
Ahead of the premiere of Ali Oetjen’s season of The Bachelorette on Wednesday, many of us breathed a sigh of relief.
‘Finally,’ we thought.
‘We can forget about that very vivid story about the stairs.‘

For anyone who somehow... missed the stairs incident, and/or erased it from their memory, I'll try to keep this as brief as possible:
When Ali and Grant broke up shortly after Bachelor in Paradise (before it had even aired, to be precise), Grant told the media there was a salacious story behind the end of their relationship.
Speaking to Kyle and Jackie O in May, Grant described the moment he caught a "guy going down on [Ali] on the stairs" to his apartment. "I kicked her out that night," he said.
“This guy was my friend and she was the one who wanted to have a threesome and she told him that. So I took her to the other room and asked if that was true. She said no and [later on], I walked back into that. That’s what happened.”
After staying quiet for months, Ali finally responded to the claims in September, telling Stellar magazine, "My major reason for not saying anything is that I don’t want to give him any ammunition or any reason to keep coming back in the limelight, which is what he wants."
"He wants to keep on grabbing those headlines. It speaks volumes for who he is really," she said.
But just as Australia was preparing to watch The Bachelorette, the Daily Mail published a story that threatened to take the spotlight off Ali's big moment, and back onto the goddamn stairs.
Grant appears to have shared his private text messages from March with the publication, in an attempt to provide evidence of Ali's cheating.
Top Comments
"No matter how your relationship ends, surely it's not necessary to destroy your ex-partner's reputation as revenge". It's also not necessary to cheat on your partner. Let's not make him out to be the only bad guy here. It's totally understandable that he's still angry, although not 'necessary'.
Perhaps if Ali had simply said "Yes, I cheated on Grant, and I'm very sorry I hurt him", rather than accuse him of attention seeking, this wouldn't be an issue now? I suspect all Grant wants is for her to admit the truth. If it were a guy who was the new Bachelor being accused of cheating on his previous girlfriend, would you be so sympathetic? Or would you be calling him a 'love rat'?
I'd wager it's that they'd decided he's the one who's a cheating, fame hungry wannabe and she's nothing but a victim, written articles about it being the case, then were proven wrong.
Normally I'd say "she's dug her own grave on this one" but it seems like she had quite a bit of help.