TW: This article contains descriptions of alleged child abuse.
Jon & Kate Plus 8 rose to immediate popularity when the show premiered on TLC in 2007. Viewers caught a glimpse into how Jon and Kate Gosselin and their sets of twins and sextuplets tackled life as an uncommonly large family.
Eventually, the glimmers of contempt that fans of the show could see between Jon and Kate evolved into divorce. A wedge formed between some of the the eight Gosselin kids – who are now all adults.
Twins Mady and Cara, 23, and five of the 20-year-old sextuplets – Hannah, Alexis, Leah, Aaden, and Joel, have largely stayed out of the spotlight since the show died out. However, Collin Gosselin recently spoke out about disheartening abuse he allegedly suffered at the hands of his mother. He claims that Kate would regularly isolate him from the rest of the family by zip-tying his hands and feet and locking him in the basement.
Collin Gosselin: Kate’s alleged emotional and physical abuse caused him to “never [have] a childhood”
Anyone who watched Jon & Kate Plus 8 could see that Kate was maybe uptight and a bit controlling. However, Collin claims that things were even darker when TLC’s cameras weren’t rolling.
Collin told The U.S. Sun that Kate would often banish him to a room in the basement of their home. “My mother had a room built in our unfinished section of the storage basement. She had a room put up with cameras in it, a tiny window in the corner and it was bolt-locked from the outside.”
He said the “containment room” had “a mattress on the floor, and that was how I lived.”
Collin alleged, “When my mother would put me in that room multiple times, she had zip-tied my hands and feet together and bolt-locked the door, turned the lights off and had cameras there just watching me.”
He says Kate consistently treated him differently from his siblings. Despite being part of hit TV show, he felt isolated and alone. When he was 11, Kate sent him away to a mental health facility due to diagnoses of various behavioral and psychiatric conditions he believes were misdiagnosed. He provided private medical records indicating he doesn’t have any mental illnesses or behavioral conditions.
Collin eventually wrote a letter from treatment that spurred Jon to remove him from the program. Collin and his sister, Hannah, have lived with Jon for years now, while the other six kids remained with Kate.
Kate hasn’t responded to Collin’s accusations. Her attorney Richard Puleo commented that he believes Kate never did anything to “intentionally harm” Collin. He added, “she did what she did to protect herself and her family” from Collin’s “troubled behavior.”
The Childhelp USA National Child Abuse Hotline (1-800-4-A-CHILD (1-800-422-4453) operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and receives calls from throughout the United States, Canada, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam and Puerto Rico.
