Reading Time: 3 minutes
We’ve got another Love Island USA shocker.
A few weeks after Yulissa Escobar also departed the Peacock reality show — because we learned she had said the N-word during two separate podcast appearances — Cierra Oretega made a similar decision.
On July 6, narrator Iain Stirling announced during Episode 30 of the series that Ortega had left the program due to a “personal situation,” thereby leaving fellow contestant Nic Vansteenberghe single.
The 25-year-old’s unexpected exit came after numerous racist social media posts that she allegedly made resurfaced… at least two of them contained words/terms offensive to Chinese people.
“We’re not here to justify or ignore what’s surfaced,” Ortega’s parent wrote via Instagram on Sunday, citing social media abuse their daughter has suffered of late and adding:
“We understand why people are upset, and we know accountability matters. But what’s happening online right now has gone far beyond that.
“The threats. The cruel messages. The attacks on her family, her friends, even her supporters, it’s heartbreaking,” the statement continued. “It’s uncalled for. And no one deserves that kind of hate, no matter what mistake they’ve made.”
An old post made Ortego recently went viral.
In it, the content creator references her eyes, using a racial slur at the time that has been used to denigrate the Asian community.
The first example of this slur took place in 2015; Ortega appeared to use it again in February 2023 to describe her smile while getting Botox.
Since this reference was made public… Cierra started to lose thousands of followers. Prior to the backlash, the star had nearly one million followers.
However, when Love Island USA fans learned of her using this phrase, her follower count began to drop; it currently stands at 683,000.
Ortega has been sequestered ever since the scandal hit.
“While Cierra is not in the villa anymore, she is still away. She hasn’t had the chance to process any of this or speak for herself,” Ortega’s family wrote this weekend. “But we know our daughter. We know her heart. And when she returns, we believe she’ll face this with honesty, growth, and grace.”
Prior to Sunday, 17,000 people had signed a petition dedicated to Ortega’s removal from Love Island Season 7.
Concluded her mom and dad in their statement:
“While she’ll always be our little girl, she’s also a woman, one who will take responsibility in her own time and her own voice. Until then, we’re simply asking for compassion. For patience. For basic human decency. Not just for her, but for everyone caught in the middle of this.”
Following Ortega’s exit on Sunday, Belle-A Walker — who was dumped from the villa after Ortega’s bombshell arrival — praised the show’s producers for “taking a stand” against racism in a post on her own Instagram Stories.
“When I first saw what my fellow Islander said on their social media pages, I was incredibly heartbroken,” Walker wrote. “But I wanted to wait until they left the villa and were able to address the situation, genuinely apologize, and commit to learning from the experience before deciding how our relationship would look moving forward.”
She added:
“As screenshots continued to surface, it became clear that I could no longer support this person, and made the decision to unfollow them a couple of days ago.
“Asian hate is oftentimes overlooked and dismissed. But being a first-generation American, I have personally witnessed and experienced how real and hurtful comments like these are.”
