Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photos: Getty Images
The Gosselin family is back in the headlines almost a decade after the hit reality-TV show Jon & Kate Plus 8 (later Kate Plus 8) went off the air. Last week, Collin Gosselin, one of the family’s sextuplets, published a memoir expanding on extensive abuse allegations against his mother, Kate Gosselin, that he first shared with the public in 2023. Many of the family members have been estranged from one another for years, but Collin’s memoir, as well as a forthcoming Netflix documentary, seems to have brought the tension further into the spotlight. Here’s what has happened so far.
You probably know the Gosselins from their TLC reality show, Jon & Kate Plus Eight, which premiered in 2007 and chronicled the lives of Jon, Kate, and their eight children: twins Mady and Cara, who were born in 2000, and sextuplets Collin, Aaden, Joel, Alexis, Leah, and Hannah, who were born in 2004.
Jon and Kate divorced in 2009 after ten years of marriage and five seasons on TV. Their split was messy and public — Jon faced cheating rumors when he began dating Hailey Glassman, the daughter of Kate’s plastic surgeon, though both he and Glassman denied they had been together before the separation. After the divorce, Jon was photographed spending a lot of time with Christian Audigier, the fame-hungry designer behind the Ed Hardy brand who was known to throw lavish parties attended by Michael Jackson and Madonna. Meanwhile, Kate received full custody of the couple’s eight children as well as their Pennsylvania home. She continued filming the reality series — which was retitled Kate Plus 8 — for six more seasons. The show aired its final season in 2017, when the twins were 17 and the sextuplets were 13.
Collin first came forward with allegations against his mother in Vice TV’s 2023 documentary Dark Side of the 2000s, in which he talked about being isolated from his siblings and verbally abused. He expanded on those claims in an interview with The Sun in 2024, where he said Kate had kept him confined to a makeshift room in the basement that was “bolt-locked from the outside.”
In his new memoir, In the Shadow of Eight: Surviving the Reality of my Childhood, Collin claims his mother mentally and physically abused him after Jon moved out, when the sextuplets were about 5 years old and Collin told her he didn’t want to be on-camera anymore.
He writes that Kate once yanked his ear so hard that his fourth-grade teacher noticed bruising and made a call to the local Children and Youth Services, which triggered an investigation. Kate removed Collin from school shortly after, telling him it was “for his own good,” he says. He claims that he then began spending most of his time in the basement room, which was monitored by two security cameras.
“Most days, I spent about 70 percent of my time locked in that room,” Collin writes, per E! “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.” He says he would often attempt to escape his confinement, and on occasion his mother zip-tied his hands and feet together. He also accuses Kate of further verbal abuse, alleging she called him “crazy, dangerous, and other names nobody should ever call a child” and told his siblings he was a “bad kid.”
When Collin was 11, Kate checked him into Philadelphia’s Fairmount Behavioral Health System, a mental-health facility he describes in the book as an “institution,” where he stayed for 21 months. Kate said in a statement to People at the time that she had enrolled Collin because he had “special needs,” describing his diagnosis as “fairly fluid” but adding that “he needs to learn certain strategies to help him deal with things.” Collin claims in his memoir that he was given medication at the facility that made him feel “like a zombie” and was physically restrained at times. He says he was ignored when he asked questions about the duration of his stay, and throughout his nearly two years in the facility, Kate visited only once.
Collin, now 22, claims he was finally released from Fairmount after he smuggled a letter to his father asking for help. He says that his mother had led him to believe Jon hated him and that his letter was part of a last-ditch effort. After receiving it, Jon filed an emergency petition with the court to modify custody, Collin writes.
Jon gained custody of Collin and his sister Hannah in 2018, when they were both 16. Collin says he has not seen or spoken to his other siblings since being removed from their home. Hannah remained in contact with her siblings and her mother.
In the Vice documentary, Hannah corroborated Collin’s claim that he had been isolated from her and the rest of their siblings. In previous interviews, she said she moved in with Jon because she wanted to be closer with him.
However, Hannah has recently distanced herself from both her brother and her father, writing in a statement posted to TikTok that she has not lived with Jon in “over a year” nor spoken to Collin in “close to a year.” Her statement followed the news that Netflix will release a documentary about the Gosselin family featuring interviews with Jon, Collin, and herself.
“I have had a relationship with my mom and other siblings for quite a few years now,” Hannah wrote. “And that’s the only thing I’m clearing up. I will not be commenting on Collin’s behavior growing up or my experiences growing up with him.”
In response to his sister’s statement, which she published days before the release of his memoir, Collin told The View’s co-hosts that Hannah’s language “sounded like a lot of the words of my mother, especially the last part. What I do believe has happened is that Hannah’s caught in the middle — and nobody deserves that.” He added, “I know what it feels like to have to fight to have a relationship with your siblings. I don’t have one with my siblings, and I know how much that hurts. Not only is she caught in the middle, but I do believe my mom is either leveraging finances or Hannah’s relationship with our siblings over Hannah.”
He added that he thinks Hannah is also attempting “pre–damage control” — presumably to preserve her relationship with Kate — before the premiere of the Netflix documentary, which does not yet have a release date.
Collin’s other siblings have not commented on his latest allegations against their mother. After the Vice documentary aired in 2023, Collin’s older sister Mady defended her decision to cut ties with him.
“I do not owe my allegiance to any person(s) who has physically threatened me and every member of my immediate family (some incidents as recent as last year),” she wrote. “Further, I will never allow someone who has exhibited hateful and even violent behavior toward others based on their racial identity, gender identity, or religious beliefs to be in my life.”
She added that there was “no further conversation to be had about rebuilding relationships with anyone in my life after reaching the point of physical violence and hate speech.”
“I cannot speak any further on why Collin has done these things, just that I have witnessed them,” she said.
Jon responded to Mady’s post in a statement to People at the time, saying, “It took courage for Collin to sit down and speak about his past, and the last thing I would have expected was more abuse to come his way from a sibling that hasn’t seen or spoken to him since he was in sixth grade.”
After Collin spoke out in 2023 about his experience of being institutionalized, Kate released an Instagram statement suggesting he had fabricated his claims. “My son Collin, whom I love with all my heart, has received multiple psychiatric diagnoses over the years,” she wrote. “For the safety of myself, his brothers and sisters and for his own well-being, he was placed in a facility following years of outpatient treatment which proved insufficient for his need. Collin’s distorted perception of reality is one of the many issues that he has always struggled with.” She insisted that “all measures that were taken in our home were at the explicit recommendation of [Collin’s] pediatric psychiatrist and/or his team of specialists and were put into place to safeguard every member of our family, our friends as well as our family pets.”
After Collin shared more details about the alleged physical abuse with the The Sun in 2024 — including his claim that Kate had zip-tied his hands and feet — Kate’s lawyer, Richard Puelo, told The Sun there are “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, I think if Kate did the things that Collin is accusing Kate of, she would have been investigated by the authorities and prosecuted,” Puelo added.
Collin, meanwhile, has pushed back on the idea that mental illness drove him to make up allegations of abuse against his mother; he recently told TMZ that he had completed and passed “three independent psychiatric evaluations.”
Earlier this week, Kate, who has engaged in the comments sections of a few social-media posts defending her, addressed Collin’s claim that she had visited him only once at the behavioral facility.
“I visited EVERY single time the facility felt he was stable enough for a visit,” she wrote in an Instagram comment. “Sometimes a visit was planned but the facility canceled it because he was too unstable and it would have to be rescheduled.” In a separate comment under the same video, she wrote that she called her son “EVERY SINGLE TIME he earned phone privileges or was allowed to have or make a phone call.”
Jon has remained supportive of Collin and Hannah, though he is currently estranged from his six other children. In a recent interview with Entertainment Tonight, Jon said he’s still interested in rebuilding his relationship with his other children. “Of course, I want to talk to them. It’s not about the book stuff. I just want to know how their life is going,” he said. “I mean, we’re perfect strangers now. It’s been a long time with Mady and Cara — about 13 years I’ve been estranged from them. I have no idea why.”
When asked if he had a message for the children he doesn’t speak to, Jon said, “I’ve tried to reach out to you publicly. In the early days, I tried to reach out to you privately. I hope you understand that I still love you.” He also encouraged them to read Collin’s book, adding that it will “explain a lot.”
