Ariel Winters talks trauma and being preyed on: ‘It's a dark place'

Modern Family alum Ariel Winters has just sat down for a honest chat about the dangers of predatory behavior, when actors joint the entertainment industry young.

The star shared her fears with the Daily Mail, as part of her promotionals for the true crime docuseries SOSA (Safe from Online Sex Abuse) Undercover, available on YouTube.

For those unversed, this true crime show is jointly hosted by a nonprofit that aims to protect minors from sex crimes, predatory behavior and harassment.

At the start of the conversation she said, “I am familiar with male predators because I worked in Hollywood at a young age, I started at age 4.”

She also touched a bit into her day-to-day life and added, “I don’t wanna say too much about it, but by the time I was on a laptop and cell phone, I was getting inappropriate messages from older men, and it caused trauma.”

And before concluding she also wore her heart on her sleeve and added, “The experiences I had in person and online as a child have affected me so deeply that I’ve had to go to therapy for it. The movie and TV industry is a dark place.”

What is pertinent to mention is that, this isn’t the first time Winters has been honest about her own experiences as a child-star.

She talked at length with People magazine as well, admitting, “That was a major part of my teenage years.”

“It was just everywhere,” she even admitted at the time. According to Winters herself “it was every headline I read about myself, like, grown people writing articles about me saying how I looked terrible or pregnant or like a fat s***. I mean, I was 14. It totally damaged my self-esteem.”