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Melissa Gorga claims Teresa Giudice and Luis Ruelas accused her of not only cheating on Joe Gorga with another man, but with multiple men, after calling him to their home for a secret meeting amid production on the 13th season of The Real Housewives of New Jersey.
Following Tuesday night’s finale, in which Danielle Cabral was seen sharing the rumor with Melissa, Teresa compared the matter to “strippergate” as Melissa shared Joe’s disgust, noting that he quit speaking to his sister after the incident as Margaret Josephs called out Teresa’s double standards.
“They’re talking about the rumor on camera, so I guess it’s time to talk about it. She didn’t think he told me. She told him, ‘Never tell Melissa that I brought you here.’ And he listens to her. It’s weird. But now we’re gonna talk about the real facts about what went down,” Melissa began on the May 16 episode of RHONJ: After Show.
Meanwhile, in her own confessional, Teresa said it was a “joke” that she was being blamed for the rumor when she never mentioned it on camera.
“Luis told my brother privately,” Teresa said. “It’s happening again. Like, what happened with the whole strippergate, that I got blamed for it. And I’m getting blamed for this, and it’s like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ It’s like such a joke. I swear, it’s like, so over it.”
But while Teresa has suggested that it was Luis who brought up the matter, Margaret believes the false report should’ve been a non-issue, especially considering there was no proof behind it.
“[Teresa] blames Luis. She says, ‘Well, Luis wanted me to call Joe and have him come over.’ You don’t get in between two people and just call up one and say these things. ‘Well, he’s my blood. He’s my brother.’ Well, over a baseless rumor,” she shared.
Margaret then pointed out that when Teresa’s first marriage faced cheating rumors, she wouldn’t hear of anything without solid evidence.
“So you need hard proof when your own husband [ex Joe Giudice], when he had burner phones, was doing all this stuff. But someone who’s actively trying to get on the show, cause drama, goes to the sister-in-law and Jennifer, who hate Margaret and Melissa the most, to say this rumor. There’s no fact bases, no proof whatsoever, but that’s proof enough for you to call your brother and tell your brother his wife is definitively cheating on him, and then you said a bunch of other stuff and that he should leave her,” Margaret noted.
“It’s actually insane,” she added.
According to Melissa, she and Joe protected Teresa after her sister-in-law and her then-fiance called him over to discuss her potential infidelity.
“I was protecting her, and Joe was protecting Teresa for so long about the fact that she called my husband to her house behind my back with her husband, the three of them, to talk about how Melissa’s a cheater, and she didn’t just say the rumor that [Laura Marasca Jensen] said,” Melissa alleged.
Instead, Teresa and Luis allegedly accused Melissa of multiple incidents of cheating.
“She said with multiple men. They like doubled down. It was like they wanted that man to leave the house and divorce me,” Melissa revealed.
“My husband was so disgusted,” she continued. “He walked out and basically never talked to his sister again if you look at the timeline. He wouldn’t go to the housewarming party. He didn’t want to see her. He didn’t want to talk to her. Nobody knew for all of these months why Joe was so [standoffish] and why Joe was annoyed, and why Joe hasn’t come around. Well, gee, let’s see, he’s been married for 18 years with three children, and she’s calling him over with this guy she met on the streets a year ago to tell him to basically leave me.”
The three-part Real Housewives of New Jersey season 13 reunion begins Tuesday, May 30, at 9/8c on Bravo.