October 14, 2026, 5:56 p.m. ET
While “Jon & Kate Plus 8” star Collin Gosselin spent more than 20 months in a behavioral institution, he celebrated birthdays and holidays alone, while watching dozens of children come and go. Entering eighth grade, he faced a sociocultural dilemma: He hadn’t heard of AirPods and didn’t know what a Snapchat streak was. “I was a clumsy kid,” Gosselin told USA TODAY. “I didn’t know anything. That’s where I really had to catch up.”
Before Collin Gosselin entered the Fairmount Behavioral Health System, audiences knew him as one of eight rowdy siblings on “Jon & Kate Plus 8.” Cameras caught her early teens on the popular TLC show, and her parents, Jon and Kate, later rehashed their family drama on social media and in the tabloids. In Gosselin’s memoir, “In the Shadow of Eight: Surviving the Reality of My Childhood,” he tells his story on his own terms. Gosselin, a participant on Fox’s “Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test,” gives a raw, unfiltered perspective, alleging he faced isolation from his siblings, physical abuse and verbal attacks that left emotional scars. The reality TV star, now separated from her mother, details her attempted runaway, her basement bedroom locked from the outside and her treatment in a behavioral institution.
“I knew there was something wrong in my life that needed to be talked about,” he told USA TODAY. “As an adult, it just clicked and it was finally time to do what little Collin always wanted to do.”
Here are some of the biggest revelations from the reality TV star’s memoir, based on a pre-released copy reviewed by USA TODAY, from the time staffers at the behavioral facility sedated him to his abrupt departure from a Marine training program.
Fairmount Behavioral Health System did not respond to calls and requests for comment. Representatives for Kate Gosselin did not respond to requests for comment.
Collin Gosselin describes severe and pulling discipline
Collin Gosselin alleges that his mother, Kate Gosselin, took a different approach to disciplining him and his seven siblings. Collin, in a chapter titled “What Happened to Your Ear?” “, remembers the times when she would grab his ear and drag him across the room. He accuses Kate of spanking him and hitting him hard enough that the side of his face was bruised. He says he learned to distance himself from her in order to anticipate the next move.
“I don’t think putting your hands on your child on a daily basis is what I would consider discipline,” Collin says. “It doesn’t do anything to a child’s brain except damage it.”
While sitting in an elementary school classroom, a teacher noticed his bruised ear and accompanied him to the school counselor where he described what had happened to him. When a representative from Children and Youth Services later visited their home, Collin recalled shrinking and denying any negative experiences at home, writing “If I say yes, I’m dead.”
Collin Gosselin says his mother tied him up in the basement bedroom
His mother then hired a contractor to put up a wall in the basement, Collin claims in the book, creating a room with an air mattress. He once talked about the basement bedroom and wrote that most days he spent 70% of his time there. It locked from the outside, he claims, requiring him to ask permission to leave the room or use the bathroom. His mother also installed two cameras inside the room, which she used to monitor him when she left the house, he said.
The book offers new information about an escape attempt at age 11, where he pushed his double mattress against the wall, crawled through a window and started running. After realizing he had “nowhere to go,” he turned around. He said returning to a place where you were “not safe” was one of the “hardest things to do”. After returning, he offers vivid details of the moment Kate dragged him by the ear into the room, wrapped restraints around his arms and ankles, something he had previously told the US Sun, turned off the lights and walked out. “You’re a burden, Collin!” he writes that his mother told him. “You are a burden to this family!”
Collin Gosselin says he felt “imprisoned” in a behavioral institution
Following the incident, Collin writes that he was admitted to the Fairmount Behavioral Health System just before his 12th birthday in May 2016. Before his mother’s one-time visit, he enthusiastically made origami gifts for each of his siblings. During the visit, she detailed her siblings’ birthday cakes, talked about later holiday celebrations, adding that he wasn’t coming home and that “You broke our family,” he alleges in the book.
“When I think back, I was imprisoned as a kid and I would see all these kids coming and going and I would try to make friends with them and then they would leave,” he says.
He also claims Fairmount staff behaved aggressively. After Collin punched a doctor’s office, demanding to know why he was there, he alleges that staff members restrained him and administered sedatives. In an attempt to cope, he then scribbled a letter in pencil to his father, asking another child to deliver it to him. After spending more than 20 months at the institution, he writes that he was transferred to a residential program, came into contact with his father and then began living with him in 2018.
Collin Gosselin receives the results of his medical evaluation
In the summer of 2023, he began a month-long training program in the Marine Corps. During his training, his mother made an Instagram post in July 2023 in which she claimed that he had “multiple psychiatric diagnoses” and, for the safety of his family, she had placed him in an institution. She wrote that she was also influenced by doctors following a seizure he had involving “his use of a weapon.” Following his explosive post, Collin alleges that a Navy doctor fired him from the program after learning of his bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. He denied these claims and clarified that he did not report any psychological problems, according to an October 2023 medical evaluation.
“What really lit that flame was everything that happened with the Marines,” he says of writing his memoir. “That was the final straw with a dream that my mother took away from me. I was like, ‘This is it. It’s time to tell my story.”
Gosselin, a junior at Penn State, told USA TODAY that after he graduates, he plans to re-enroll.
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