The Bachelorette contestant Justin Glaze, one of Katie Thurston’s frontrunners, is now apologizing for past tweets that were homophobic, misogynistic and colorist.

As reported by People, the tweets (posted between 2009 and 2011) were from when the 27-year-old was a teen. They resurfaced on Reddit over the weekend. The report also cites tweets that included insulting comments about Black women.

On an episode of the Bachelor Happy Hour Podcast with Becca Kufrin and guest host Tayshia Adams, Glaze issued an apology.

“As I reflect on everything I just went through with this whole journey, oftentimes people ask me what I took from it…And one of the biggest takeaways for me was just my personal growth, and one of those things is being able to hold myself accountable, which is something that historically I wasn’t able to do,” he said. “So, I have no issue with owning up and apologizing from the bottom of my heart for the really hurtful words that I used.”

Glaze, who maintains that he doesn’t want anyone to defend him, added, “The last thing that I want to do is run from it. That’s not who I am. I just want to speak from the heart, and hopefully, people will get an understanding of where I was then versus where I am now. When I look back at 14-year-old Justin, I was in high school and quite frankly I was the type of person who for whatever reason felt the need to fit in and say funny things and keep up with what my peers were doing and saying. The folks I had associated with would throw around really hurtful slurs that, at the time, I didn’t really think anything of. what I said was ignorant and hurtful then [and] it’s ignorant and hurtful now.”