Kate Gosselin Says Her Kids Know Who She Truly Is Amid Collin's Memoir
Collin Gosselin Sets Record Straight on Sister Hannah's Claim She Hasn't Seen Him
Kate Gosselin is keeping her focus on her family.
Though the Jon & Kate Plus 8 star has not directly addressed the accusations her estranged son Collin Gosselin made in his new memoir Shadow of Eight: Surviving the Reality of My Childhood, in which he chronicled the alleged abuse he faced from his mother, she has used comments from fans to share her perspective. And most recently it highlighted her dynamic with the rest of her kids.
Though Kate, 51, was celebrating her boyfriend Steve Neild’s birthday in her Oct. 22 TikTok, one follower took the opportunity to weigh in on Collin’s accusations against his mom. And the way they saw it, Kate had “made sacrifices that no Mama should have had to make alone” adding, “When people attack You, it might sting for a moment, but it can never shake who You are. It only confirms that You stood your ground and remained true through it all.”
Kate—also mom to 26-year-old twins Mady and Cara, as well as Collin’s fellow sextuplets Alexis, Aaden, Leah, Joel and Hannah, all 22, with ex-husband Jon Gosselin— was clearly touched by the comment, writing in response, “Wow. Thank you. I needed this encouragement and you are right. I know who I am and my kids know who I truly am and to me, that's all that matters.”
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Kate’s response comes days after her daughter Hannah shared in an Oct. 21 statement that she had not spoken to Collin “in close to a year” amid his estrangement from Kate and the rest of his siblings.
Collin, however, refuted his sister's claim, saying the two had indeed been in communication.
“I want to respect her privacy, so I'm going to keep it brief,” he shared during an Oct. 22 appearance on The View. “But I will say this: All families are complicated. I've seen Hannah many times in the past year. Me, myself, my father at our house. I have pictures if you want to see them.”
Netflix/Gosselin Family
“That statement sounded like a lot of the words of my mother, especially the last part,” he continued. “What I do believe has happened is that Hannah is caught in the middle, and nobody deserves that.”
As for Jon, the 49-year-old has been vocal in his support of Collin since the release of his memoir. “First and foremost I couldn’t be more proud of my son’s heartbreaking memoir and his mission to help other victims of abuse,” he told E! News in an Oct. 16 statement. “Also, let me be very clear: if you continue to falsely label my son Collin as ‘mentally ill’ you will be held accountable.”
For a look at what Collin said about his relationship with Kate in his memoir, keep reading.
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Collin Gosselin Says His Mom Separated Him From His Siblings
On a 2015 episode of Kate Plus 8—the Jon & Kate Plus 8 spinoff Kate Gosselin led following her 2009 divorce from Jon Gosselin—TLC viewers watched as twins Mady Gosselin and Cara Gosselin moved into their own rooms in Kate's 7,500-square-foot estate, while their younger sisters Leah Gosselin, Alexis Gosselin and Hannah Gosselin inhabited a shared upstairs room and brothers Collin Gosselin, Joel Gosselin and Aaden Gosselin made over a basement space.
"It was like a slumber party every night," Collin recounts of that first week in his memoir Shadow of Eight: Surviving the Reality of My Childhood. "Then, one day, I was told by my mom I’d be moving out. An air mattress appeared in the unfinished part of the basement, shoved into the far back corner like an afterthought."
Coming on the heels of him being cut out of weekend visits with his dad (he was told Jon didn't want to see him; Jon was told the opposite) and frequently isolated (he recalls one night where he was sent to bed while his siblings watched TV with Kate), having to live next to their deep freezers felt particularly cold.
"I was part of a plan," he notes of the punishments, he attributed to his unwillingness to play ball on camera "I just didn’t know what it was."
E! News reached out to reps for Kate and TLC about the accusations in Collin's book and has not heard back. However, this past June, Kate referred to her son's accusations as "ridiculous" in the comment section of her TikTok page.
Amy Sussman/WireImage for Discovery Communications
Collin Gosselin Claims His Parents Kate Gosselin and Jon Gosselin Were Offered Millions to Stay Married
As Jon and Kate's marriage began to unravel, claims Collin, Dr. Phil host Phil McGraw was teaming with TLC "to negotiate a deal to keep their marriage together for cameras."
So, when the couple shared their plans to divorce in January 2009, writes Collin, "the network responded by offering my parents $2 million to stay in the marriage and pretend the relationship was intact for the sake of the show’s longevity." Turning down the offer, Jon told the Daily Mail in 2019, "I couldn't live with myself. I couldn't live a lie."
E! News reached out to reps for Kate and TLC, but they did not respond. They also declined to comment on Daily Mail's previous story. A rep for McGraw called the allegations "false" in a statement to Us Weekly. Noting the talk show host didn't have "any direct or indirect interest, financial or otherwise," in the series, the rep added, "Neither Dr. Phil, nor anyone associated with his show ever facilitated, encouraged, participated in or knew anything about any payments to the Gosselins by the other network as alleged by their son Collin, who Dr. Phil has never met."
Photo by Donna Svennevik/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images
Collin Gosselin Says He Spent 70 Percent of His Time Locked in His Basement Bedroom
According to Collin, some 14 complaints were made against his mom to Children and Youth Services, one of them coming after he turned up to his fourth-grade classroom with a noticeably injured ear.
Not long after, "my mom pulled me from school," he wrote. "She told me it was temporary. That it was for my own good. That people were 'asking questions' and we needed to keep things calm for a while. I didn’t argue or ask how long. I'd learned that asking questions made things worse."
Collin said he was also banned from playing with the family's LEGO sets. But perhaps the biggest change, Collin alleged, was the walls Kate had built around his basement air mattress with two security cameras he had to speak through if he needed to be let out to use the bathroom.
"Most days, I spent about 70 percent of my time locked in that room," writes Collin. "The rest was split between meeting with my teacher, eating alone without my siblings, cleaning up after everyone or pretending to be happy when the cameras came around. That was my life."
Photo by Donna Svennevik/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images
Collin Gosselin Claims Mom Kate Gosselin Told His Siblings He Was a Bad Kid
To explain why Collin was no longer attending school with them or even joining the rest of the family to eat dinner, Kate would tell his siblings he was troubled, Collin writes.
"'Collin needs more help than you kids,' she would say right in front of me," he details in his book. "'You and your friends at school aren't bad like your brother.' They were repeatedly told that I was unpredictable, violent, beyond help. They grew up around me as if I was a cautionary tale. They were children themselves. How could they know to doubt her?"
Kate previously told People that Collin received "multiple psychiatric diagnoses" and inpatient psychiatric treatment in response to "unpredictable and violent behavior." But Jon claimed to the Daily Mail in 2019 that Collin had no known diagnosed medical condition other than common ADHD.
Michael Simon/Getty Images & Noel Vasquez/Getty Images
Collin Gosselin Alleges Mom Kate Gosselin Once Bound His Wrists and Ankles With Zip Ties
Having tired of his basement existence by age 11, Collin plotted his escape, using his twin-size air mattress to climb out the tiny basement window. But with nowhere to go—"It had been almost two years since I'd seen my dad"—he returned home.
Once there, his mattress was gone, as were the few books he had. Then, Collin detailed, Kate allegedly came in with zip ties for his wrists and ankles.
"Once I was bound, she grabbed me by my wrists, pulled me up into a standing position and then threw me down, slamming my tailbone against the hard floor," Collin alleges, adding she told him he was a burden to the family. "She went on, calling me crazy, dangerous and other names nobody should ever call a child, things that stuck long after the pain faded."
A rep for Kate didn’t respond to E! News' request for comment. But her attorney previously told The Sun, "There's always two sides to every story and when things take place in the past, it's hard to determine because people have differing recollections and perspectives."
However, his take, he added, was "if Kate did the things that Collin is accusing Kate of, she would have been investigated by the authorities and prosecuted."
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Collin Gosselin Recounts Being Physically Restrained and Sedated at a Mental Health Clinic
After his escape attempt, Collin claims he was transported to Fairmount Behavioral Health System mere days before his 12th birthday. Throughout his 21-month stay in the mental health clinic—where most kids stayed just days or weeks, he claims—he was given daily medication. "My brain had started feeling soft and cloudy, like someone had turned a dimmer switch down," he details. "I found myself zoning out, feeling like a zombie."
During one incident, 18 months into his stay, Collin alleges he was physically restrained and injected with a medication he dubbed "booty juice" after asking administrators why he was still there. After another, a staffer bent his wrist in such a way that "a violent, searing pain shot up my arm, so intense it made my knees buckle." (E! News reached out to Fairmount Behavioral Health System, but has not heard back.)
Throughout his nearly two-year stay, Collin says his mom visited once.
Instagram/Jon Gosselin
Collin Gosselin Says He Smuggled a Letter to Dad Jon Gosselin to Get Out of the Mental Health Clinic
With his mom and siblings no longer taking his calls from Fairmount, said Collin, he hatched a plan to reconnect with his dad. After hitting it off with one of his roommates, Collin confided in him about his reality star past.
Writing a letter to his father in crayon while hiding in a bathroom stall, Collin claimed he asked his roommate to find a way to deliver it. Soon after, he was discharged to a residential facility where he was able to once-again attend school and slowly weaned off his medications.
It was there that he connected with his dad for the first time, Jon sharing in that initial phone call that he had plans to bring him home.
As Jon later detailed to Collin—who ended up moving in with him, sister Hannah and Jon's then-girlfriend Colleen Conrad—he had spent years trying to track him down. Then he received Collin's letter and filed an emergency petition with the court to modify custody.
Collin Gosselin Says He Hasn't Seen Most of His Siblings Since He Was 15
Other than Hannah, Collin has only seen his siblings once since leaving Kate's home at age 11—a court-mandated visit just before his 15th birthday. "It was a way to keep the kids together, despite being split between two households," Collin reasons, noting the meet-up started out awkwardly before they all teamed up to best the amusement center's games.
But, as Leah, Alexis, Joel and Aaden moved toward the exit, "No one turned back," Collin recounts. "And I haven't seen them since."
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