Modern Family star Ariel Winter has spoken out about the abuse she faced as a child actor in Hollywood at the hands of “male predators.”
The now-27-year-old actor was 11 when she landed her best-known role as Alex Dunphy on ABC’s Emmy-winning sitcom Modern Family — though she joined the industry much earlier.
“I am familiar with male predators because I worked in Hollywood at a young age. I started at age four,” Winter disclosed in a new interview with the Daily Mail.
“I don’t wanna say too much about it, but by the time I was on a laptop and cell phone, I was getting inappropriate messages from older men, and it caused trauma.”
She said that “the experiences I had in person and online as a child have affected me so deeply that I’ve had to go to therapy for it.”
“The movie and TV industry is a dark place,” she added.
Winter has previously spoken about the traumatic experiences she faced growing up in the spotlight, which ultimately led her to team up with Safe From Online Sex Abuse (SOSA), an organization that collaborates with law enforcement to lure online sexual predators.
“It just impacted me so deeply,” she told People in May about the organization’s work, “because I’d been that kid who’d been preyed upon online so many times.”
The Sofia the First voice actor currently appears in a true crime docuseries on YouTube titled SOSA Undercover. Each episode follows the SOSA team members as they carry out “undercover operations to identify and apprehend perpetrators of sex abuse and trafficking.”
Describing her work with SOSA as “cathartic,” Winter told the Mail that it was also “scary at times pretending to be 12 and talking to older men, but it’s validating to put away predators that have been harming children.”
“Growing up in the entertainment industry, I’ve been the girl we are trying to save,” she said. “It’s vital to me to help protect young women from the experiences I endured in my own life.”
Elsewhere in her interview with the tabloid, Winter recalled the relentless scrutiny she faced in the media growing up.
“Having my figure written about was a major part of my teenage years,” she said. “It was just everywhere. It was every headline I read about myself. I mean, I was 14.”
In 2022, Winter revealed that she decided to move away from Los Angeles because of the toll paparazzi interest was taking on her life.
“Part of the reason I always hated L.A. is because I have been followed by paparazzi for a very long portion of my life. And I really, really dislike having my space invaded,” she explained. “I don’t like pictures of me when I haven’t signed up for pictures of me. I don’t like feeling watched.
“People have always been like, ‘You don’t like L.A., why don’t you just move?’” she recalled. “And then I just randomly looked and decided, ‘Why not?’”
If you are a child and you need help because something has happened to you, you can call the NSPCC free of charge on 0800 1111. You can also call the NSPCC if you are an adult and you are worried about a child, on 0808 800 5000. The National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac) offers support for adults on 0808 801 0331.
