'Modern Family' Actress Flees to Studio City After Claims of Abuse

The young, smart, bespectacled member of the Modern Family family, 14-year-old actress Ariel Winter, was removed from the home of her mother and is petitioning to live in Studio City and have her sister, Shanelle Gray, act as her guardian.

Winter plays Alex Dunphy on the show, and she would be moving not far from where her screen mom, Julie Bowen, lives in Studio City.

TMZ originally reported that the young actress was removed from the house of her mom, Chrisoula Workman, and there will be a hearing on Nov. 20 for guardianship. There are claims that the mom tried to "sexualize" her and created physical and emotional abuse. The mother denies the charge through a family spokesman, and said to People magazine: "It's all untrue, it's all untue" and said she has letters from a doctor and stylists that show the girl was not abused.

Gray, Winter's 34-year-old sister, also left her mother's care under similar circumstances two decades ago, according to TMZ.  Gray, whose real name is Workman, appeared on daytime soap operas One Life To Live and The Bold and the Beautiful.

Court documents say the mother has been restricted from contacting the actress and mention "on-going physical abuse (slapping, hitting, pushing) and emotional abuse (vile name-calling, personal insults about minor and minor's weight, attempts to 'sexualize' minor, deprivation of food, etc.) for an extended period of time by the minor's mother." They also say her father, Glenn Workman, is "estranged and incapable of properly caring for a minor."