MAFS bride Mel adds context to her ‘stalking’ speech, and it’s more complex than we thought

MAFS Australia viewers were pretty perturbed by the bride Mel’s comments about “stalking” during revelations week. She told her husband Luke that the most shocking thing she’d done after a break-up was “stalk” her ex. Mel said on the show she would “get in the car with [her] friends and drive past his house multiple times during the night time to make sure he was home”. Apparently, she would “get a treat” from a service station and “do laps”.

Unsurprisingly, MAFS viewers really dragged Mel for this on social media. An anti-stalking advocate called out this moment for “trivialising stalking”. But Mel has added some extra context to the comments we saw on TV, and it seems the topic is a bit more complicated than we initially thought.

Mel wrote on her Instagram: “Over the past few weeks, I’ve watched parts of myself on TV that have been difficult to see. There were moments where I didn’t communicate well and come across insensitive. For that, I’m truly sorry to anyone who felt hurt or offended. This experience has been a huge learning curve for me. I’m not perfect, and seeing things play back has made me reflect on how I handle certain moments. All I can do is acknowledge it and keep growing.”

One of these “moments” is Mel’s conversation about stalking. “I also want to apologise for the comment I made about ‘stalking’,’ she said, ‘I do not think stalking is funny and I absolutely do not condone that behaviour. I was referring to something from when I was 17 and joking with friends, and it was careless of me to say it the way I did. I regret it.”

Mel and Luke in Revelations Week
(Image via Channel 4)

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Mel went into more detail about that part of MAFS in an interview with the Daily Mail. Apparently the “stalking” referred to something her group of friends often did together when they were 17. The teenagers drove past houses of different people who had upset them – not just Mel’s ex. Mel was not impressed with how the moment came across on TV. She said: “They put this like intense horror movie soundtrack behind me, making me look like the guy from You. And I’m sorry if I triggered anyone… because I don’t think stalking is funny.”

Apparently, Mel and her friends received many hateful messages on social media after this episode aired. She deleted her TikTok and Facebook over “hate that crossed the line”.

Now, it’s obviously not okay for people at any age to drive past people’s houses to find out what they’re doing. But from what we saw on MAFS, it seemed as if Mel had “stalked” somebody from a recent relationship. There is a big difference between a 28-year-old woman rallying her friends to “stalk” an ex-partner, and a group of literal children looking into driveways before they necessarily understand why that is wrong.

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Featured image via E4