Manti Te’o, a football star, claims he is coming out about the incident so he can get over it and go on with his life after discovering in 2012 that his online girlfriend was not the person she claimed to be and had faked her own death.
The Heisman Trophy finalist and award-winning footballer tells his version of the tale in a new two-part Netflix documentary titled “Untold: The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist.”
Te’o, a free agent currently, said on Tuesday: “I wanted to expose it in order for me to sort of recover from this.”
“At this time, I forced myself to be honest and have those difficult discussions whenever somebody inquired about it or had concerns about it.
I began to sense the power that I would receive from talking about it.”
Te’o revealed the death of his grandma and girlfriend Lennay Kekua hours apart during his final year at Notre Dame in 2012.
Kekua was described as a 22-year-old Stanford University student who was involved in a catastrophic vehicle accident prior to receiving her leukaemia diagnosis.
Te’o said he had never seen Kekua in person and had only spoken to her digitally before her alleged death.
He claimed, “There were efforts to meet up, and in some cases airline tickets had already been bought.
There were justifications like, “Oh, a family member is sick, someone was in the hospital,” and I wasn’t going to say, “Prove it.”
Neither Kekua’s death nor a car accident on the reported dates could be found in records, according to reporters at the sports publication Deadspin in 2013.
They claimed that Seattle resident Ronaiah Tuiasosopo was the genuine subject of the pictures.
Te’o said on “CBS Mornings” that he was first as shocked to receive the knowledge as the general public.
The disturbing information was eventually brought to his attention, but he chose not to make it public.
Te’o said, “I didn’t know what to think. The football star said, “What do you do with such information?
You don’t expect someone to say ‘Hey, somebody’s dead,’ then three months later, ‘Somebody’s living.’”
Do you phone someone to say, “Hey, I just learned someone is alive?”
Te’o, who is one of the most decorated college football players in a single year, said there was “a lot of self-discovery” during this period.
Te’o faced flak online after the report for critics who claimed he was in on the scam.
I had no idea how much I cared about other people’s viewpoints, he said.
He expressed gratitude to his family for their support and highlighted that he had had lost someone all those years before.
Te’o stated, “If there’s anything I would want to do it’s to give my grandma the respect that has sort of been neglected the previous 10 years since I did lose my grandmother.”
Te’o wants to shed more light on her because it almost seems as like this narrative overshadows her.
Te’o is now married in the year 2022, has one daughter, and is expecting a boy.
He urged anybody experiencing mental health concerns to get assistance, saying, “That’s something to not take lightly.”