Trigger warning for child and domestic abuse

Collin Gosselin is one of 8 children in the Gosselin family – a set of twins and a set of sextuplets, including Collin, and their parents. The family starred on TLC’s Jon & Kate + 8 from the time Collin and the rest of the sextuplets were two years old.

This week, he single-handedly took down one of the biggest pop-culture villains of the 2000s. His memoir, In The Shadow Of Eight, debuted at #1  on the NYT Bestseller list. It’s a harrowing tale of one child being scapegoated, gaslit, abused, isolated, and ultimately removed from his family, institutionalized at the age of 11… while we all watched.

In The Shadow of Eight by Collin Gosselin

The details of Collin’s abuse at the hands of his mother are predictably awful. I don’t say that to minimize any of the horrors of his life – he was isolated from all 7 of his siblings and spent all his time in a locked room in the basement. He was told his father didn’t want to see him, was excluded from fun activities on their TV show, was removed from school (after he admitted the abuse to a teacher, which resulted in a visit from Child & Family Services, natch) and ultimately institutionalized for specious-at-best reasons, based on accusations of mental illness and violence that have never been corroborated. All of this is the tip of the iceberg, and Collin goes into much more vivid detail in the book.

Sadly, none of this is singularly that remarkable for children in abusive situations, especially in families where one child is deemed the source of all the family’s problems. What makes this different – both more heartbreaking and more powerful – is that this story has documented proof…  oh, and millions of viewers who saw it in close-to-real time. We were there, with our own eyes and our critical thinking, which either makes us complicit, or eyewitnesses who can testify to exactly what Collin alleges happened.

I am not the only one who knows the long, sad tale of Collin Gosselin. I was not watching Jon & Kate + 8 all by myself, even if you all would like to pretend you were never there. I know you were, just like I know some of you reading can name all the Duggar siblings and their spouses to boot.

But there’s a stigma to the admission. The particular shame in being acquainted with the families on 2000s-era TLC spans a couple of reasons. Firstly, following those families meant immersion in a world that was intrinsically dorky – the goofy music and made-up excursions that made up the alleged ‘content’ feel like the TV equivalent of forced detention in a Michael’s.

Second, the Venn diagram of families who were on shows like this, and families who were involved in one toxic corner of evangelical Christianity or another is a virtually perfect circle. Whether the parents espoused truly terrible beliefs, or just said they did because being good churchgoing people was the TLC equivalent of a Disney kid’s True Love Waits purity ring, it was inescapable. Those ‘essential’ elements for a TLC show were presumably engineered to ensnare and retain the largely female, Boomer-forward viewers who got high on an abundance of kid cuteness, meaning TLC’s executives basically put tracking devices on any telegenic family with multiple kids and a good hook.

But for a minority of us, the draw was different, and frequently darker. When families agree to be filmed close to full time, the complex dynamics and daily horrors can’t be hidden altogether, no matter what the soundtrack says:

This is what’s most damning about Collin’s book. The incredibly painful incidents he writes about exist in plain sight, and are much more heartbreaking in retrospect. Like the story he tells about how sure he was that Kate would like the gift he carefully picked out for her. Watch with care, because this clip could absolutely be triggering – but if you can, you should watch. This little boy deserves the witnesses:

Lauren Hailey (@itslauren_hailey) on Threads
You know, I could maybe give Kate Gosselin a little grace…..but then I rewatched this episode. Collin finds this little mama bear with her cub for Kate’s 40th birthday, negotiates the price from 500 pesos down to 200, and is genuinely SO excited and grateful to get it for his mom. He says, “It’s me and you.” 🥹 A mama bear and her baby. Just him and his mom. Kate is absolutely OVERJOYED opening the other kids’ presents. And then she gets to Collin’s. And what’s her reaction?
Threads

It’s devastating enough that it happened. But imagine being Collin, who seems about 8 here, having this happen in front of your entire family and a crew of adults, and wondering why nobody sees what’s happening? It’s not like there’s a lack of evidence of this woman’s cruelty. The incident I remember most doesn’t even make it into Collin’s book, but it was obvious even here that she was casually cruel and specifically to Collin.

But other people remember different moments, like this:

Or this:

Or countless others that haven’t yet been found and uploaded by invested, intrepid TikTokers who – and I cannot stress this enough – were able to go back and find these clips because they were so seared into our memories in the first place. Because they aired this woman’s abuse on TV, blithely billed as entertainment!

There are protections for child actors in scripted productions. As we well know, some are woefully inadequate, but they’re there, and they are enforced by outside bodies specifically because parents can’t always be trusted to act in the best interests of their children.

But no similar protections exist for children on reality TV, whose homes are, often, not safe, since they’re also the set of the show they appear on; whose parents are their employers, and who almost never see the money their parents are raking in. If you’re Collin Gosselin, or Jill Duggar, or Shari Franke, and you don’t want to play Happy Family on TV when it couldn’t be further from reality, well, you’re out of the family, then – no money and also no love or community for you!

Which brings me to the most insidious part of these terrible stories. Kate Gosselin is “fighting back” against Collin’s allegations in her TikTok comments, and has nodded to some of her other children, including her outspoken daughter Mady, Collin’s older sister, for corroboration.

Except that’s not proof of anything. Because even if you’re not the specific target of abuse in a particular moment, that doesn’t mean you didn’t grow up in an abusive household. Here’s just one clip of what it was like to be Mady as a child:

Yeah. And as bad as that would be if it were a clip from a day at the beach or a trip to the mall, it’s not. It’s from a TV interview, where Kate and her 8 young children are working – but only Kate is entitled to a luxury like WATER. When you grow up in a house like this? Where your mother rules all, and isolates everyone – your dad, aunts and uncles, family friends – who opposes her? Well then telling your truth, and risking her wrath? It’s just not worth it. These kids have seen how quickly she can cut someone who displeases her out of the fold – and in this case, Kate is the fold – emotionally, financially, and as gatekeeper to the rest of the family. 

I’m thrilled for the success of Collin’s book, though not the reasons he was able to write it. I’m excited by what it might mean for reality TV kids, and their slightly younger cousins, influencer’s kids, who don’t even have the “benefit” of a TV crew or other outside adults bearing witness to their trauma. His bravery and resilience at only 22 are remarkable, but they should never have had to be tested this way. He lost 6 of his siblings, years of his life, relationships with family, his military career – all on the words of one famehungry megalomaniac who didn’t want a squeaky wheel in her camp. Meanwhile, she, along with the networks, who made millions upon millions are still getting away with it all these years later.

We already knew it was true. The least we can do is to look Collin’s reality in the face. Let's Squawk about it. (App link here.)

Photo credits: Lisa O'Connor/Shutterstock

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