@raypo3/TikTok
- A TikTok of 23-year-old nanny dancing with her male employer has gone viral.
- The video, which has 7.2 million views, is being called "inappropriate" and "flirty" by commenters.
- Nanny Lizzie Norton and the couple who employ her have denied the claims in their latest TikToks.
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A nanny has denied speculation of an inappropriate relationship with her male employer after a TikTok video of the two of them reenacting a scene from "Dirty Dancing" went viral.
The TikTok video, which was posted on Tuesday August 3, shows 23-year-old nanny Lizzie Norton and father-of-two, Andrew taking turns to lift each other up and wrap their arms around each other imitating the final dance from "Dirty Dancing."
Andrew's wife, Rachel, can be heard giggling in the background while filming the video. At one point, Rachel can be heard saying, "You touched her boobs!"
The video initially went viral on Rachel's own TikTok account, where she posts content about her husband, two children, and nanny under the handle @raypo3. She has around 95,000 followers, but the video in question received 7.2 million views. The TikTok was also reposted by an account called "The Best Loved Nanny," which offers advice and discussion points for aspiring nannies, where it was viewed 5.3 million times.
Michele Garza, the person behind "The Best Loved Nanny" account, later said in a second video responding to the clip that "it is important [for nannies] to model healthy behavior" with their employers. "With the video, I don't think that anything has actually gone wrong, I just think that it has started to blur the lines," she said.
However, various social media users criticized the video. In the comments, some claimed that Andrew and Norton were "flirting," while others suggested that due to the perceived age gap, Andrew was "grooming" Norton. Sexual abuse charity RAINN defines grooming as a tactic "employed by a family member or someone else in the victim's circle of trust, such as a coach, teacher, youth group leader or others who naturally have some interaction with the victim."
In the days following the video, Rachel posted three TikToks to her account defending the original video and denying allegations of "grooming." Norton joined her for the videos, which got a combined viewership of 5.5 million. The first was captioned "Since you're all nosy perverts."
In the second video, Rachel explained that although Norton and Andrew saw each other every day during the pandemic, this is no longer the case since Andrew returned to his workplace.
"On the rare occasion she does see him, they're so happy to see each other, because she's like our little sister," Rachel said. "We love her to death. She's really goofy and weird and we can joke around and mess with her, and vice versa."
"When she dates and makes bad decisions on other things, we give her advice. We tell her we're disappointed in her, we tell her we're proud of her," she added.
Norton herself said, "I'm not being groomed, everybody can calm down."
Rachel later urged people in the third video to stop "attacking" Norton, saying, "She's a godsend to our family and people are attacking her like she's some sort of slut."
Neither Norton nor Rachel or Andrew immediately responded to Insider's request for comment.
For more stories like this, check out coverage from Insider's Digital Culture team here.