Manti Te'o Hoaxer Recreates Fake Girlfriend's Voice for Dr. Phil

Ronaiah Tuiasosopo told Dr. Phil he was raped and molested as a child.

ByABC News
February 1, 2013, 2:06 PM

Feb. 1, 2013 — -- Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, the alleged mastermind behind the Manti Te'o "catfish" hoax, recreated the voice of fake girlfriend Lennay Kekua for Dr. Phil today.

Tuiasosopo convinced Dr. Phil and his audio experts that he was, in fact, the voice behind the hoax.

Dr. Phil McGraw pressed Tuiasosopo to do the voice behind a privacy screen in an audio booth. Tuiasosopo read transcripts of some of the voicemails that "Lennay" had left for Te'o, including a teary one left when "Lennay" said another girl had answered Te'o's phone.

Click here for an infographic that breaks down the connections between the key players in the hoax.

Dr. Phil said he sent one of his producers to Tuiasosopo's home where he used the producer's phone to call back to the show and do the voice from his natural environment.

He convinced Dr. Phil's three experts that he was the voice behind imaginary girlfriend Lennay Kekua.

Te'o, Notre Dame's star linebacker and a finalist for the Heisman Trophy, said he spoke daily to Lennay -- sometimes for hours -- over a period of about nine months after being told that Lennay was hospitalized for a car accident and then leukemia. He would often sleep while listening to her breathing over the phone.

Te'o and a trio of experts who previously reviewed the voicemails for ABC News all said that the voice on the phone was not that of a man.

When asked today if Te'o had any response to Tuiasosopo's comments on the show, his publicist Matthew Hiltzik told ABCNews.com via email, "As of now, no."

Te'o's agent said they did not have any statement from the athlete.

Tuiasosopo told Dr. Phil that creating Kekua was "an escape from a lot of the things that I've been through."

He said that he had been molested and raped as a child by people close to his family and had been too afraid to say anything, for fear of jeopardizing his fragile relationship with his father.

He said he felt "dirty and filthy" from the abuse, but would "hold it in and hope it doesn't happen [again], but it did."

Tuiasosopo, 22, said one of the most "validating" parts of creating the alter-ego of Lennay Kekua was to "sit back and watch the impact I had on Manti and I would watch through his eyes the good that he saw in Lennay."

His parents, who also appeared on the show, said they did not know about the hoax or the abuse until Tuiasosopo sat them down and told them everything.

"As he was explaining to me all of the [abuse] incidents...right away, when he told me the location, the time, I could go back and vividly remember those trips, the times that these guys came over and that part right there was kind of gut-wrenching for me," his father Titus Tuiasosopo told Dr. Phil.

Tuiasosopo cried as he discussed the abuse and the hoax. He tearfully said he was "well aware" of "the horrible things I have done."

At one point, Tuiasosopo looked directly into the camera and sent a message to Te'o, the star linebacker he said he had victimized.

"I can never explain how sorry I am for everything," Tuiasosopo said, addressing Te'o and his family. "I pray that you can forgive me, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, maybe you've already done it and maybe you never will. My deepest apologies. God bless you all."