We’ve been religiously covering the Modern Family’s Ariel Winter saga for the past few days. If you’re not up to speed, Winter was removed from her mother’s care after an October 3rd guardianship hearing and placed under her sister’s care. Winter’s physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her mother, Chrystal Workman, rocked the television industry’s most loved cast, and while everyone is still mum on the allegations, most media outlets have already outlined the next turn in this dramatic saga.
We reported last night on Celeb Dirty Laundry that the catalyst in the whole saga was Winter’s mother, who walked in on her and her 18-year-old boyfriend having sex. Chrystal’s written statement shifted the blame from her alleged ineptitude to Winter’s manipulative teenage love affair, “I caught them engaging in behavior that I feel my daughter is too young mentally and physically to understand. I put a stop to it immediately. I filed charges against him because legally he is an adult and if he wants to engage in adult behavior with a minor than he should also be ready to suffer adult consequences for his actions and poor judgment. I will not apologize for protecting my daughter, as she means the world to me and I will always be there for her and I will always protect her to the best of my ability until the day I die.”
Could it have been Winter’s obsessive puppy love that caused the rift between her and her mother? What about her sister – who allegedly also suffered abuse at the hands of their mother for twenty years? Could Winter have picked up on this rift and played it to her own advantage? According to a latest TMZ report, “Authorities have serious doubts about [the] allegations made by [Winter’s] mother […] because they think the mother is making up stories of an illicit sexual relationship to save face after she was stripped of custody.” Several law enforcement officials, who were involved in the abuse scandal, told TMZ that Chrystal only went to the police after she lost custody of Winter during the 3rd of October trial, even though she has been claiming that the affair’s been going on since the beginning of summer. Allegedly, Chrystal only once mentioned the criminal relationship during the guardianship hearing, when she fumed in court and called the guardianship attorney a “moron”. She testified on the 24th of September, when she said in court, “I caught my daughter with her boyfriend in bed – she’s 14. He’s 18 and I threw him out and I broke them up.”
Why didn’t she give the above written statement during her testified account? If she loves Winter as much as she claims, why didn’t she fight for her daughter during the trial and outline the chronology of events in a lucid manner? Why was the illicit relationship only recently brought to the attention of media? Why was Chrystal Workman’s timing so absolutely perfect? TMZ alleges that a law enforcement official told them, “They don’t believe there was ever a sexual relationship between Ariel and the boy.”
We admit that there are always two sides to a story, but Chrystal’s impeccable timing and shifting of blame smells like a scapegoat. The illegal relationship might have been the catalyst in the eventual turn of events, but we doubt Winter would put her entire life in the public arena, and cause a hemorrhaging of media nitpicking, without concrete evidence.
What do you think? Who is to blame? Was it Winter’s illicit love affair that caused the allegations of abuse? Or was Chrystal the fiend in this sordid tale? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Ariel over the years
Photo Credit: FameFlynet Pictures
