Trigger Warning: This story contains mention of physical and emotional abuse.
Collin Gosselin is discussing the “physical and emotional abuse” he says his mom Kate Gosselin subjected him to, and opening up for the first time about Kate’s one (and only) visit to the mental hospital she placed him in when he was 12 years old.
Kate recently resurfaced on TikTok, where she has been posting videos and answering fan questions. She even recently answered a question about her decision to leave Collin— who is one of her sextuplets— in a mental health facility for nearly two years beginning in 2016. In her response on TikTok, Kate stated that she “had no other choice” but to send Collin away.
As The Ashley has previously reported, Collin has said that Kate abandoned him in the facility and did not contact him while he was there, except for one visit. While Kate has disputed that she only visited once (writing online last year that she visited him “every time it was approved by his treating physicians”), Collin opened up in the comment section of his own recent TikTok post about what happened during Kate’s only visit to see him while he was locked in the facility.
After someone commented that he’ll “understand” the choices Kate made if he ever becomes a parent himself, Collin disagreed.
“Being sent away because I didn’t fit into an equation. Having one visit from her after being completely cut off with no contact at 12 years old, in which the whole visit was her telling me how I deserved the situation I was in because I ‘destroyed our family…'” he wrote.
View this post on Instagram
Last year, Collin spoke out about physical abuse he allegedly suffered at Kate’s hand, stating that when he was around eight years old, Kate would zip-tie his hands and feet and lock him in a special room in the basement.
“She had a room put up with cameras in it, a tiny window in the corner and it was bolt-locked from the outside,” Collin said during a 2024 interview. “So this, it was like a containment room, literally, and it had a mattress on the floor and that’s how I lived. And I was there … most of the day because I didn’t go to school after a certain point. So, most of the day I was in that room, and I was away from my siblings and I never went outside. I never played with them. I was kept there.”
Collin also stated that he was sent away because people started noticing the alleged abuse.
“It got to the point where word was getting out and child services were being called,” Collin said. “In her desperate attempt to protect herself, she placed me in this institution with no notice. I was one day just up and gone.”
View this post on Instagram
This week on TikTok, Collin discussed that alleged abuse, and compared being on Kate Plus 8 to being a circus animal.
“The physical and emotional abuse I was put through, while having to be an animal in her circus on TV. Being locked up, isolated, zip-tied. Yeah I’m sorry, but I will never ‘understand’ that. I will break the cycle that she couldn’t,” he wrote.
Collin also seemed to dispute Kate’s past claims that his behavior as a child put other family members in danger.
“I’ve only ever had love and respect for my family, even though I could see through all the BS of the very staged life we lived,” Collin wrote in response to another comment left on his TikTok post. “To this day I still find it hard to think about my siblings because it hurts so much that we were forced apart.”
As The Ashley previously reported, Collin posted an emotional video to TikTok over the weekend, writing how much he misses his siblings. (Currently, Collin only has a relationship with his sister Hannah and is not in communication with his other six siblings.) He attributed his lack of relationship with his brothers and sisters to his mother pitting the kids against each other.
In the post’s comment section, Collin wrote about his plans to teach his future children to treasure their brothers and sisters.
“I can’t wait to have kids and teach them the importance of siblings,” he wrote. “I tell all my friends who have siblings to always value their siblings and hold each other close.”
He did state, though, that he still maintains a great relationship with Hannah.
View this post on Instagram
“I just saw her today!” Collin wrote. “She was worried her car wouldn’t pass inspection so I was looking at it for her. She’s so funny and I love her sm. It makes my day whenever I see her, but we’re both so busy with work, school etc.”
Kate recently wrote on TikTok that she “supports” her other six kids in their decision to not have a relationship with Collin or their father Jon Gosselin.
“They make their own decisions on that and I support them,” she wrote.
RELATED STORY: Collin Gosselin Makes Emotional TikTok Video About Estranged Siblings; Says They Were “Pitted Against Each Other”
(Photos: TLC; Instagram)
34 Responses
In home heath pediatric nurse.
This is a nasty woman. I mean come on, that poor child has been abused by his own mother and she is not in jail? What is wrong with the system? She calls herself a nurse? Give me a break!! 🤦♀️ The other children should have a relationship with all their siblings and not buy into the lies and manipulation from their nasty mother.
How has this vile woman never been charged with child abuse???
Kate is a monster and I hope what she did is still able to be prosecuted where it happened. C’mon Pennsylvania!!!
She also needs to lose her RN license for Colin’s horrific abuse.
Instead of Karen, we should call the women trying to control/police everyone else a Kate.
She’s lucky she wasn’t the example, it would fit so well. Her old haircut and all.
She is SUCH a nasty woman.
Her hairstyle is literally the profile for Karen.
LMFAO!!!!!!
I have always hated Kate, the screaming she did all the time, the rudeness of everything she said and did. The way she treated John and the children, the other kids have been brainwashed by her to not want to see Colin. How can a mother only go once to see her child and not tell the father where he was? And why a mental hospital? She should be locked up. It’s so sad when kids end up with parents that have their own mental problems. Did these other kids see her zip tie him and put him this room? Sick sick sick!
Another Ruby Frank.
Imagine… Supporting your children in NOT having a relationship with their own sibling… After she completely isolated Collin from the rest of his siblings herself and created the rift between them all. SMH Kate is disgusting. Always has been. I feel SO badly for Collin- truly. I think he was just a normal child that was singled out (which I cannot imagine singling out one of my sons to be treated any differently than the others), abused and isolated as a friggin’ CHILD. I can’ imagine also, not wanting to repair a relationship with my child when I was the reason they came off as different. She’s seriously evil.
This is my mom. She is a narcissist and has forbidden my 7 other siblings from speaking to me since I was there and helped my 8th sibling when she was abusing him. And they obey her. It’s disgusting! She is still abusing them mentally and emotionally!
Book recommendation for you…The Borderline Mother by Christine Lawson. If you are looking for validation, you will find it even if she does actually have Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
Borderlines are commonly misdiagnosed as having NPD or Bipolar. The actions look very similar, but the drivers for that behavior are different. Amber de Couch & Farrah = Borderline. Kate & the Kodster = NPD
The way he was treated at home and in treatment is inhumane. I’ve heard more horror stories about how some medics feel it’s best to treat adults and childten with mental health issues. Break them down and built them up by rewarding perfect behaviour with “rewards”, like being allowed to wear clothes, a few inches of freedom, get better food, etc. What he describes happenend not just to him and must be stopped.
She’s vile for choosing these harsh methods. When she could not control him, needed to cuff him and keep him in a safe room that much, it should have been clear to her she couldn’t care for him herself.
I do not believe there was and is nothing going on with Colin’s mental health.
His siblings are still scared of him, he made threats since moving in with Jon and he also claimed Jon abused him too and tried to press charges.
Jon and his sister said there was nothing wrong and that Jon needed to constrain him sometimes, apparently, in a chokehold? They found that normal and okay.
Jon uses wrong and harsh methods to contain him too. Who the hell advises these parents?
Colin and those around him, might need to see a better psychiatrist.
The only way his siblings will start to feel emotionally and physically safe around him again, is when he can be that.
The siblings should be helped repairing the relationship and deal with Colin’s mental illness when he is in a better spot.
I remember right after Jon and Kate split, Jon leaked one of Kate’s old journals to someone and in it she wrote about not being able to control her temper when dealing with Colin specifically and hitting him too hard out of anger because he was “doing things just to irritate her.” He was 2 years old at the time the entries were written. She singled that boy out and hated him from the beginning.
I read those entries in the book Kate Gosselin: How She Fooled the World. I should point out, Kate DIDN’T win her lawsuit against that author. She also never sued for defamation. She only sued because he got his hands on her journals and contracts. Let that sink in people. It means the actual information is CORRECT and she couldn’t sue him for defamation. She abused those children.
In one of the entries where she’s confessing to snapping and hitting Collin really hard because she was angry that he knocked stuff on the ground like toddlers do, she follows it up by saying she doesn’t like that 2yo Collin doesn’t know how to handle his frustration and anger the right way. She really expected her 2yo to be the one in the relationship that had some self-control because she had none herself as an adult.
That poor little boy.
Why wouldn’t children services take him from her if they were notified? And why isnt she charged with child neglect since it came out?
Because not all kids are rescued by child services, a lot of it probably had to do with her being a public personality. If child services did anything there would have been media to deal with and insane backlash. And people can’t be arrested without proof. At this point it’s he said she said.
Because CPS sucks
CPS doesn’t just suck… they literally play a role in kids dying regularly and being put in even more abusive situations than a child was already in. They are a crock that abuse their power and completely need to be reorganized and reformed.
Kate is a monster and I hope what she did is still able to be prosecuted where it happened. C’mon Pennsylvania!!!
She also needs to lose her RN license for Colin’s horrific abuse.
For the same reason Jenelle Evans still has her kids. CPS, 9 times our of 10, protect the abuser, not the child. I literally just read an article about a child being killed a week after CPS returned her to her parents. And I see articles like that A LOT.
CPS in PA used to (idk if they still do), call before they would come to the home of my nephew’s mom’s house when people would make CPS complaints…
Because it takes a heck of a lot more than that to get kids taken away. It practically takes a M*rder to get kids removed from a home. The whole system is broken.
I have always hated Kate. How could any mother lock their child away like they were nothing but a nuisance? And zip tying your child and throwing them in a makeshift kiddie jail? She should have been arrested.
She was abusive on the show. I can only imagine how she was when camera’s weren’t rolling.
I remember one instance where all of the kids went to her brother’s to visit. Collin got chewed gum on the bottom of his sock. (like normal kids do) She put him in time out and just started screaming and screeching like a crazy woman. I remember watching how sad Collin was in his eyes. She then can be heard calling her brother screaming that they never should have given Collin gum and how she now had to try and get the gum out of his sock. It was a cheap Walmart sock. Throw it away and move on. Don’t make your kid feel like a murderer over a freaking sock.
Her brother and his wife did an interview discussing how abusive Kate was to all of her kids. But particularly to Collin. Shortly after John left. He lived there. He knew how abusive she was yet he took off and left the kids in her custody. I just don’t get it. Kate is evil.
Do you know if the interview is still available to watch anywhere?
I don’t know if I’m allowed to put a link on here or not but this is it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_5Dk3EZeZ8
If the link isn’t allowed the look up Gosselin archives on YouTube. The interview is called “Aunt Jody and Uncle Kev speaks out”.
I tried to put a link on but I don’t think that’s allowed. If you go to the YouTube channel “gosselinarchives” the video is still there under “Aunt Jodi & Uncle Kevin speak out for the Gosselin kids”.
Reminds me of that YouTube Mom that was recently found to be abusing her kids while posting all of these videos about family life… Kate just focused on one child, unfortunately….I’ve never liked her and I’m old enough to remember the original show when they first started and she was always a b*tch
YES! Ruby Franke!
Her daughter Shari published a memoir if anyone is interested or wants to read it. It’s very highly reviewed on goodreads. The title is The House of My Mother.
The Hulu documentary is also pretty well done.
I remember that interview the brother and his wife did. They also filed some sort of formal report or complaint regarding a number of issues, including that the children were being filmed undressed on the toilet, during potty training, and were left alone during these vulnerable moments with the film crew.
I remember that!! “WHO GAVE THE CHILDREN GUM?!!!!”