Jennifer Garner's Daughter Was Kicked Off A Soccer Team Due To Paparazzi

Jennifer Garner’s daughter Violet was only in kindergarten when she was kicked off a soccer team because of the paparazzi her family would attract

Jennifer Garner opened up in a recent interview about a disturbing incident involving the paparazzi and her daughter, Violet. Garner is fiercely protective of her kids and their privacy, so to hear that photogs tormented her children is truly vile.

Garner tells The Hollywood Reporter that fame is something she and ex-husband Ben Affleck, the father of their three kids, willingly accepted, but of course, their kids did not. She recounts upsetting incidents from their childhoods involving invasive paparazzi, specifically sharing stories about Violet, now 15, being kicked off her kindergarten soccer team and even chased in and out of schools. At the height of the paps’ harassment, Garner gathered other celeb moms and local authorities at her home to explain the situation and plead for better protection. That’s when little Violet decided, even at her young age, that she wanted to speak out too.

“Violet’s hyper-articulate — she is Ben Affleck’s daughter,” Garner tells THR, “and she stood up on a chair in a little velvet dress, with her hair a bit back and her glasses on and she didn’t say her R’s right, and she said: ‘We didn’t ask for this. We don’t want these cameras, they’re scary. The men are scary, they knock each other over and it’s hard to feel like a kid when you’re being chased.'”

Ugh. Our hearts.

In 2013, Garner testified before the California State Assembly Committee on Public Safety to support a bill aimed at shielding kids like hers from paparazzi cameras. It was ultimately signed into law. Because no child should be tracked, harassed, and chased just because their parents are famous.

Heartbreakingly, Garner admits they have no family pictures because the constant paparazzi attention made her kids scared of cameras. And of course, it’s just not being chased by photogs that makes life complicated for Violet, Seraphina, 12, and Sam, 9 — there’s also the invasive headlines about their parents’ private lives.

“When they were smaller and there were things out there that were shocking, my request to them was always, ‘Let Dad and I talk you through whatever it is,'” she says, not specifically mentioning any stories in particular, but over the years, there has been media attention paid to Affleck’s substance abuse, relationships, and rehab stays. “I’d tell them, ‘If you see an image on the front of a magazine, I’ll look at it with you and we’ll process all the scary feelings that come up together.'”

The interviewer then brings up something Garner said back in 2016, shortly after the couple decided to divorce. She told Vanity Fair at the time that she thought she “lost the dream of dancing with [her] husband at [her] daughter’s wedding.”

Now? It seems their co-parenting situation has changed.”When our kids get married, we’ll dance, I know that now,” she says. “We’ll boogaloo and have a great time. I don’t worry about that anymore.”