Emily Simpson Slams Braunwyn For Abusing Husband, Sean Defends Wife From ‘Disgusting’ Comments

Sean Windham-Burke has wife Braunwyn Windham-Burke’s back amid criticism from fans and even one “Real Housewives of Orange County” costar.

As the most recent episode aired, RHOC star Emily Simpson called out her costar on Twitter, “Tonight on #RHOC, Braunwyn excuses her behavior by acting like a victim of the people and circumstances around her, not to be confused by previous episodes where she excused her behavior by acting like the victim of the people and circumstances around her.”

The tweet came after Braunwyn admitted that she had physically hit her husband on more than one occasion — including once in lockdown and another time during a family vacation to Aspen where one of their children saw it happen.

Responding to a since-deleted tweet, Simpson also wrote, “I support love too. I don’t support physical abuse, let alone in front of children.”

While Braunwyn — who has been working on her sobriety this season — didn’t directly respond to Simpson’s comment, she did tweet, “being sober in this toxic environment ain’t easy….to have someone diminish the struggle is low, I’ve been blessed to have support and have been working a program, if you need help it works.”

Her husband, Sean, retweeted Braunwyn’s message and added, “Much respect for taking the hard road of making the struggle a public journey. I get to personally observe how many people you have helped, and it’s amazing!”

He also seemingly replied to Simpson’s tweet as well, though not directly.

“I love my wife,” he posted. “On two occasions I was the last defense between her and a bottle. It’s disgusting to see some comments from her so called ‘friends’ that pretend to know anything about our relationship, attacking her, rather than showing an ounce of support.”

He also liked a pair of tweets aimed at Simpson, including one which read, “I liked you Emily, but I don’t think you are being fair to Braunwyn, is this what every house wives has come too? Let’s pick and demean at least one lady all year long, most of you have become bullies.”

He liked another post replying to Simpson’s initial tweet reading, “She is a victim. Alcoholism is a disease. Just stop.”

On Wednesday night’s episode, the reality star explained how her battle with alcoholism, compounded with the stress of quarantine with their seven children, led to a few instances with her husband of which she isn’t proud.

In a self-filmed confessional from inside her closet, Braunwyn explained she had been “raging” and “angry” in lockdown, adding that attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings online just wasn’t the same as going in person.

“I just, I lost it. I lost my temper again with Sean belittling me over the vacuum cleaner,” she said, saying she couldn’t get the charger to work properly. “And instead of being like, ‘Yeah, I’ll help you’ — he’s still going to the office, he’s still working, he’s still getting out of the house — so, instead of helping, he made fun of me and I lost it and I smacked him.”

“I have hit Sean a couple of times in my life,” she added, before pointing to another recent instance just a few months prior in Aspen, during a family getaway.

“Nothing though like what happened in Aspen,” she explained. “I hit him across the face and I hit him hard. I wanted to go drink. I was angry and I was lashing out and Curren saw it.”

Curren is one of the couple’s seven children. The two share Bella, 20, Rowan, 18, Jacob, 15, twins Curren and Caden, 7, Koa, 5, and 2-year-old Hazel.

“Looking back, it was a side of me I’ve never seen. It was bad,” she added. “I feel trapped in my house, I feel trapped in my marriage. I feel trapped, emotionally and physically. I have put a happy spin on my marriage for a long time, but the truth is, there are some big things that have been happening and that part of me that we’ve never talked about.”

Braunwyn recently came out as a lesbian, saying that her sobriety made her reevaluate her relationship with Sean and her sexuality.

“I know that when you get sober and you start doing the work that goes into that, you start realizing a lot of the reasons you drank had to do with who you were on the inside … this sort of became something that I didn’t want to hide anymore and I didn’t want to keep a secret anymore,” she explained. “I wanna be able to go out to dinner with whoever I want without judgment. As long as my husband’s okay and the person I was dating’s okay and knows everything, I didn’t wanna have to hide this anymore.”

Braunwyn and Sean are still married and still live together. Despite Windham-Burke’s coming out and new relationship with a woman, they don’t plan on divorcing.

“Real Housewives of Orange County” airs Wednesdays on Bravo.

If you or someone you know needs help, call 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) for the National Domestic Violence Hotline.