‘The Bachelor’: The Difference Between the Jed Wyatt Scandal and the Victoria F. Scandal

Contestant scandals have become more prevalent in The Bachelor series in recent years. Hannah Brown’s season of The Bachelorette was filled with scandal thanks to her final rose winner, Jed Wyatt, competing with a girlfriend waiting for him back home.

Peter Weber’s season was scandalous thanks to controversial contestant Victoria Fuller, who’s been accused of sleeping with her friends’ husbands. Both situations were handled very differently by the franchise. Here’s how they differ.

The Jed Wyatt scandal

Wyatt admitted to coming on The Bachelorette for reasons other than love (to promote his music) early on in Brown’s season. He told her his original intentions of coming on the show, he said, because he was starting to develop real feelings for her and he wanted to be honest. While he continued to promote his music throughout Brown’s season (Bachelor Nation frequently dragged him for always having his guitar in hand–even while proposing), it was also clear he’d grown attached to the former beauty pageant queen.

After Wyatt won Brown’s final rose and they’d gotten engaged, he was put on full blast. His name littered the press. The Bachelorette finale did a deep-dive into the accusation. There was no hiding what Wyatt had done.

The Victoria F. scandal

The Victoria F. scandal, on the other hand, was only addressed slightly on Peter Weber’s season of The Bachelor. We had the blurred out face of Weber’s ex, Merissa Pence, warning the bachelor that the controversial contestant had “broken up many relationships,” and then host Chris Harrison asking Victoria F. if she’d done what she’s been accused of during “Women Tell All.”

“Absolutely not,” she responded.

And that was that.

Why were the Jed Wyatt and Victoria F. scandals handled so differently?

So why was the Wyatt scandal so fleshed out and the Victoria F. scandal more or less swept under the rug?

For one thing, Wyatt was the season winner. He was engaged to Brown and the secret he’d kept played directly into their relationship. Victoria F. did not win Weber’s season, so her past isn’t really the pilot’s concern anymore.

Additionally, Wyatt had a girlfriend while competing on The Bachelorette. It was a real-time scandal. The accusations made against Victoria F. all happened prior to her appearing on the show. Perhaps Weber is operating from a place of leaving the past in the past. If the accusations are true (Reality Steve and much of Bachelor Nation believe they are), who’s to say Victoria F. can’t repent and move forward?

So why didn’t Harrison ask for a further explanation as to why people keep accusing Victoria F. of sleeping with married men? As we saw on “The Women Tell All,” Bachelor contestants receive a lot of hate. Maybe the host was sparing the medical sales representative of more online harassment. Though, he didn’t do the same for Wyatt.

Read more: The Bachelor: Women Tell All Was Messy but Ended With a United Front Against Online Harassment