Food Network Pulls 'Worst Cooks in America' Season 20 After Winner Ariel Robinson Is Charged With Child Murder

The Food Network has pulled all content related to Season 20 of Worst Cooks in America after the [...]

By Allison Schonter

The Food Network has pulled all content related to Season 20 of Worst Cooks in America after the season winner was charged with murder. Ariel Robinson was arrested and charged last week with the murder of her 3-year-old adopted daughter. Robinson's husband was also arrested and charged in connection with the toddler's death.

Following her arrest, Food Network has scrubbed all Season 20 content. Deadline reports Robinson's season has not only been removed from the cable channel's VOD offerings, but also from numerous streaming platforms, including Discovery+, Hulu and YouTube. Episode summaries are still available on the official website. Past seasons of the competition series, which finds people with less-than-stellar cooking skills going through a boot camp under celebrity chef supervision, as well as Season 21 are available to stream.

Robinson, a recently retired teacher and budding stand-up comedian, had won $25,000 in the latest edition of the competition. She and her husband, Jerry Robinson, were taken into police custody and charged Tuesday on counts of homicide by child abuse in the death of their adopted daughter, Victoria Rose Smith.

According to local TV affiliate Fox Carolina, police in Simpsonville, South Carolina responded to a call about an unresponsive juvenile victim on the afternoon of Thursday, Jan. 14. The child was pronounced dead after being transported to a hospital, with the Greenville County Coroner's Office later identifying her as Victoria and determining her cause of death to be "multiple blunt force injuries." The injuries were inflicted by the Robinsons, per arrest warrants, which also stated they were responsible for the victim's care and welfare.

Speaking with CBS affiliate WSPA, Alan West, whose aunt was the toddler's foster mother for nearly a year before she went to live with the Robinson family, described Victoria as "sweet as could possibly be… You could not be mad at that girl just by how she looked and how sweet she was, so I don't understand how this man and woman would have done this to her."

The toddler's death remains under investigation by police, SLED, and the coroner's office. In a statement, the South Carolina Department of Social Services confirmed the agency was aware of the case and is investigating and noted standard procedures include "taking appropriate action with any children remaining in the home after evaluating safety and risk." Robinson and her husband are being held at the Greenville County Detention Center without bond. According to a release from the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, the case will be prosecuted by the 13th Circuit Solicitor's Office.

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