'I regret not going to police.' MAFS' Hayley on what isn't shown about the toothbrush incident.

To catch up on all the MAFS 2020 recaps and gossip, check out The Twins recaps and visit our MAFS hub page. And sign up for our Recaps newsletter to get them straight into your inbox.

Hours before Wednesday night’s episode of Married at First Sight aired, Hayley shared with Mamamia exactly what happened before, after and during the toothbrush incident.

You know… the one where David films himself using her toothbrush to clean poo from the toilet bowl. He scrubs it into the faeces, rinses the toothbrush in the bowl and returns the toothbrush for Hayley to use.

According to Hayley, there was a lot of context viewers weren’t shown.

Just to recap, for anyone who’s not fully across the ins and outs of Australia’s most bizarre dating show:

• Hayley is (fake) married to David
• Michael is (fake) married to Stacey
• Michael kissed Hayley during a drunken night out
• David, in an act of revenge, engaged in the vile act with the toothbrush.

But Hayley says after the cheating allegations emerged of her and Michael, the cast went on a two-week break. At the time of the cheating rumours, she and David were already sleeping in separate rooms.

“After that situation, we didn’t speak to each other for a week. I couldn’t actually say we were a couple, it was over but that doesn’t justify what happened by any means – that’s really important to say,” Hayley says.

“The dinner party was filmed two weeks after the cheating allegations came out. When they found out, they shut production for two weeks.”

MAFS Experts: UNCUT. Exactly what goes down behind the scenes. Post continues below.

Last night, Hayley told cameras that Mishel warned her not to use her toothbrush but Hayle tells Mamamia that it was actually Natasha who first told her roughly four or five days after the incident had occurred.

“Natasha had sent me a text message saying not to use my toothbrush. She had the room next to me so I went over to her room and she goes ‘Hayley you can’t say anything, Mishel has told me and I wanted to tell you because it has something to do with your health and safety’,” she says.

“I absolutely lost my shit. I broke down, I was screaming.”

Hayley labelled David’s actions as “physical abuse” and says she wishes she had gone to the police during the filming of the show.

“I really should have. That’s one of my biggest regrets. I got told not to go to the police, that production would deal with it,” she tells Mamamia.

“When he went into there unsupervised, he wrecked my clothes, took some of the food on the bench and filmed the toothbrush incident.

“It is almost physically abusive. I’ve spoken to the police about this, it’s classified as a form of physical abuse. It can endanger your person and you can get Hepatitis A.

“It was such a high-pressure situation where everyone was feeling very stressed [however], someone going down the path of being physically abusive to someone else is just deplorable.”

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by David (@dave_the_cowboy88) on Feb 19, 2020 at 12:15am PST

Hayley also shared what really went on behind-the-scenes of last night’s dinner party. While Vanessa saw Hayley and Michael together, she says Michael was originally going to deny the accusations.

“Michael wanted to gaslight Vanessa and say she was crazy,” says Hayley. “Vanessa was the only girl I could trust in the experiment but for a split second I was going along with Michael but [I couldn’t] do this to a girl who’s had my back.”

“Vanessa called up Stacey and we came together and said that we were going to pull Michael up on his bullsh*t because he had been denying it,” she adds.

“Our plan was to go into the dinner party and Vanessa was going to say: ‘You know what Michael? Hayley told me the truth’. Instead of that happening, Stacey stood up and [accused me of] lying.”

During the dinner party, as the rumoured kiss was revealed to the rest of the couples, we saw Hayley receive most of the blame.

“In the real world, if this had happened, Michael would be getting a 50 per cent amount of the blame,” Hayley says.

“The thing you’ve got to understand is that at this point, I was kind of on the outer. I had always spoken the truth and sometimes the truth doesn’t resonate with other people, you know what I mean?”

But things did change once she left the experiment. “All the cast members who didn’t have my back, who were listening to the ‘popular girl’ in the experiment, they ended up messaging me and going: ‘I’m so sorry I didn’t have your back, I should have’,” she says.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Hayley (@hayleyvernon_) on Feb 25, 2020 at 12:50am PST

Hayley also confirmed with Mamamia the rumours of Stacey’s affair with Mikey – something viewers will see unfold during the reunion.

“It turns out during the break, Stacey actually sleeps with Mikey Pembroke and Mikey calls me during the break and goes, ‘I feel so bad for you that you’ve been vilified and I’m actually flying back from Italy,'” she adds.

“Production actually paid for him to fly back from Italy to attend the reunion so he could confront Stacey.”

Since going on the reality TV show, Hayley says her mental health has suffered. She calls her time on MAFS  the ‘hardest thing she’s ever done’ and says that while she was in the best health prior to going on the show, things have since changed.

“I suppose being in an environment like that, which is so toxic, has led to an array of issues,” she tells Mamamia. “I get social anxiety now. I’ve had weight gain, I’ve got eating issues.”

“I suppose sometimes I struggle in public environments because people think they know you, but the thing they’ve got to understand is that at a Commitment Ceremony, the filming of it can go for like six hours and you’re only seeing a 45-minute take. There’s a lot you don’t see as the audience, a lot,” she adds.

However, there is a silver lining to her time in the experiment.

“I said that if I didn’t have a husband, I wanted to be kind of a role model in the drug and alcohol space for people who are trying to better their lives.

“Although there has been a lot of negativity around me, there’s also been a lot of positivity. My inbox is pretty much full on the daily of people, mums, brothers, sons. People whose kids are going through drug addiction that want to thank me. They now think they can do better for themselves.”

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Hayley (@hayleyvernon_) on Apr 12, 2019 at 10:14pm PDT

Hayley says she’s still on good terms with the majority of her castmates – with a few notable exceptions. She’s even had “nearly every cast member” stay at her Melbourne home at some point. But she hasn’t spoken to David since the reunion.

Speaking on news.com.au’s podcast Not Here to Make Friends, David has admitted his actions were “really childish”.

“About three days after the cheating scandal happens, I’ve heard nothing from Hayley and I’m in a really dark place… I still had her room key, and that’s when I did something really childish,” the Melbourne-based truck driver told the podcast.

Having listened to the 41-minute episode, Hayley says he’s still not taking “accountability for what actually happened”.

“Although he’s saying the act was very childish, I feel as though he’s not bringing himself into play. It’s really a half-arsed way of saying sorry,” she tells Mamamia. 

As for how she wants the public to remember her, she hopes they can appreciate her honesty.

“I was 100 per cent who I am as a person and sometimes you stick out like a thorn between roses when you don’t care about your ego,” she says.

“I much prefer to march to the beat of my own drum than to fit in with a posse.

“I was very truthful with what I’ve done throughout this experiment. I don’t like [Michael] but I’m not going to go out of my way to sit there and throw daggers at someone. It’s just a waste of energy. I’m too busy to do that.”

Mamamia has approached Channel Nine for comment. At the time of publishing, they were yet to respond.

What did you think of tonight’s episode? Tell us in a comment below.

Sign up for our “Mamamia Celebrity” newsletter, for a smart take on everything entertainment.