradise, which assemble a group of people under one roof and give them almost nothing to do but date and drink in hopes of sparking salacious situations — all while producers nudge them to interact in one way or another in service of the best “storylines” — are all about blurring the line between “normal” interactions and ones “salacious” enough for TV.

Or, to be even more blunt: When a show encourages shitty behavior, truly shitty things just might happen.

On the one hand, this burgeoning Bachelor in Paradise disaster isn’t typical of The Bachelor franchise, or any reality program. No production wants to be liable for any criminal activity whatsoever, and so it’s a producer’s job to keep things in line as much as it is to find good stories among the cast. Shows like Real World and Road Rules have gotten much stricter over the years about sending home contestants who get into physical fights, drunken or otherwise, and reportedly conduct psychological tests before casting to evaluate contestants for possibly violent behavior.

But even the most carefully worded liability waivers — those contracts protecting shows from contestants suing over potential damages suffered on the show — can’t guarantee that a show will catch every situation before it gets out of control. Stricter policies or no, incidents still happen, to the point where drunken fights have become a staple of the genre; Jersey Shore, for example, featured multiple drunken altercations onscreen, at least one of which resulted in a lawsuit against MTV.

Incidents like the alleged Bachelor in Paradise assault are still much more rare — but unfortunately not unheard of, either.

In 2003, Real World: San Diego came to a halt when a 22-year-old woman, found naked and disoriented in the house’s bathroom after a night of drinking, alleged that a cast member’s guest had drugged and raped her. According to reports, MTV and Bunim-Murray, the production company behind Real World, did not report the rape allegation, and initially resisted letting the police search the house for evidence. The show lost a month of footage; no arrests were made.

In 2012, MTV settled a lawsuit filed by Tonya Cooley, a Real World alum who accused two of her castmates on Real World/Road Rules Challenge: The Ruins of raping her with a toothbrush while she was passed out. (Like the alleged Bachelor in Paradise victim, Cooley reportedly learned about the assault from other castmates.) In its initial response to Cooley’s allegations — which included a charge that the production itself had “condoned, encouraged, and ratified” aggressive behavior from the men while on set — Viacom’s defense included the following jaw-dropping paragraph:

[Cooley] failed to avoid the injuries of which she complains. ... [She] was frequently intoxicated (to an extent far greater than other contestants), rowdy, combative, flirtatious and on multiple occasions intentionally exposed her bare breasts and genitalia to other contestants.

As defenses against rape allegations go, saying that the alleged victim “failed to avoid the injuries of which she complains” is such classic victim blaming that it’s almost unbelievable — almost.

The case was settled out of court, and Cooley is legally unable to discuss the case any further. But a recent BuzzFeed oral history of the Challenge franchise still covered the case, with some contestants throwing doubt on the alleged sequence of events. The one thing the Road Rules women from throughout the years seemed to agree on, however, was the fact that the house felt like a frat, in which some bored men got drunk and made a sport out of making the women feel uncomfortable.

“The guys try to take your tops off in the pool or whatever, and there’s unlimited alcohol,” contestant Susie Meister told BuzzFeed. “It’s sort of like a breeding ground for bad behavior. So it does become difficult if you want to maintain any sense of dignity or self-respect when you are a woman on this show.”

Real World, Road Rules, and Bachelor in Paradise all live and die by the drama that producers and contestants create onscreen. And for the many series in the live-in reality show genre — which usually isolate their cohabitating contestants by depriving them of TV, phones, books, or anything else that may distract them from creating said drama — supplying alcohol to exhausted contestants and prodding them to stir shit up is a go-to tactic to jump-start the action.

This method of causing drama now has a more high-profile showcase in UnReal, the scripted Lifetime show that dramatizes creator Sarah Gertrude Shapiro’s experience as a Bachelor producer. The extreme lengths to which UnReal’s producer characters go to get their contestant to bend and break in the ways the producers want are intentionally horrifying — and, according to real-life Bachelor contestants, not entirely hyperbolic.

In 2016, Bachelor season five contestant Jessica Holcomb told Cosmopolitan that while producers aren’t “forcing alcohol down your throat,” there’s just “nothing to do” but drink and eat — a strategic choice that results in more pliable contestants.

“The boredom is truly the worst part,” Meister said to BuzzFeed on why things could get so out of hand on The Challenge. “It’s mind-numbing, and that, for me, is why people are acting like they’re in a zoo, because it feels like you’re in a cage.”

Reality producers who’ve spoken on the record about their behind-the-scenes process of masterminding storylines usually insist that they are in control of every situation, as a Bachelor franchise veteran recently did in an interview with Variety in the wake of the Bachelor in Paradise scandal. And one male Bachelor in Paradise veteran has publicly defended the franchise against claims that it fosters bad behavior, saying that “Alcohol is treated with the respect it deserves” on set, and that “sometimes contestants are asked to stop.”

But the fact remains that it’s ultimately the producers who are in control of the situation; a producer can decide to intervene, or can decide to take a step back and let a situation run its course. Producers are responsible for setting and enforcing the show’s limits, both legal and ethical, when it comes to destructive behavior on set. One of the inexcusable mistakes that happened on Bachelor in Paradise, it seems, is that those with the ability to step in and do something about an unfolding assault allegedly chose not to, in favor of keeping the cameras rolling.

The contestants involved in Bachelor in Paradise are adults who can decide how much to drink or not drink. If one contestant made the decision to assault the other — whether or not he sees it as such — that is also a choice he made. But this incident didn’t happen in a vacuum. If the allegations that crew members were warned that the victim couldn’t consent and failed to stop what was happening are true, they reflect a larger corrosive culture: one that encourages reality shows and everyone involved in them, from the crew members to the contestants to the producers, to get the most salacious material possible while turning a blind eye to common decency.