Jon Gosselin has issued an emotional plea to the six children he no longer speaks to, telling them he still loves them and asking them to read their brother Collin’s explosive new memoir before judging what happened inside their family.
“I hope you understand that I still love you,” the 49-year-old former reality star said during a new interview.
Highlights
- Jon Gosselin said he still loves the six children he is estranged from.
- He urged them to read Collin Gosselin’s memoir, which contains serious allegations about life inside the family home.
- Collin said he and his siblings were deliberately pitted against one another as children.
“I hope one day you reach out to me.”
Jon, who shares eight children with ex-wife Kate Gosselin, currently has relationships only with son Collin and daughter Hannah, both 22.
He remains estranged from twins Mady and Cara, 26, as well as four of the sextuplets, Aaden, Leah, Joel and Alexis, all 22.
Jon Gosselin said he and six of his children have become “perfect strangers”
The family became famous through TLC’s Jon & Kate Plus 8, which followed Jon, Kate and their eight children as they navigated everyday life with twins and sextuplets.
But years after the show ended, the family remains deeply divided.
Jon said he has not spoken to Mady or Cara in approximately 13 years.
“I have no idea why,” he said.
As for Aaden, Leah, Joel and Alexis, Jon said he has not seen them “since before COVID, maybe.”
He insisted he had tried to contact them.
“I haven’t talked to them,” he said. “It’s not about the book stuff. I just want to know how their life is going. I mean, we’re perfect strangers now.”
Jon urged his children not to simply accept one version of the family’s history.
“Form your own opinions and try to take in as much information before you talk ill will or anything about anyone in this family,” he said.
That appeal comes as Collin has made some of his most disturbing accusations yet about their childhood.
Collin’s memoir describes a childhood he called “dark” and “violent”
Collin released his memoir, In the Shadow of Eight: Surviving the Reality of My Childhood, earlier this month.
The 22-year-old previously said the book was not intended as entertainment.
“This is not a story for entertainment,” he wrote when announcing it. “It is a story to instill responsibility in everyone to advocate and speak up against ab*se, injustice and the exploitation of children.”
In the memoir, Collin described growing up on Jon & Kate Plus 8 and later Kate Plus 8 as exhausting.
He said there was little structure governing how frequently the children were filmed and claimed they appeared on camera “as much as the studio wanted” and “as much as [Kate] wanted.”
Collin said he eventually felt “trapped” by the “daily pressure to perform” and began resisting filming by refusing to smile on cue or play along.
He also recalled tension between his parents before their 2009 divorce.
One of his most vivid childhood memories, he wrote, was hearing Jon and Kate engaged in a “loud and explosive” fight that allegedly left the children “trembling.”
Collin accused Kate of singling him out for increasingly harsh treatment
Some of the most serious allegations in the memoir concern Collin’s relationship with his mother.
He claimed Kate regularly called him “untrustworthy,” a “bad kid” and “nothing like his siblings.”
According to Collin, her treatment became more intense once he began resisting filming.
He also claimed he was the only child homeschooled and was prevented from visiting Jon, alleging he was told, “Your dad doesn’t want to see you.”
Collin went on to accuse Kate of physical torment.
He described allegedly being slapped “across the cheek,” hit on the head, pulled by the ear and frequently spanked.
In one incident, he claimed Kate grabbed him by the ear after he accidentally damaged a cabinet and then hit him with a red plastic serving spoon.
Another allegation involved an attempt to escape from a basement where he says he had been confined.
Collin claimed he climbed through a window but later returned home voluntarily.
He alleged Kate then restrained his hands and feet with zip ties, pushed him down and called him a “burden,” along with other names.
Kate has denied Collin’s allegations and previously described them as “complete fabrications.”
He claims he spent years isolated from his siblings in a basement
Collin also alleged that he spent much of two years confined to a basement room he described as a “holding cell.”
He characterized the space as “tiny, unfurnished” and “always cold,” with books but no toys.
He further claimed a camera monitored him while he could hear his brothers and sisters living normally upstairs.
According to Collin, he was sometimes brought upstairs only after the others had eaten dinner.
He said the experience left him feeling like a “ghost” inside his own home.
Hannah has previously supported at least part of that account.
In the 2023 documentary Dark Side of the 2000s, she said Collin had been separated from the rest of the family.
“He would not get to come and play outside with us,” she said. “He would eat dinner at different times than us.”
Collin said social services investigated the family more than once
Collin wrote that Children & Youth Services became involved multiple times during his childhood.
He claimed the first visit came after a teacher noticed pain in his ear.
But Collin said he feared there would be consequences if he told investigators what was happening at home.
He also alleged that Kate watched from a doorway while he spoke with an investigator.
Collin claimed he gave authorities a positive account of home life and was removed from school shortly afterward.
Kate herself acknowledged in 2016 that authorities had investigated the family before.
“I’m in the public eye,” she told ABC at the time. “I have been investigated many times … It’s always unfounded, obviously.”
He also described being placed on multiple psychiatric medications at 11
One of the memoir’s more disturbing sections concerns Collin’s treatment at age 11.
He listed six medications he said he was prescribed during a period in 2016, including antipsychotics, mood stabilizers and anti-anxiety medication.
Collin wrote that taking all six pills at once was “hard to swallow” and claimed Kate sometimes pinched his nose and rubbed his neck to make him swallow them.
Kate has previously said Collin received “multiple psychiatric diagnoses over the years.”
In a 2023 statement, she claimed he had a history of “attacks/outbursts,” including one involving a weapon, and described him as “unpredictable and violent.”
She said his placement in treatment followed years of outpatient care that had proved insufficient.
Collin claims Kate visited him once during his nearly two-year stay at a behavioral facility
In 2016, Collin was sent to Fairmont Behavioral Health Institute in Philadelphia.
He said he was never told how long he would remain there and recalled “sobbing to the staff” asking when he could go home.
“Wake up. Pills. Meals. Groups. Lights out,” was how he described his daily routine.
Collin claimed he spoke to his siblings only once and alleged that calls stopped after he asked Mady when he would return home.
He also alleged Kate visited him only once during his nearly two-year stay.
During that visit, he claims she told him his siblings were “doing so much better without [him] at home.”
“Collin. You are here because of you,” she allegedly told him. “You broke our family.”
Jon later obtained custody of Collin and helped arrange his release in late 2018.
Collin admitted that rebuilding their relationship was difficult because after “years of destruction,” the two barely knew one another.
He has since described their bond much differently.
“I am so grateful for the bond we share and how we have continued to grow closer and make great memories!” he wrote in a Father’s Day tribute.
Both Jon and Collin are now asking the estranged siblings to hear them out
Collin has not spoken to six of his seven siblings in roughly a decade, but he has repeatedly said his feelings toward them have not changed.
“I sincerely love all my siblings,” he wrote in the memoir. “To Maddy, Cara, Alexis, Aaden, Leah, and Joel: No matter what’s happened or what was said, no matter how things look from the outside — I love you.”
“I always have and always will.”
Speaking separately to Page Six, Collin said he wanted them to understand that “what was done to us as children is not normal.”
“It’s horrible how much triangulation occurred in our home and that we were pitted against each other,” he said.
“I mean, how do you do that to siblings that were all born together on the same day? It’s horrible.”
"Kate needs to be held accountable," a reader wrote
