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On Tuesday's episode of SAS Australia, model Arabella Del Busso faced scrutiny from the instructors about her past relationship with NRL player Josh Reynolds.
It was likely a familiar position for her: The media storm surrounding their relationship has been nothing short of intense.
For months, there had been plenty of speculation about what happened between the two, and what emerged resembled the story line of a Netflix series or true crime podcast.
"She's apparently used 10 known aliases, false cancer treatment... digitally altered photos of herself to appear pregnant," the SAS instructors read.
"The best baseline to ever start with is honesty, integrity and truth," ex-soldier Mark Billingham said.
"To me I'm looking at you and I can see deep f***ing issues in your face right now, once you knock down all that crap and you’re true to yourself then you can rebuild."
Del Busso was asked why she was painted as a liar in media posts.
"My ex-partner was an NRL player and obviously we separated late last year, but now since then I've faced scrutiny in the tabloids," she said, explaining her lies weren't as bad as the media portrayed.
"I told my partner that I had a pregnancy scan and I showed it to him and said it was ours when in fact it wasn’t our scan at all.
"Our relationship was coming to an end and I didn’t know how to deal with losing someone because I feel like I’ve lost family members and stuff [before]. [I was doing it] to try to draw him back in."
Instructor Billingham told her "you can't move forward in life if you can't be f***ing honest."
However, Del Busso continued to claim her lies were harmless.
"I have told a lie but the way that I see it a little white lie here or there is not going to hurt anyone," she said.
"I'm sure we all do it, I'm honestly not the only person in the whole of Australia that has told a little white lie here or there. People will judge me no matter what but they haven’t lived my life, they don’t know the extent of things that I’ve been through."
The following morning, Del Busso decided to leave the show.
After her exit, her cast mates shared their thoughts.
"I don't trust someone with six names, I'm sorry," Candice Warner said.
"She almost didn’t want to open her mouth in case a skeleton or a bone came out of her mouth," actor Firass Dirani replied.
What happened between Josh Reynolds and Arabella Del Busso?
In May, Del Busso spoke about their relationship for the first time during an episode of 60 Minutes.
West Tigers player Reynolds was charged and later acquitted of domestic violence after Del Busso, whose real name is Donna Preusker, took footage showing Reynolds verbally abusing her to police.
Reynolds and Del Busso appeared on 60 Minutes. Post continues below video.
In the footage, Reynolds shouted at Del Busso as she sat on his bed, saying she “scared the f*ck out of [him]” and asked her to leave.
“Can you get out of my house. I want you out now. I want you out now or I’m going to f*cking flip it,” he said.
Then it emerged Del Busso, 30, was accused of faking three pregnancies and miscarriages throughout their relationship. She also allegedly duped Reynolds out of money with lies, including the false death of her mother.
Reynolds’ legal team told a Sydney court Del Busso had a history of deception, and had used aliases to allegedly exploit several former partners who came forward.
The charges against him were dropped in February.
On 60 Minutes, Del Busso said she was “setting the record straight”.
“Especially with headlines, you know, people think I’m a psycho, they all think I’m crazy,” she said during the show.
Reynolds and Del Busso met in 2018, and their relationship began after Del Busso claimed she was pregnant with twins following their one night stand.
She said she was looking forward to becoming a mother, and the couple even had a gender reveal party.
But Reynolds, who was also interviewed for the story, said he felt things quickly turned a “bit fishy”.
“The things that really got to me, hurt me, were every time there was a scan, there was always an excuse,” he said.
Reynolds also said he wanted to meet Del Busso’s obstetrician, but each time he requested to, she “shut it down”. 60 Minutes found the obstetrician and discovered Del Busso had seeked an ultrasound scan in November 2018. However, it was not because she was pregnant. She had told the obstetrician it was because she wanted to be an egg donor.
In January 2019, Del Busso told Reynolds she had miscarried.
“At that stage I was so into this whole relationship, baby thing, that I was hurting so much. It broke me,” Reynolds said.
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