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Collin Gosselin, son of Jon and Kate Gosselin of Jon and Kate plus eightpublishes a new memoir about his abusive childhood with his mother, Kate. Collin is one of eight siblings, a sextuplet, and his childhood was documented on a TLC reality show about a family trying to raise eight young children. His parents divorced in 2009 and the series was retitled Kate Plus Eightfocusing on Kate as a single mother.
In his memoirs In the shadow of eightCollin says his mother was abusive and cruel when the cameras weren’t filming. “Simply put, my entire life that I lived was a lie,” Gosselin said. Hello America. “Everything you see on TV is a lie.” He claimed he was kicked out of school in fourth grade after a teacher noticed a swollen ear, and he told a guidance counselor that Kate “dragged” him across a room by his earlobe. “I talked to my guidance counselor about it and I talked to them about it,” he explained in the GMA interview. “And my mother wasn’t very happy that I talked about it.” He was too scared to tell CPS and tried to run away; his mother allegedly tied his hands and legs together.
Before his 12th birthday, he was placed in an institution far from his family. “I was told, ‘It’s for your own good,’” he said. “I threatened my mother’s income, I threatened her image, and people will do anything to protect their reputation, especially my mother,” he said. Collin was eventually reunited with his father and sister Hannah, who no longer lived with their mother. He hopes to find his other brothers and sisters. “I would love to. I will never know what it means to have a normal childhood and to have a childhood with my siblings,” he concluded. “We will never get this back.”
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