'90 Day Fiancé': Ed Brown's sexual assault accuser Lorelei Clemens was 'triggered' when she saw him on TV
'90 Day Fiancé: Before The 90 Days' Season 4 had everyone glued to their television but also managed to pull in many controversies. one such controversy that recently came to light was the sexual assault and harassment claim made against Ed Brown. The 90 franchise has managed to make its cast members famous personalities and it did not come as a surprise that history repeated with new cast members.
Ed's accuser, Lorelei Clemens first opened up about the assault on the famous social media platform, TikTok. She admitted it was a tough decision to make about coming forward but finally managed to gather the strength to voice out what had happened to her. Clemens admitted she never thought she would see her assaulted on the show.
"I mean, initially it was very triggering, it's been a lot of work to deal, but still the trauma of sexual violence, it's very hard to get over and often it will never go away because it doesn't disappear," she said in an interview with Daily Soap Dish. "So it was very triggering, but I think with that pain, it sounds kind of weird, but it made me realize that I don't want this to happen to anyone else, and if I can prevent that from happening, I'm going to. I tried to do it four years ago, but no one really knew who Big Ed was, and so I guess that pained kind of turned into motivation to help others."
She confessed the purpose of her coming forward was not because Ed was slowly gaining celebrity status. "I understand because they don't know what happened four years ago, so I did confront, not Ed but the workplace about it. I did speak up about it. But no one wanted to take action at that time. So, you know, I felt I did what I could, I spoke about it, I brought it to light about what was happening. It was by chance that Ed happened to come on '90 Day Fiancé', I had no idea that he was going to be on it until honestly, someone had told me about it by accident. So, it makes sense if you haven't seen the whole picture," she said.
Clemens revealed her decision of coming forward with the claims had been months in making. “You know, it was very difficult. I took a couple of months to kind of meditate and figure out if I wanted to take that step forward. With that being said, I felt that it was important that I come forward even if there was a lot of backlash from people," she said.
She continued, "I mean there's always going to be people that don’t understand, but at the end of the day it's the victims that understand it and generally people react out of fear and it's cruel when they react out of fear or they just don't understand the situation and that's not my fault. I'm just here to set an example for other victims that even if they feel like they can't come forward there’s always the option. They have the power; they don’t have to feel like someone owns their words or their story."
Clemens admitted she tried reaching out to TLC and other websites to tell her story. "Yeah, so initially I tried to contact TLC, I actually reached out to a couple of media outlets before posting on TikTok, but there wasn't any response from anyone, so I decided that I'm going to try and take this into my own hands and hope someone sees this story and can talk about it," she said.
While the decision to come forward was a tough one, Clemens believes it was all worth it. '90 Day Fiancé: Before The 90 Days' airs on Sundays at 8 pm ET on TLC.