Tasha Ghouri, a Love Island star, has said that appearing on the reality dating show was ‘challenging’ for her parents.
Tasha, 23, arrived to the villa last summer and fell in love with Andrew Le Page.
The duo advanced to the finals, but lost to Davide Sanclimenti and Ekin-Su Culculoglu.
Tasha, the first deaf person to appear on the ITV2 reality programme, has spoken openly about her experience and her’superpower,’ while her boyfriend Andrew recently surprised her with a tattoo of a cochlear implant.
While she has received overwhelming support for her efforts to raise awareness of the deaf population, Tasha’s stay in the villa was difficult for her parents due to internet harassment.
‘I think for my parents it was terrible, that they actually had to go through that emotional journey on TV with me while coping with their own feelings,’ she said on Thursday’s Good Morning Britain.
‘It’s a lot for them, and for me, I dealt with a lot of ableism as well, that’s the negative side of being on the show.
‘They had to deal with that and try and educate people as much as they could, to be like, when you’re deaf, you get really tired, fatigued, exhausted.
‘You’re lip-reading a lot, you’re trying to hear all the conversations around you and being in the hot sun all day, so it was really hard to get that education across.
‘I couldn’t do that on TV when I’m finding love, so my parents were heroes for that because they stood my ground for me.’
Tarek, Tasha’s father, has previously stated how tough it was for him to read through hateful and violent remarks directed at her.
He pondered travelling out to Majorca to remove her from the villa when the abuse became unbearable.
‘It was difficult,’ he recently told Metro.co.uk. ‘There were two occasions where I sat with my wife and said I’m going to jump on a plane and go to Majorca and drag her out of there, but then we would talk it through.
‘There was nothing we could do about the trolling.
‘It’s worse than you could ever imagine it could be.’
Initially, Tarek did try and engage with the trolls, as he said: ‘I was taking a few to task and trying to educate and make them think that what they were saying was a bit too harsh.
‘But actually, there becomes a point where you’re looking for the bad stuff and not actually the good stuff.
‘Life changed after me and my ex-wife decided to stop looking at the bad stuff.’
Love Island returns to ITV2 on Monday, June 5.
Source My Celebrity Life.