A new facet to the tale. In the fall of 2012, Manti Te’o was once one in all the most renowned and talented faculty soccer avid gamers in the nation, but by the iciness, he was once the target of merciless jokes.
Te’o, who performed for Notre Dame at the time, printed after a September 2012 recreation in opposition to Michigan State that he had lost both his grandmother and his girlfriend, Lennay Kekua, on the identical day. He dedicated his season to their reminiscence, even skipping Kekua’s funeral because she insisted that he didn’t miss a single game of his senior season. “[She] made me promise, when it took place, that I'd keep and play,” he informed the Los Angeles Times in December 2012. “All she sought after used to be some white roses. So I despatched her roses and despatched her two picks together with that.”
Though his story of persevering thru heartbreak and grief earned Te’o nationwide consideration, the story got even bigger in January 2013, when Deadspin reported that Kekua was not a real person. “Her passing, recounted so many times in the nationwide media, produces no obituary or funeral announcement in Nexis, and no mention in the Stanford student newspaper,” the outlet mentioned at the time. “There is not any record of her birth in the news. Outside of a few Twitter and Instagram accounts, there’s no on-line evidence that Lennay Kekua ever existed.”
In their article, Deadspin claimed that the fake Facebook account was once created by way of Naya Tuiasosopo. The Washington native later confirmed that she initially invented Kekua as a approach to process her struggles with her gender and sexual identity. She has since come out as transgender.
Shortly after the tale broke, Notre Dame issued a commentary confirming that the linebacker had been “the victim of what appears to be a hoax,” and clarified that Te’o had simplest recently discovered that he have been catfished. “On December 26, Notre Dame coaches were informed through Manti Te’o and his parents that Manti had been the victim of what appears to be a hoax in which anyone the use of the fictitious name Lennay Kekua it sounds as if ingratiated herself with Manti after which conspired with others to steer him to consider she had tragically died of leukemia,” spokesperson Dennis Brown stated at the time. “The University straight away initiated an investigation to help Manti and his family in discovering the motive for and nature of this hoax.”
Te’o soon became the subject of mean-spirited jokes and memes, a lot of which criticized him for believing that the meant Stanford pupil was a real person even supposing he by no means met her. As a results of the scandal, the former soccer famous person was once chosen in the 2nd spherical of the NFL draft and struggled to search out his footing taking part in professional soccer.
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Te’o and Tuiasosopo shared the whole story with the global in the Netflix documentary Untold: The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist, which premiered on Netflix in August 2022. “When I used to be first approached about this challenge again in 2020, I advised the filmmakers Ryan Duffy and Tony Vainuku that I didn’t need this to be my tale. I wanted this to be the tale,” Te’o told USA Today in August 2022. “That required everyone involved in what happened to be in the documentary and I believe that’s what’s so robust about it. You have each side. It creates a stage of reality that may’t be pushed aside or doubted.”
Keep scrolling to relive the complete timeline of Teo’s catfish controversy:
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