Credit: Instagram/Rachel Leviss, startraksphoto.com
Rachel “Raquel” Leviss agrees with Lala Kent‘s suggestion that Tom Sandoval is a groomer.
After Lala, 33, made the claim against Sandoval, 41, on Tuesday’s episode of Vanderpump Rules, Raquel, 29, welcomed therapist Melissa Reich to her podcast, where she addressed Sandoval’s past behavior toward her, including his alleged grooming and the “boundaries” he pushed with both her and his former girlfriend, Ariana Madix, 38.
“I don’t want to label Tom,” Raquel began on the March 13 episode of Rachel Goes Rogue. “I know I have called him a narcissist in the past, and maybe I shouldn’t have done that. But you start seeing these patterns and these types of behavior, and there are terms that psychologists use to explain this behavior because once you are able to pick up on it, it becomes predictable. So it’s like, the terminology is used as a tool, not as an insult to somebody.”
While Raquel didn’t want to label Tom, she admitted to feeling that she’d been “groomed.”
“I do feel like I have been groomed because I was in a very vulnerable state of mind, and I just got out of a relationship that I feel like was very destructive to my well-being,” she explained. “He witnessed that whole thing play out. And I think things started shifting when we went to Coachella, and he really went out of his way to cater to me.”
According to Raquel, Sandoval brought non-nicotine cigarettes for them to smoke together.
“Thinking back on it, did he bring those just for me, or did he bring those for people that didn’t smoke cigarettes that he wanted to smoke with them?” she wondered, adding that her therapist said smoking was “a very intimate type of activity.”
“That was the first thing that I can really label as, I think that was grooming,” Raquel suspected.
As for the boundaries Sandoval pushed with both her and Ariana, Raquel said that he would often do things that one might find inappropriate with her — even when Ariana was around.
“I just flash back and I think of the boundary-stretching that was happening when all three of us were in the same environment, and he would almost push Ariana’s boundaries when he would touch me a certain way or like, massage my feet in front of her, but like, act like it was completely normal,” she recalled. “So then for me, it was like, ‘Well, it feels like it’s okay and Ariana’s not saying anything.’ But thinking back, I am sure she was uncomfortable with it but maybe didn’t want to say anything in front of him.”
“I just feel like he was pushing both of our boundaries,” Raquel added.
Vanderpump Rules season 11 airs Tuesdays at 8/7c on Bravo.
Lindsay Cronin
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