Love Island star Jacques O’Neill’s mum forced to move out of home after horrifying death threats: ‘It was awful’-Louise Griffin-Entertainment – Metro

Love Island’s Jacques O’Neill quit the show (Picture: ITV/REX/Shutterstock)

Love Island star Jacques O’Neill’s mum has opened up on the horrifying death threats she received while her son was on the show.

Rugby player Jacques, who was coupled up with Paige Thorne, quit the ITV2 show, and has now described appearing on it as ‘the worst decision of his life.’

His mum, Janet Wright, said that, after the first couple of weeks of the show, she started to get ‘awful’ messages.

‘I started to get horrible private messages on Facebook, people were saying they wished my son and I were dead, it was awful,’ she said.

‘I just didn’t get why people have to message such nasty comments. The messages really hurt, strangers were saying to me that I was a bad mother and a bad parent. It was awful, especially as I brought him up by myself.’

Janet told The Sun that she found watching the show so distressing that she had to leave her Leeds home to move in with her sister.

‘I was relieved when he finally left the villa as I couldn’t watch it live. I had to get my sister to text me every night to say if it was OK to watch. I knew how much it was upsetting me,’ she said.

Jacques recently spoke out for the first time since his exit from the villa, saying he ‘couldn’t cope’, and that he feared things would get physical between him and returning islander Adam Collard, who had also expressed interest in Paige.

‘At home, you can remove yourself from situations, but in there you had to deal with every situation, and in that moment I took my microphone off, and walked straight through the front doors because I just wanted to get out of that place,’ he said in an interview with The Sun.

Jacques was coupled up with Paige Thorne (Picture: REX/Shutterstock)

He struggled on the show (Picture: ITV)

‘Producers tried coming to me, they were like, “Jacques, are you ok?”, I was saying, “I don’t want to speak to you or anyone. I want to be left to myself”. It was too much.’

The Leeds lad flew back to the UK on Tuesday night, with his mum meeting him at the airport.

A Love Island spokesperson previously told Metro.co.uk: ‘We cannot comment on any individual’s medical records owing to confidentiality and our own duty of care towards the Islanders, however, we have rigorous and extensive checks in place to assess Islanders’ physical and mental health in advance of being cleared to enter the Villa. This is something we take extremely seriously.’

They added that ‘Jacques made the decision to leave and we respected that decision.’

‘Islanders are welcome to leave should they choose to do so and we would never put pressure on someone to stay in the Villa.’

Love Island continues tonight at 9pm on ITV2.

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