Taylor Frankie Paul has 4 million followers on TikTok, where she posts videos of herself getting ready to attend Mormon services, discussing her “swinging” lifestyle, working out, styling her long hair, and preparing her Utah home for her young children to come over for weekend visits.
Paul took a dark turn earlier this year. After a domestic incident in February, she was charged with aggravated assault, domestic violence in the presence of a child, child abuse, and criminal mischief.
TikTok gave Taylor Frankie Paul, an everyday person, the chance to win fame and celebrity status, but the attention it gave her turned her into an egotistical and entitled monster: She felt entitled, according to the Herriman City Police Department, to abuse her 0wn daughter.
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But even before the alleged child abuse, Taylor Frankie Paul had already torn her family apart because she craved fame and attention. (READ MORE: TikTok Needs to Be Destroyed)
Last May, Paul revealed in a TikTok livestream that she and her husband were getting divorced as a result of their “soft swinging” behavior. “We played with fire, and we got burned,” she explained.
Paul had frequently used their “open relationship” to get views and likes on her TikTok; she often danced while advertising her claimed lifestyle. It was unclear whether the videos were a joke.
Paul claimed that her and her husband’s “swinging” arrangement with the other couples was that they would not “go all the way” with other people or engage in sexual activity without the other spouse present. Paul said that her husband was divorcing her because she had broken the rules of that arrangement with one of her friend’s husbands, a man whom she “caught feelings” for.
“We were at a party, I got belligerent, and we went and messed [around] by ourselves rather than with the whole group,” she said.
Paul explained, “We had an agreement, like all of us, and I did step out of that agreement.” She claimed of the others in her claimed “swinging” group: “No one was innocent. Everyone has hooked up with everyone in this situation.”
Paul’s explanation of the divorce is suspect. It seems that she was trying to spin up as much drama as she could for maximum attention. If that was her goal, she succeeded, as her divorce announcement made national headlines. People were drawn in by the discrepancy between her membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and her claim that she was part of a swingers’ group. But her claims also alienated all of her friends, she said, as she had implicated them as being part of the swingers’ group. They deny her claims.
For a while after her divorce, Paul made content about her sadness over the divorce and adjustment to coparenting. But within months, she was making content with her new boyfriend, Dakota Mortensen. By November, she announced that she had become pregnant by Mortensen but had lost the baby due to an ectopic pregnancy. They broke up in December but soon got back together.
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It was then on Feb. 17 that police say Paul domestically abused Mortensen while drunk. Police reported that Mortensen was left with a “minor laceration” on his neck, scratches on his fingers, and swelling around his eyes. Mortensen told police that he believed his finger may have been broken and that his elbow had “protracted pain.”
The Herriman City Police Department explained in a police report that a cellphone video showed Paul throwing metal chairs, which appeared to come from a kitchen island, at Mortensen. The first metal chair hit Mortensen in the “arm and hand.” Mortensen then yelled, “Your daughter is right here!” Taylor, however, according to police, taunted him and threw a second and third chair in his direction. The third chair hit his arms and, according to Mortensen, subsequently hit Taylor’s 5-year-old daughter, who was lying on the couch, in the head.
Police reported that the video showed Taylor’s daughter crying and Mortensen screaming, “Your daughter just got hit in the head with a metal chair!” Paul’s response to this was allegedly, “Because of you,” to which Mortensen replied: “No! You! Go and help your daughter now! Help your daughter, Taylor!”
As Mortensen was checking on the young girl, who was crying and saying that she wasn’t OK, police showed up. Police said that Paul then hit Mortensen right in front of them.
Paul later admitted that she had thrown the chairs, as well as a wooden play set, according to court documents.
Police argued that the chairs should legally be classified as “dangerous weapon[s].” They wrote, “The heavy metal chair could have caused serious bodily injury in the manner that Taylor used them when she threw and swung them at Dakota.” Mortensen told police that he feared for his life because of the heaviness of the chairs.
Police said that Paul’s daughter was left with a “goose-egg” on her head due to her injury from the chair. In addition, a police officer said at the time of Paul’s arrest that one of her children had “puked” following the incident.
Mortensen explained that the reason for Paul’s blowup was that she wanted to go to a concert, but he did not want to bring her because she was drunk.
The normal course of human behavior after being charged with abusing your daughter would be to get off social media. But one month after the domestic incident, Paul was back on TikTok, reaping the benefits of the increased attention due to the serious charges against her.
On March 18, she posted a video with Mortensen that she captioned: “It’s been a minute, missed you guys.” In the video, she gets out of bed with Mortensen — who she stands accused of abusing — brushes her teeth with him, gets dressed, eats breakfast, goes to the gym, and goes to Trader Joe’s. They act as though nothing is amiss.
Paul continues to post on TikTok most days. She claimed at one point that she would no longer feature her children on social media, but then she subsequently continued to feature them prominently on her accounts.
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For instance, she posted — without shame — a video on Mother’s Day of her dancing with her children.
One person commented: “Happy Mother’s Day! You are killing it! We all go through stuff which makes us the best version of ourselves and you are claiming to the top!”
She responded, “love this appreciate you.”
Taylor Frankie Paul has allowed herself to be twisted by social media attention into a monster. The only thing that will stop her is prison.
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