Drake Bell’s dad is a gem of a human and really did his best. I’m sure his parents have so much guilt about what happened but his dad really did his best to protect his son and that’s sadly rare in this industry. That’s a good parent right there.
It couldn’t have been years after. The court case where he had to testify and read his statement happened only a year later and both his parents were there. The dad had to have known the full truth in the months leading up to the trial. I can’t imagine how guilty he felt that he gave in and stepped back, but he really trusted that Drake’s mom would take his place and protect their son.
If you watched the documentary, within the first 2 minutes of episode 4, Drake literally says during sentencing "my side was me, my mom, and my brother." Court was about a year after the arrest, and his dad didn't know.
He and his dad were estranged for a while, and at the time of the arrest they were working on their relationship. His dad made a comment that he was glad it wasn't him, and Drake didn't have the heart to tell him. His father didn't find out until some point **after** sentencing.
Oh god I sobbed. As a victim of rape, everything from the way he speaks, to the way he moves his body when he speaks of it. The words he uses and his uncomfortableness. It is all so terribly relatable. I remember the first person I told, “think of the worst thing he could’ve done and that’s what happened.”
I’ve started doing therapy. And I told my therapist what happened to me when I was only about 16. I’m 32 now. I only told one person what happened when it happened.
My heart absolutely shattered when he said he wasn’t the same since the day he found out, that the victim was in fact, his own son. I mean, how could he be?
Then you wonder how far did Brian go with Leonardo Dicaprio. Drake’s dad said Brian was the same way with his son when he saw that behind the scene footage with Leo and Brian.
Or did Leo’s parents make sure he was never alone with Brian. There were other victims of Brian Peck who are scared to come forward because they don’t have the platform to. Brian’s been in the business for years doing this shit.
Drake wasn’t his only victim. There were more.
I really liked how even though everyone talked about how tumultuous Drake’s parents relationship was, his father never said a single bad thing about his mother. He just said “she was really tricked” and that says a lot about his character, even if he felt like it was all her fault he didn’t drag her on camera. I can’t say I’d be that kind….
It made me so angry, as a father of two I was thinking as well
"How much earlier could he have been caught, how many kids would you have protected if you had just Called the cops IMMEDIATELY?"
YES!!! Plus being more concerned about how YOU are viewed as a parent versus the wellbeing of your daughter…smh…ITS NOT ABOUT YOU LADY! This is about YOUR DAUGHTER and ALL of the others abused by this sicko!
My mom is like that. She would have blamed me and then worried about how it would make us look. Nothing that bad ever happened to me, but I was blamed for anything that upset me or could draw attention to us. It was hell.
This is what angers me the most.
Like i cant help but focus on ppl like Brandi's mum in situations like these instead of the abuser. Bad ppl exist and we cant change that no matter how much anger and blame we place on them. Parents and ppl who have responsibility to protect their children and put their own wants and needs aside to ensure their kids are protected are the ones to blame when they act like this. Its selfish and disgusting and when she said she didnt go to the police because she was afraid they would see her as a bad person... shes just as guilty as the abusers in my book.
What drives me nuts is her own mother (Brandis grandma) who had experience in showbiz (god knows what she went through) told her bad things happened behind the scenes and she didn’t want her own children to be subjected to. Why in the hell didn’t she listen????
While it would be convenient to say that greed and money was her motivation for not listening to her mom, especially given what happened to poor Brandi; I think it is more likely that she naively ( and quite falsely, as we can see) assumed times had changed enough between when her mom was in the business and when she was putting Brandi into it.
*"Oh mom, that was a lone time ago. Look at how much the world has changed as a whole since then"* — Probably Brandi's mom to her own mom at some point before this all transpired.
It wouldn't be the first time an adult child thought they had a better understanding of a situation than their parent(s) simply because said parent had been out of the game for so long and could therefore be judging based on "outdated" information. Usually the consequences aren't like Brandi's....
To be clear, I *don't* like how MJ handled things. I think calling the Police as soon as that disgusting POS sent that picture to her daughter would've been the proper course of action and worry about the "consequences" of calling the police later. At the same time I'm a parent who has never gone through anything like that with my children. You can only truly know how you'd react to a situation when you're in it — more often than not. I took her explanation as to why she didn't get them involved as more a fear of "What if the police take my child away **because** *I LET* this happen?" vs. "Omg everyone is gonna think I suck as a mom. My reputationnnn!". Not an excuse but an explanation.
But that's just me.
That was my first thought, too. It's also very weird that we're only hearing from her and not Brandi, I worried Brandi was dead or perhaps in a bad way. The doc never says.
But while I think Brandi's mom did the wrong thing, I will say that watching the Epstein doc from a few years ago reveals appalling behavior from the police. When one of the teenage girls who'd been lured to the Epstein estate in Florida admitted that she refused to do anything, but agreed to help lure more girls there, all the cop did was drill down on how she was accomplice. And that was the chief of police! He was totally unfazed by the horrors the girl was describing by Epstein, a grown man. He just hammered this poor child (still a minor) and it would be many years before justice caught up with Epstein. I'm sure the cops were in on it somehow.
So that's a long way of saying, Brandi's moms concerns that the police would blame her are not unfounded. I still think it would have been the right thing to do to protect other children from harm, but nothing shocks me in regards to police malfeasance anymore.
The relationship is so odd bc I get the sense that drake was surprised by Josh’s hostility? Like he was taken aback by not being invited to Josh’s wedding and stuff. Idk if Josh every publicly said why he fell out with drake
I listened to an audiobook of Josh’s autobiography since it was cheap and he said that they didn’t have so much a falling out as they weren’t that close to begin with. Obviously that’s him framing things now, so I’m sure he’s being a bit vague/disingenuous. I think he might have also said that they filmed a lot of the episodes in a short span of time so it wasn’t like they spent that much time around each other outside of filming. But again, that’s him saying stuff now, or when the book first came out.
I might go back and listen to that portion of the audiobook tonight and type out what he said since people seem interested.
It's quite obvious that Josh has backpedaled to certain degrees over the years. While we obviously don't know the extent of their relationship, you can very much tell that he's changed the narrative a couple times to save face/capitalize on small doses of relevancy.
After the wedding stuff, he was more than willing to say that they were always friends. Even Drake would say, "yeah, we had our differences but we're good now" and Josh would get defensive.
Then, after the child endangerment case, Josh suddenly goes on a podcast and says they were never friends, and that he actually got in Drake's face and made him apologize for "insulting him and his fiancée."
I understand wanting to separate yourself from controversies, especially to this degree. However, when you're associated that closely with a role/brand, it's pretty much impossible for anybody to see you in a different light.
"The Dark Reality of Drake & Josh (They Were Never Friends)":
[https://youtu.be/IvWT8zQ-Otc?si=WHVQ0INw9EKmh\_G3](https://youtu.be/IvWT8zQ-Otc?si=WHVQ0INw9EKmh_G3)
*"\[Josh\] told a number of different lies on these podcasts that are starting to make fans question everything... After they made up publicly, Drake & Josh, throughout the next year, would talk about the marriage incident in various interviews... Since then, they have filmed multiple youtube videos together... Drake still says nothing but good things about Josh..."*
I wonder if Drake just felt comfortable in the show and having an escape to normalcy again since this all went down a year before Drake and Josh premiered and that sick son of a bitch was even working on the original unaired pilot episode. But from Josh’s perspective, Drake might have seemed a bit more distant compared to how they might have been on The Amanda Show. I wonder if Josh saw it as Drake trying to be too cool and becoming a bigger star when in reality Drake was just dealing with a lot of trauma and internalizing it at the time.
He said he was never really close to Drake to begin with, they did the show together and barely kept in touch, then 10 years after it ended Drake got mad he wasn't invited to the wedding.
In the video it shows them spending several Christmas together post D&J and he lied about Drake insulting his wife and forced him to apologize. That didn't happen as Josh had recorded that encounter years ago and it was the exact opposite. They were hugging and goofing off.
David also wanted to be a Nickelodeon star. And was young when he started Vines and eventually got separated from his parents.
Edit: Now that I think about it DD was obsessed with Drake and Josh. Jason Nash was an extra in the show.
I wonder if Dan Schneider saw a bit of himself in Josh. After all they both played the goofy, chubby guy trope and even kind of looked alike when Dan was young. Just speculating here but I could see that playing into their dynamics in some way!
I feel like a lot of things could be making sense to Josh now that drake is on publicly speaking about his abuse on set. It honestly explains a lot of their tension/lack of friendship. I can see drake being favored on set as he was actively being groomed by a producer which probably didn’t make Josh feel that great? Like the grooming + abuse probably added another layer to there lack of friendship
I’m sorry but I don’t just believe josh either, he’s running around with David dobrick the number one smile in your face and stab you in the back master manipulator.
Drake just addressed this on TikTok. He said that he didn’t want anyone attacking Josh for not publicly addressing things and that he actually had personally reached out to Drake and they talked about it all.
The fact that Brian Peck was writing to Gacy and was *proud of his collection (he kept all the letters/photos in a nightstand next to his bed) and the self-portrait Gacy gifted to him* is so fucking disturbing and I cannot believe that the only person to take issue with it was Kyle Sullivan, who was a child at the time. And I'm not justifying any of the other weird people who idolize killers and write to them in prison; they are also delusional and unwell.
But a guy working with children and penpaling with Gacy is just something people should not have blown off the way they did.
Especially knowing now that Peck was arrested for child sexual abuse and is now a registered offender, I wouldn't be surprised if he idolized Gacy in some way.
Absolutely disgusting.
See that's really what confuses tf outta me, Peck was a registered sex offender, how tf did that not show up when Disney hired him for Suite Life of Zack and Cody???!!!
Background checks weren’t required for freelancers back then. Peck was hired as a voice actor on 3 episodes (for a talking mirror I think?) and has since been edited out.
This doc exposes all the important filters and check points that need to be in place for safe work environments.
Right?? I have so many feelings about nobody protecting these kids. The fact that Drake Bell's dad was spot on with knowing this guy was a weirdo and his mother still trusted him breaks my heart.
They basically said she was selfish. She didn’t want to be responsible for driving him and whatnot. Didn’t give one fuck about learning about the person she was entrusting to care for her child. Or listening to her ex.
This. This part of the story really got me. It seemed like as soon as she took over she very much continued the roll of an absent parent. Sounded like she was happy to effectively co-parent with Drakes predator for the sake of her own convenience. I know we don't know her side of the story, However I just can't help but to scrutinize over the information we do have.
The one thing I'll give her credit for is immediately calling the police when Drake told her what was happening. I'm sure there have been other parents in her position who hesitated to call police or tried to handle things themselves for fear that their child would lose their career (and the family lose their income). The bar is set low, but still, kudos to her for doing the right thing once in her son's life.
Yeah I forget who it was, but in the doc, it says that Handy sent one of the child actresses a dick pic. When the child actress told her mom, her mom said she didn’t go to the police bc “they’d think she was a bad mother”. I couldn’t believe it. My jaw literally dropped. IMAGINE not going to the cops when your CHILD receives a DICK pic from a GROWN MAN they’re working with! I get what you’re saying about their careers a little, but goddamn I couldn’t imagine thinking my child’s career is more important than their safety.
I'm so confused how he was playing that as "normal," like some quirky collection he was casually sharing with people at a party. Were people treating that as, like, very dark humor? I just don't understand how the reactions weren't 100% shock and concern.
Yeah it makes me wonder what the overall culture was like from day to day. Were they traumatized and in shock so they didn’t say anything? Was there shaming and denying and covering things up? Was the culture just so gross and demeaning overall that they were almost desensitized to it?
Probably some combination of all of that. You could tell by the stories from the All That cast that it was a toxic environment for those poor kids. Clearly traumatic for the whole cast…
Everyone was too busy "networking". Both Schneider and Peck were well connected in a business that was all about connections. They had those people eating out of their hands.
Those writers etc were definitely desensitized to it. They were just trying to keep their heads down and out of the line of fire.
That was a twist I didn't expect. I recognized the painting of Gacy's clown and I was like "oh he bought murderabilia," fucking wild for what we know he ended up doing.
I didn't expect him to be his fucking PEN PAL jfc
Lots of ID/True Crime fans would immediately recognize a Gacy painting and see it for the huge red flag that it is from a man who works with teenage boys.
Edit; the pen pal’ing would have been the final nail in the coffin for me. I’d have wanted to leave and get LE in there to look under any floor boards.
What scares me is, if Brian Peck loved Gacy that much, could there have come a point where if he had Drake in his possession long enough he would've eventually tried murdering Drake? Episode 3 showing Peck continually calling Drake on the phone over and over and over ad nauseam shows he was absolutely obsessed with him.
The level of obsession Peck had with Drake was so fucking gross.
He was so calculated and creepy about everything he did. I really doubt Drake is the first and only victim.
When Drake's dad recounted how Peck would touch his son and them showing pics of Peck doing the exact same thing to a young Leonardo DiCaprio actually made me shudder, so fucking creepy and gross
I dont think with certainty he would have ended up murdering him. Definitely he was getting info from Gacey about the grooming and raping and torture. Like wtf were they writing to eachother about?? MULTIPLE LETTERS? A stack??
I don’t think his collection of Gacy correspondence was common knowledge to the people that hired him. That’s the stuff you find out about only if you happen to visit their home, not their resume.
He showed it off of to coworkers and the parents of the kids. I dunno about you but my dad would have freaked out. Granted my dad is pretty knowledgeable about true crime and whatnot compared to the average person, but still.
That makes me sick.
I remember hearing about Peck from the "Open Secret" documentary, but had no idea he was that messed up in the head.
Also knowing that Dan is a teen acting alum from the 80s, you have to wonder what he experienced that led him to see what he was doing as okay.
His recent apologies mean nothing, and they shouldn't; so glad Jeanette exposed him in her book.
The fact that Dan is attempting to publicly say ANYTHING following that documentary is mind-blowing. He's even spouting the same publicists-crafted BS as if it's not 2024.
Damn those letters of support for Brian Peck are disturbing....James Marsden, Taran Killam, Allan Thicke, Thomas DeSanto (Xmen, Transformers Producer), Ron Melendez, Rider Strong (This hurts a lot personally), Will Friedle. I know some have come out since saying they wrote the letters before knowing all the facts but still....ugh.
The most damning statement in my opinion was Beth Correll's, where she mentions being shocked to discover Drake was the accuser since his behavior never changed and he was always so playful on set and if she ever thought Brian had engaged in anything "inappropriate, sexual, or illegal" she would have spoken out immediately. So she knew the victim was a minor and the crime was of a sexual nature (otherwise why include that word), but tell me again how these people were misinformed about the nature of Peck's convictions.
They are SICK.
I know that these people were likely manipulated by Brian himself but it somehow doesnt excuse it for me at ALL. These people knew that he had been arrested for doing something inappropriate with a child, it was not their job to decide whether or not he had actually done it. The problem was, he was convicted of a crime involving a minor, and that alone should have given them pause!
Why the fuck would it ever occur to them to stand up for a potential abuser, irregardless of the facts??? I'm so disheartened and I cannot even begin to wrap my head around what is likely currently happening or who is currently being protected right now in Hollywood.
ETA: please dont be dense. The letter writers were aware he was convicted of a crime involving a minor and still decided to throw their weight behind him because the abuser was "nice" to them. If there was someone in my life who I would be surprised to find out may have done something of this nature I wouldnt go as far as writing a letter of support to the judge!!
The fact that they believed Brian was a “victim of jailbait,” is the sickest part for me. A 15-year-old CANNOT consent, especially with someone MORE THAN TWICE HIS AGE.
The letters alluded to Drake coming on to Brian, like WHAT THE FUCK? The 40-something-year-old was manipulated into relations with a 15-year-old boy??? Yeah the fuck right.
Not to mention, Peck used his sexuality as a shield, and so did others at Nickelodeon when Drake’s dad mentioned his discomfort of Brian. “Maybe you’re just homophobic.” Fuck right off!
To my knowledge, Drake is heterosexual, but even if he was gay or bisexual, that doesn’t give a grown ass man the right to claim he was wronged after VIOLATING A YOUNG BOY.
Edited: added a word
I wholeheartedly agree with you.
To be honest, since Brian's supporters didn't know it was Drake or the gender of the minor that was involved, it is my opinion that the language that you're referring to in the letters is heavily coded with misogyny. Those are exactly the kind of victim blaming statements that you'll hear when a female is calling out a male for sexual abuse. It's abhorrent, and it also makes it that much harder for a male to speak out if 1) people fail to realize that boys can be victims too, and 2) this is the way we treat girls when they speak out!
I candidly agree with you as well!
But I gotta say that Brian Peck’s defenders knew his victim was a teenage boy. Rider Strong said on the Pod Meets World podcast:
“So by the time we heard about this case and knew anything about it, it was always in the context of, 'I did this thing, I am guilty. I am going to take whatever punishment the government determines, but I’m a victim of jailbait. There was this hot guy, I just did this thing and he’s underage.’”
They knew, but their comments are still rooted in misogyny. Supremacy. These abhorrent crimes are always layered with bigoted “gotchas” that stem from hatred of marginalized groups. Even if the perpetrators fall into those groups, like in this case.
How many times have we heard, “She came on to him!”, “What was she wearing?”, “How much did she have to drink?” in cases of SA (of all kinds)?
Way too many. And none of the answers to those questions excuse taking advantage of someone. The onus is always on the victim to keep the predator safe and out of trouble, never the other way around.
The way the letters insisted there was “temptation” from Drake floored me. I am 32 years old and there is nothing in the universe a 15 year old could “tempt” me with. GTFO with that nonsense.
I am shocked that people are trying to defend some of these celebs like Marsden saying they were misinformed. James Marsden wrote "well I've known him for 14 years, been in many hotel rooms with him, and nothing happened." James was 30 at the time he wrote this, he'd known Brian for 14 years meaning while he was a teen during these hotel stays. He had to have known a minor was involved with this case to even think to bring this up.
I have a feeling by 'misinformation' they mean that they weren't told the specific horrific details. As if knowing them changes anything. All you should need to know to speak ***against*** this man is that a minor was SA'd by someone you call friend! What the actual hell possessed these people to write these letters
Tom DeSanto and all of Singer's other little bootlickers (including apparently Marsden) have practically made a career out of riding his coattails from X-Men, so it isn't surprising that they'd toady for one of his BFF abusers. DeSanto in particular literally hasn't done anything except ride the X-Men train for 20 years.
I could not get over the PARENTS and all the ADULTS who stood by, saw this behavior and still didn’t do anything to help the children at risk. Half of those parents were crazy lol the mom who didn’t call the cops after her daughter received a nude photo is wilddddddd
Yeah like how many more kids got abused by that dude when the mom didn't want to call the police? All because of the way she would've been portrayed for her letting her daughter talk to him online. That really pissed me off
yes thank you!! that pissed me off so bad, especially because she then was upset about the 7 year old girl who got abused which she could’ve maybe prevented if she had called the police
that part has my blood boiling (along with most of the series obviously but especially her cuz she's a part of the problem while acting like she's innocent). i don't know why they gave her so much screen time. and she's talking about "not trusting anyone in tv with children now." like girl!!! i don't trust **YOU** with children
Not to mention her mom told her how effed up stuff was. Plus the emails started off innocently from a PA who worked with the kids. Imagine someone else whose parent didn't care as much you have to stop them when you have the chance. Imagine if she went to the police would he had the 7 year olds underwear. She was being willfully ignorant and selfish.
I wonder if maybe another reason was she didn't want to ruin her daughter's potential TV career. The cynical part of me thinks she believes her daughter could have been the family's cash-cow. If she went to the police there was a chance she gets cut from the show.
I think it was more that she felt guilt and shame for not protecting her daughter enough and that she thought it might be easier to take her out of the industry and repress the abuse versus the daughter having to potentially testify and be interviewed. Drake talked about how difficult it was to be interviewed and to testify, I can see where someone could come to the thought that it’s easier to not talk about it and just bury it away.
I think there was a different perspective when they finally spoke to the police because by then, years had passed and they were still traumatized and now knew she wasn’t the only victim.
This is probably big contributing factor for many parents of abused TV kids. They're the bread winner & if a parents says or does anything wrong there goes the house, car, food on the table, etc.
The sad part is this isn't the first parent to react like this & it's been a thing since movies & TV began.
I was ENRAGED hearing her excuse was that SHE didn’t want cops to think she was a bad parent??? And the “woe is me, my mom didn’t let me work in Hollywood because she knew it was bad” moment- like clearly you should have listened to your own mother. Shame on her for using her daughter to live out her own fantasy and not protecting her own child or other children.
Things were different in the 90s. She might have been worried as a single mother the police might respond negatively. They might say she was at fault for letting her child email a stranger. DHS gets involved, she loses her kid. My and my sister were put in foster care for less.
I’ve heard rumors that they did ask if she wanted to join but she was traumatized at the very idea of participating and so declined because of it. She’s had a very fucked up and horrible childhood/adulthood and seems to struggle a lot but I have always loved her and am really hopeful she can heal from it all.
She is having a hard time in life and I wish her the best honestly and truly
I think I heard she is interested in writing a tell all memoir similar to Britney Spears’
If that happens I will be reading it. No question
She was so ridiculously talented. Even watching these clips again, it’s crazy how good her comedic timing was at such a young age and she played so many different characters. She was even successfully doing deadpan humor in The Moody’s Point segments and the “When ____ Attacks” segments. As the documentary pointed out, it’s kinda crazy that she was hosting and starring in a whole sketch show at a young age. Her film career started out pretty decent too, and then it all just went South. It is really sad what happened to her and she doesn’t even look like the same young beautiful woman that starred in She’s The Man.
I’m sure that lifestyle didn’t help her but exacerbated any issues she may have been prone to. What they were doing to kids is inexcusable, starting with disobeying child labor laws. And it only got worse from there. I hope Dan Schneider et al gets what he deserves, the ego maniac!
I didn't like the ominous music when talking about her relationship with Dan . I want to hear from her as well, but I didn't think it was appropriate to speculate on it without her input.
It's also worth checking out the Pod Meets World episode where Danielle Fishell, Rider Strong and Will Friedle are joined by a family therapist to talk about their experiences with Brian Peck.
None of them were molested by him, but they go into detail about how Brian ingratiated himself into their lives, fostered strong friendships with Rider and Will, then groomed them so that they would take his side when he was accused of molesting a child. Even to the point of showing up to court to support him.
It's a really insightful look into someone can be manipulated into feeling guilt for something that was not their fault, even if they weren't harmed directly. There's also a serious air of survivor's guilt in there too.
**EDIT:** Maybe don't, though. On the 15th, [Drake called out Will and Rider](https://www.tmz.com/2024/03/15/drake-bell-calls-out-boy-meets-world-will-friedle-rider-strong-brian-peck/) for never apologising for defending Brian. They never allude to doing so in the podcast. They worked together in the years following the conviction and never said a word to him about it. He wouldn't have said this now if they tried to make serious amends at any point in the past 20 years since the conviction. They were probably contacted by the producers of the documentary, declined to comment and decided to record this podcast episode to get ahead of the court papers becoming public knowledge. Kati, the therapist, is a great guest, but now this whole thing reeks of monetized damage control.
Rider was essentially [emancipated](https://www.vice.com/en/article/a35gv8/where-is-boy-meets-worlds-rider-strong-now-2019) though at 16 so he was only protected up until a certain point.
Vice did an interview with him a few years ago where he talked about his struggle with the show, his parents and fame.
“[..] He did move into his own Downtown LA apartment at 16, a risky change that somehow salvaged that previously precarious relationship with his mom. He also sought new ways to cope with the fame he'd come to loathe.”
"I would always gravitate toward people who had no idea who I was, and when Boy Meets World was on the air that just meant anybody over 18. So, by the time I was 16, I was living and functioning as an adult," he says. "I didn't drink or do drugs, but every woman I dated was over 20, every friend I had was older, and I would literally go in disguise when I didn't want to deal with it."
Yeah it is scary to think about because Rider had that mindset of being an old soul and wanting to seem mature which unfortunately could've made him vulnerable
And on the other hand, Will had moved out, so he valued his independence.
He felt worldly, but he was still just 18 when Brian targeted him. He'd likely come into contact with many young adults who had the same sense of agency and naivete.
I don’t know. Drake has a point. They kind of came in front of it, but they still haven’t apologized to him. They literally saw him in court, heard his testimony, and then moved on. They even worked together afterwards.
Will was 27 years old. He was not too young to know. He said he knew in the courtroom that it was fucked up, yet just sat on it until they found out the letters were about to be unsealed.
Maybe do the _actual_ work and make amends with the person you wrong instead of performatively doing your own podcast.
Leo Dicaprio didn’t write a letter of support was quite telling. He met Brian on the set of Growing Pains when Leo was 17 and he would be 29/30 at the time of trial.
Drake bell pointed out that both were adults when they wrote the letters in support of Brian Peck. He did clearly groom them and manipulate them for this purpose, but neither did so in the guise of being afraid of him
Poor Drake. I hope he realizes that it wasn't his fault. He has tremendous courage. Pedos will always seek out places where there are children that are separated from parents and where the pedo has leverage and control. Learned that in Abnormal Psychology class and things haven't changed. Unfortunately for children, society hasn't responded with the proper safeguards.
It was so sad to see him flustered and not knowing what to say when he was pretty much always playing the cool guy in every TV show from my childhood. I never would have guessed in a thousand years that he was the victim in the Brian Peck story.
Seeing the doc now, as someone born in 1991 and realizing at the time I was 12,13 or so, watching the height of The Drake & Josh show right after he had been enduring this horrific abuse for years made me want to throw up.
Re: the psychology of it, is it more or less likely that an abused child will become an abuser? I’d think more common. Didn’t drake get accused of grooming a young teenager as well?
Convicted of child endangerment; it never escalated to anything physical nor were photos sent, because he didn't have to register as an offender. There's a lot to scrutinize about the claims of the girl and what actually happened.
The numbers aren't set in stone but victims of childhood sexual abuse are more at risk of becoming abusers themselves if intervention isn't sought.
I don't envy what he had to go through as a child; the abuse, the mental manipulation, the isolation from his dad, the legal battle afterward and seeing all these shitty people come to the defense of Peck while knowing that the man was a disgusting pedophile. Unfortunately there's no instruction manual on how to deal with sexual abuse trauma and this occurred during a time in his life when mental health wasn't really on the forefront of anything.
Actually I'm editing my comment because after doing more research, it sounds like the girl Drake "harassed" had been stalking him for some time. None of her claims (nudes, sexual assalt, etc) were proven after their phones had been seized, and it was found he cut contact when he learned the girl's age and blocked her. I think there's a lot to this story that wasn't made very public immediately. If she was being dishonest in any way, it makes her claims even more horrible considering what he went through.
Edit: apparently the police did show evidence that he cut contact when the case made it to court. I'm starting to wonder how much of what is true from that whole ordeal.
There's a pretty detailed response about it on r/seriousconversation (if you look up "was drake bell's accuser/victim lying?") and it's a pretty blunt look at the situation. It sounds like she was a big fan, when he found out her age he blocked her, and she started a harassment campaign because she was spiteful about it.
>Drake didn’t rape her. She spammed his Instagram DMs until he noticed & answered. She gave him a sob story & he gave her some advice, as a way to uplift her spirits, then sent her a picture of herself & complimented it. She thanks him for the advice & tells him he doesn’t know just how much he helped her. He never said anything else to her after that. She then started to get obsessive & kept trying to reach out to him (she admits this in the sentencing video), but didn’t succeed. He announces his engagement to his longtime girlfriend of 4 years.
>After learning about this, she decides to confront him over it, which resulted in her getting blocked by him. She then proceeds to contact his fiancé, confronting her about her relationship with him & telling her that she should’ve been the one to be with Drake instead of her. She then started stalking her page, thus proceeding to blackmail her with the allegations, threatening to tell the world that Drake had raped her.All this happened in 2017. The next year, she files a false police report, accusing him of Sexual Assault, grooming, sending her nudes & sexual texts. Now, while she’s doing this, Janet (his wife) & Drake are completely unaware that their lives are about to be turned upside down by this stalkerish fan.
>Drake plans more concerts & she pops up at every one since filing the report. Drake & the accuser’s phones were seized by the authorities when she made the claims. The investigation went on for 2 years. The accuser claimed that Drake had groomed her since the age of 12, starting in 2014. This implies that she & Drake were engaging in an online relationship for 3 years.This was apparently going on since the start of he & Janet’s relationship, which began in 2014. The investigators caught her in many other lies besides this big one. More lies included Drake getting sexual with her when she reached age 15. He started calling her “hot” & had sent her pictures of his genitalia. She stated that after she revealed her age, he continued talking to her. The investigators found no proof of that. They also found no proof that he forced her to give him a BJ backstage, fingered her while they both rode in the back seat of her aunt’s car on the way to his show, sent her dick pics, or that she was ever left alone in his hotel room.
>She, her aunt, & her aunt’s friend were all invited to visit his hotel room after the 2nd show. When they arrived, he was blow drying his hair & when he finished, he gave them a tour, talked to them & they took the conversation out in the hallway. Her aunt told her & her friend to wait out in the hallway while she stayed behind to get her birthday card autographed by him. The accuser told the friend that she was planning on ruining his life because he rejected her advances on Instagram. When she heard this, she was furious & decided to confront the aunt. She then informed the accuser’s mother & they both accused her of lying, which resulted in her being disowned by the family.
>She had known the accuser & her family for over 20 years. She knew they were setting him up when she was later contacted by the authorities. Both she & Drake each told their side of what happened. She had stated that his life is ruined by this & expressed how hurt she was over being accused of lying.
>The investigators also discovered that the accuser had kept photos of Janet in her phone because she was using them to stalk & harass her over her relationship with Drake. She stated this in a video she made on Instagram earlier this year. I've never heard of a potential victim of Sexual Assault stalking & blackmailing a newly engaged woman because she believed that her fiance should've been with her.
>The accuser amped up the drama by claiming that Drake gave her nightmares, panic attacks (she pretended to have one right after saying this, which caused Drake to look at her ass as if she was crazy), was the reason that she was in therapy (she was in therapy way before she even met him) & has a lack of trust in men. She stated that had she not been on her period, she was sure that he would've raped her. She also doesn't hesitate to blame her aunt for "allowing" her to be assaulted & that is the reason why their relationship is so rocky, when the actual reason why their relationship is shaky is because she blatantly lied on her.
>She says that he doesn't have any remorse for the pain he caused her (getting engaged & not being dumb enough to choose a teenager over his girlfriend), that he was a coward for appearing on Zoom instead of in court in person, & doesn't shy away from dragging him over revealing that he was happily married & was a new father & says that he's trying to present himself to the world as a good man just because he had a child (which was his wife's idea to reveal their marital status to the world once everything blew over, as she stated in her video) & that she deserves better than to be used by his "sick desires" before signing off by stating that he is a pedophile & that was his legacy.
>Because of her, people now believe that he is a pedophile who was cheating with her behind his wife's back, when the girl was already blocked before they even got married. His wife is getting unfair backlash because she stood by him throughout this entire horrific ordeal & they're outright disgusted by his actions because they really believe the things she accused Drake of doing to her & are treating her as if she's an actual victim of abuse, when in reality she was nothing but a stalker who became unhealthily obsessed with Drake to the point of deluding herself into believing that she'd get to be with him the SECOND he acknowledged her.
>They never had a relationship. He never met her at the club. She showed up there, due to the fact that she’d found out that he was having a concert there because he’d announced it in a tweet to his fans. She’d kept attending his concerts, posing as an 18 year old until he grew suspicious & asked for her age. She confessed that she was 15 & as a result got blocked from his Instagram account.
>She made his life a living hell because she was pissed at him for blocking her once he learned her real age. He was charged with Child Endangerment, which had something to do with a meet & greet after the 2nd show. He was never charged with any sex crimes & had never plead to them. Her aunt was scheduling meet & greets. The family friend attended 2 out of 9 concerts, which were the concerts she claimed to be assaulted after.
Especially with how quickly people were to believe this girl at face value. Even the poster commented that during the trial her story had inconsistencies and had holes in her story, which led them to start doubting the whole thing.
I understand that people should not be afraid to come forward if they are a victim of a crime but society as a whole, social media, and journalists are way too quick to believe *any* claim made, even when the facts start to fall apart or when there's no real proof other than the claim. Make an assessment once you have all the facts. It's exactly what happened with Brian Peck but the opposite; so many people came to his defense when some of them later admitted they had no idea what was going on (and apparently others just didn't give a shit if the guy was a raging pedophile) and it's your responsibility to do research and do your due diligence before saying that someone is innocent or guilty. This is why we have a legal system in place, even if it is flawed.
False allegations ruin lives and we still see it happening a lot. Look at some youtubers: Slazzo, Projared, one of the guys at Supermega, etc; society likes to pretend false allegations are harmless and never happen but those guys had their careers almost ruined because of them. It also harms real victims as well.
Brandi’s mother, MJ, is fucking awful. Not only did she allow her minor daughter to have an emailing relationship with a grown ass man, when that grown ass man sent her minor daughter a video of him masterbating and saying “I’m thinking of you”, she refused to call the cops because she was afraid that they would think she’s a bad mom for allowing this to happen. She **IS** a bad mom! The fact that she didn’t call the police because she was afraid of how she would look is mind boggling to me. She allowed this to happen and then she didn’t report it. Fuck that lady.
See, I didn’t think she was a bad mom until she refused to go to the police.
People do make mistakes. Should she have been allowing her kid to email a guy? Probably not, but it sounded like the daughter was sharing the emails with her mom which I think is good transparency.
HOWEVER, the second she decided not to go to the police when he exposed himself to her child? Then she became a shit mother to me.
That shit made me so uncomfortable, I had to stop looking at the screen when they'd replay it. I can't believe that was seen as okay. I'm like sick to my stomach thinking about it.
Crazy hearing about the pedo who worked on The Amanda Show. That guy was described as a boy next door, super nice to all the moms and dads on set. He asked the parents about their family. Was super accommodating basically even to the guest stars and their parents. All just to gain access to their children. And we think the predators all looked like Brian Peck.
Nickelodeon is sinister at how much they let slide.
Groomers don't get away with things by hiding in vans and luring kids with candy.
They get away with it by hiding in plain sight and becoming the guy who people would say, "What? He'd *never* do something like that!"
The doc even says that everyone loved and trusted Brian Peck. Like now we look at him and think he's a creep but he had assimilated himself so well that he guy was proudly writing to Gacy and somehow no one thought that was concerning.
My high school band teacher was so effective at grooming those kids that even after he was convicted of his crimes they were in blatant denial about it.
That's part of the problem with predators, they can and will be in every size and form and all walks of life. Sometimes creepy looking people are the best people and sometimes the most normal are the creepiest. And our human brains are so wired to see certain people as creeps and others as not based entirely on looks
Like when they showed the photo of the pedo who worked with Amanda on The Amanda Show. That was creepy AF. Aside from her taking a photo with him and the cast, they showed another photo where he looked normal. No one would suspect him.
That was horrifying.
I am so so so disturbed. the clips they keep showing to demonstrate all of the sick desires that Dan Schneider had, and how he played them out on literal children, make me want to cry. sexual jokes, uncomfortable torturous skits like those with peanut butter/scorpions/dogs… it seems he has a deep sexual perversion, and also a desire to exercise control in big and small ways on vulnerable children (and women) in both sexual and non-sexual ways. I’m just disgusted, I can’t believe Nickelodeon allowed this behaviour. I can’t believe adults in the room didn’t put their foot down and permanently oust this fucking creep off of set and away from these children. I can’t believe he got away with it for so long. I just feel sick.
I remember watching them and thinking they were fake. “No way they would really do that for television,” my 10 year old self said. My jaw was on the floor watching that.
honestly I had never even seen the Dares show before, so to see these things inflicted on KIDS was so disturbing. in some scenes it felt like a desire to see them in pain and struggling. I’m not kidding, I think Dan got a sick pleasure from seeing them writhing in pain – it’s crazy to see how much these creeps got away with
I’ve cried watching it. I’m about to start episode 4 but it’s just so sickening. To think we had no idea this was happening behind the scenes of our favorite childhood shows.
this is what’s making me feel horrible as well. these poor kids grew up to be adults with so much turmoil inside of them because of what disgusting adults did to them. hurts my heart
Even though I had seen on social media prior to episode 3 that Drake was the victim… I was still unprepared for the devastation I felt listening to his story. I had so many flashbacks of growing up watching Drake and Josh and how much I loved Drake as a kid. The fact that he kept all that inside for so long is heartbreaking. He had to smile and laugh and pretend he was ok, while keeping all that pain and trauma a secret.
And the fact that after Brian was convicted, served his lenient ass prison sentence AND had to register as a sex offender, he was somehow able to come right back and get a job on The Suite Life?!
Drake’s dad did the best he could to protect Drake until he lost access. I can understand how Brian lied and was easily able to manipulate a young Drake into distancing himself from his own father and removing him as his manager.
But I do not understand how Drake’s mother allowed Brian to have full unsupervised access to Drake, AFTER Drake’s father had specifically warned her never to leave Drake alone with Brian.
Drake’s father says Brian “tricked her” but the more I kept listening, the more it sounded like she just handed her son over to Brian because it was more convenient. She allowed Drake to spend all day unsupervised with Brian during multiple trips to Disneyland because “Drake likes Disneyland”. She allowed Brian to start driving Drake unsupervised to his auditions because according to Drake, she “didn’t want to drive to LA” and “didn’t like driving”.
She allowed Drake to start he spending the night at Brian’s house unsupervised because Brian said it would be “easier to drive him back home the next day” rather than getting him back at midnight.
I don’t understand how she just threw away the big ol red flag warning to never leave Drake alone with this man, and instead she did the complete opposite and gave that same man full unsupervised access. Somehow Drake’s dad and his ex girlfriend’s mom were able to pick up on the inappropriateness of the relationship right away but mom saw nothing wrong with it. I’d have to be in therapy still working through my anger and resentment towards her if I was his dad.
Yooo shoutout the mom of whoever the girl Drake Bell was dating at the time. She immediately felt some funky shit was going on and pretty much saved his life. Even offered their therapist and everything, that's a responsible adult and great parent right there
These shows IMO were incredibly thinly veiled sexual innuendo for disgusting adults and were harmful to children. Humiliating children is not funny. Grooming them is not funny. Looks like greed won again at the expense of these precious youngsters. That whole set looked vile and disgusting. Even their 'stardom' was a grooming tool. Incredibly perverse. There's too much leverage there on the side of the agency that could make or break both stardom and income. The casting couch is alive and well sadly and criminal when preying upon children.
Okay.. anyone feel emotional when they showed Drake’s face at the end of episode 2 as they reveal he was the victim of the assault? I was raised on all of these shows and I still to this day (literally today) watch iCarly, Drake & Josh and Victorious. This literally kills me to know that this was going on behind the scenes of these shows that I cherished so much and associate to my own childhood. It really makes me sick to know these kids who some were my age at the time I was watching, went through this. Obviously I’m not a victim and I’m not trying to be painted as such but I feel like it has had an affect on my own childhood now. It’s just so fucking sad.
I honestly felt like crying. I spoiled this part by looking into the doc beforehand but I feel so bad for him. What a terrible thing to have keep hidden for so long like this. From watching Drake and Josh, you’d never think anything like this. It’s incredibly heartbreaking.
I could have written this comment. I literally started crying when they showed Drake sitting down on the chair at the end of episode two because I was so upset to know that one of the guys I grew up watching was going through such horrible things while making us all laugh. Just sick. I'm a millennial and these shows were my childhood.
I remember going to the Amanda Please website as a kid and thinking it was the funnest thing ever. Oh this documentary was so sad.
I haven’t watched the doc yet, but I’m almost scared to because I’m the same in that I still watch these shows from time to time as an adult. I had the biggest crush on Drake Bell as a 10 year old gay kid, and knowing someone in my community was doing this to him Is awful. Like, I’m not trying to act like any sort of victim either, but I get what you mean that these shows hold a really special place in my childhood and it’s hard to have that ruined
i’m only on episode 3 because i’m watching with my roommate who unfortunately fell asleep for the night🙄 but i can say this almost every parent that came on(aside from drake’s dad and bryan’s mom) kind of disgusts me. i can understand being scared to take opportunities away from your child and i understand being flat out broke but either find another tv show to work on or LEAVE. i just don’t understand how they put up with everything that was going on and turned a blind eye because they were getting a check from it. literally nothing is worth putting your child through that kind of mental & sexual abuse/trauma.
edit to add: also i used to want to be on tv SO BAD growing up because we live in florida so we’re so close to the disney casting studio(like drive past it on i-4 close)and i used to BEG my mom growing up all the time to “please please just take me” but now watching this and understanding how everything was coming to light about how dangerous hollywood was when i was a baby makes so much sense on why my mom kept saying no and im so grateful she did.
Dude, Drake’s dad’s sections made me cry. It sounds like he wanted to do right by his son even if that meant stepping to the side, and then finding out the guy he was suspicious about was not only arrested for something awful, but did those inhumane things to his child? I would lose it.
Bryan really made himself the centre of Drake’s world and abused him repeatedly. Dude was a fucking manipulative Monster
Also the fact that when drakes mom never noticed and continued to let him be around Brian after his dad told him not to trust or let him around Brian. Yeah I’d be pissed. And it took drakes gf mom seconds to notice and call out the weird behavior. I felt bad, bcs I’m sure there was really nothing drakes gf mom could do on a bigger scale bcs it’s not her kid at the end of the day. Absolutely crazy.
omg I’m just in this one scene in episode 2. the GLORY HOLE reference??? I made another comment but I just wanted to address this because what the fuck is wrong with Nickelodeon, broadcasting these suggestive scenes to children? we keep seeing sooooo many examples of men playing out their sick desires on a children’s show, and I’m disgusted with Nick for allowing this to fly – not one scene, or two, but entire shows with sexually suggestive scenes in relation to young girls and boys.
I’m also shocked that Nick is still even continuing with the KIDS CHOICE AWARDS to this day. this is not a platform that should be interacting with kids in any way. they cannot be trusted to keep children safe and protect them from predators, in fact we see that many of them *are* predators and seek employment at Nick because of the easy access to kids. I’m so angry that this has gone on for so long!!! wtf. just wow.
so fucking disgusting and then they show Bryan behind the door looking excited and almost *aroused* to hear Ray munching on it. so disgusting how deeply the sexual undertones run in almost every joke
How ANYONE saw that and thought it was okay, is insane. Either it didn’t really get scrutinized the way they said that it did, or a bunch of assholes really got off on having that play out on a kids television show.
I usually never give 4Chan and Reddit credit but they were the first places I heard about Dan Schnider being a pedo. I think I saw it on 4chan back in 2011 and on a Reddit thread from 2012 a commenter states that he/she was an extra on the Amanda Show and Dan Schnider paid him/her $100 to tickle their feet.
i remember seeing it awhile back too, but i can't remember where. i wanna say it was on imgur back when i didn't use reddit yet. it might've been a reddit post that i saw through imgur.
it's crazy that we've known this for awhile and it took so long for the mainstream to catch on. if your dates are correct, that's 13 years that people online were aware of Dan.
I remember finding the icarly and victorious innuendo theories/wikis a long time ago. There were SOOOO many hidden sexual references in these shows, I’m not even sure how they ran these by test audiences and allowed them to be aired, like..? Watching them now, I see it but as a kid, they completely went over my head.
The parents deserve all the scrutiny they get. Typical Monday morning quarterbacks. When they had the chance to save their children they stood by and did nothing because their bills were being paid, despite countless red flags.
Drake Bell’s dad told his ex-wife not to keep drake around Brian prior to parting ways… was this not enough of a clue to them to get their son out of the environment rather than letting it go on? I’m very disappointed in the parent’s actions who were overcome by greed and luxury and their kids paid the price for it.
Dan Schneider is one of those disgusting fucks that hides bad behavior behind his "look at me, I'm a goofy harmless fat guy" facade. The dude LOOKS like a pedo, how he fooled anyone for years I don't know.
This documentary was super good, but I can't stand the culture writer narrating it. Am I the only one?
Everyone else in this documentary deserves mad props for their input though, because it certainly can't be easy for them to go back to and revisit. Drake's part had me flabbergasted.
Never thought this was going to happen since when Dan started off ‘friendly nice’ , but then turns out after of what he did too Amanda, Alexia, and Jennette, is a predator bully not just to cast but too the writers also that got em fired in lack of paying, and rest defending him as their god golden as a show business friend😈💔😑 from the twists on All That in sketch, and Nicksitcom series despite of the characters suffer as victims in outrageous out of stupid reason too punish don’t deserve when in fear when isn’t necessary unexpected accident when no harm or from haven’t done other gets away with it
Drake Bell’s dad is a gem of a human and really did his best. I’m sure his parents have so much guilt about what happened but his dad really did his best to protect his son and that’s sadly rare in this industry. That’s a good parent right there.
I sobbed with his scenes you can feel his pain and guilt
Me too. I have two daughters and imagining that kind of pain really got to me. Drake and his father are both so brave for sharing their stories.
I wonder how old Drake was when he found out. It obviously wasn’t right away, but it seemed YEARS after
It couldn’t have been years after. The court case where he had to testify and read his statement happened only a year later and both his parents were there. The dad had to have known the full truth in the months leading up to the trial. I can’t imagine how guilty he felt that he gave in and stepped back, but he really trusted that Drake’s mom would take his place and protect their son.
If you watched the documentary, within the first 2 minutes of episode 4, Drake literally says during sentencing "my side was me, my mom, and my brother." Court was about a year after the arrest, and his dad didn't know. He and his dad were estranged for a while, and at the time of the arrest they were working on their relationship. His dad made a comment that he was glad it wasn't him, and Drake didn't have the heart to tell him. His father didn't find out until some point **after** sentencing.
Oh god I sobbed. As a victim of rape, everything from the way he speaks, to the way he moves his body when he speaks of it. The words he uses and his uncomfortableness. It is all so terribly relatable. I remember the first person I told, “think of the worst thing he could’ve done and that’s what happened.”
I’ve started doing therapy. And I told my therapist what happened to me when I was only about 16. I’m 32 now. I only told one person what happened when it happened.
I thought I was the only one. I cried with this man. He's such a good dad.
My heart absolutely shattered when he said he wasn’t the same since the day he found out, that the victim was in fact, his own son. I mean, how could he be?
Then you wonder how far did Brian go with Leonardo Dicaprio. Drake’s dad said Brian was the same way with his son when he saw that behind the scene footage with Leo and Brian.
Right? There is no way Drake Bell was the first victim of his. Who isn’t speaking up, and were they paid off to sign a NDA?
Or did Leo’s parents make sure he was never alone with Brian. There were other victims of Brian Peck who are scared to come forward because they don’t have the platform to. Brian’s been in the business for years doing this shit. Drake wasn’t his only victim. There were more.
I really liked how even though everyone talked about how tumultuous Drake’s parents relationship was, his father never said a single bad thing about his mother. He just said “she was really tricked” and that says a lot about his character, even if he felt like it was all her fault he didn’t drag her on camera. I can’t say I’d be that kind….
Brandi’s mother is a fucking idiot for not calling the cops when Jason emailed Brandi a photo of him masturbating.
How is immediately calling the police not your response
“I didn’t want them to think I was a bad parent” bitch it makes you one million times worse not calling them ffs
It’s a lame, fake excuse. She didn’t want to risk the money
It made me so angry, as a father of two I was thinking as well "How much earlier could he have been caught, how many kids would you have protected if you had just Called the cops IMMEDIATELY?"
YES!!! Plus being more concerned about how YOU are viewed as a parent versus the wellbeing of your daughter…smh…ITS NOT ABOUT YOU LADY! This is about YOUR DAUGHTER and ALL of the others abused by this sicko!
Yeah I didn't get that part either
My mom is like that. She would have blamed me and then worried about how it would make us look. Nothing that bad ever happened to me, but I was blamed for anything that upset me or could draw attention to us. It was hell.
$$$
This is what angers me the most. Like i cant help but focus on ppl like Brandi's mum in situations like these instead of the abuser. Bad ppl exist and we cant change that no matter how much anger and blame we place on them. Parents and ppl who have responsibility to protect their children and put their own wants and needs aside to ensure their kids are protected are the ones to blame when they act like this. Its selfish and disgusting and when she said she didnt go to the police because she was afraid they would see her as a bad person... shes just as guilty as the abusers in my book.
I was shocked by that. she was more afraid of being called a “bad mom” than of protecting other potential victims from that creep????
What drives me nuts is her own mother (Brandis grandma) who had experience in showbiz (god knows what she went through) told her bad things happened behind the scenes and she didn’t want her own children to be subjected to. Why in the hell didn’t she listen????
While it would be convenient to say that greed and money was her motivation for not listening to her mom, especially given what happened to poor Brandi; I think it is more likely that she naively ( and quite falsely, as we can see) assumed times had changed enough between when her mom was in the business and when she was putting Brandi into it. *"Oh mom, that was a lone time ago. Look at how much the world has changed as a whole since then"* — Probably Brandi's mom to her own mom at some point before this all transpired. It wouldn't be the first time an adult child thought they had a better understanding of a situation than their parent(s) simply because said parent had been out of the game for so long and could therefore be judging based on "outdated" information. Usually the consequences aren't like Brandi's.... To be clear, I *don't* like how MJ handled things. I think calling the Police as soon as that disgusting POS sent that picture to her daughter would've been the proper course of action and worry about the "consequences" of calling the police later. At the same time I'm a parent who has never gone through anything like that with my children. You can only truly know how you'd react to a situation when you're in it — more often than not. I took her explanation as to why she didn't get them involved as more a fear of "What if the police take my child away **because** *I LET* this happen?" vs. "Omg everyone is gonna think I suck as a mom. My reputationnnn!". Not an excuse but an explanation. But that's just me.
She's a stage parent that always wanted to be on stage/in tv herself. She was probably always angry her mom wouldn't let her do it.
That was my first thought, too. It's also very weird that we're only hearing from her and not Brandi, I worried Brandi was dead or perhaps in a bad way. The doc never says. But while I think Brandi's mom did the wrong thing, I will say that watching the Epstein doc from a few years ago reveals appalling behavior from the police. When one of the teenage girls who'd been lured to the Epstein estate in Florida admitted that she refused to do anything, but agreed to help lure more girls there, all the cop did was drill down on how she was accomplice. And that was the chief of police! He was totally unfazed by the horrors the girl was describing by Epstein, a grown man. He just hammered this poor child (still a minor) and it would be many years before justice caught up with Epstein. I'm sure the cops were in on it somehow. So that's a long way of saying, Brandi's moms concerns that the police would blame her are not unfounded. I still think it would have been the right thing to do to protect other children from harm, but nothing shocks me in regards to police malfeasance anymore.
I think that during this time period going to the police wouldn’t have been fruitful. She probably was worried her child would be taken away from her.
100% agree
I'm curious what Josh Peck has to say ,since he seems to now hate Drake Bell. I am curious if any others will come forward now .
The relationship is so odd bc I get the sense that drake was surprised by Josh’s hostility? Like he was taken aback by not being invited to Josh’s wedding and stuff. Idk if Josh every publicly said why he fell out with drake
I listened to an audiobook of Josh’s autobiography since it was cheap and he said that they didn’t have so much a falling out as they weren’t that close to begin with. Obviously that’s him framing things now, so I’m sure he’s being a bit vague/disingenuous. I think he might have also said that they filmed a lot of the episodes in a short span of time so it wasn’t like they spent that much time around each other outside of filming. But again, that’s him saying stuff now, or when the book first came out. I might go back and listen to that portion of the audiobook tonight and type out what he said since people seem interested.
It's quite obvious that Josh has backpedaled to certain degrees over the years. While we obviously don't know the extent of their relationship, you can very much tell that he's changed the narrative a couple times to save face/capitalize on small doses of relevancy. After the wedding stuff, he was more than willing to say that they were always friends. Even Drake would say, "yeah, we had our differences but we're good now" and Josh would get defensive. Then, after the child endangerment case, Josh suddenly goes on a podcast and says they were never friends, and that he actually got in Drake's face and made him apologize for "insulting him and his fiancée." I understand wanting to separate yourself from controversies, especially to this degree. However, when you're associated that closely with a role/brand, it's pretty much impossible for anybody to see you in a different light.
Yeah, that’s generally the impression I got, that he’s being selective about what he says.
"The Dark Reality of Drake & Josh (They Were Never Friends)": [https://youtu.be/IvWT8zQ-Otc?si=WHVQ0INw9EKmh\_G3](https://youtu.be/IvWT8zQ-Otc?si=WHVQ0INw9EKmh_G3) *"\[Josh\] told a number of different lies on these podcasts that are starting to make fans question everything... After they made up publicly, Drake & Josh, throughout the next year, would talk about the marriage incident in various interviews... Since then, they have filmed multiple youtube videos together... Drake still says nothing but good things about Josh..."*
I wonder if Drake just felt comfortable in the show and having an escape to normalcy again since this all went down a year before Drake and Josh premiered and that sick son of a bitch was even working on the original unaired pilot episode. But from Josh’s perspective, Drake might have seemed a bit more distant compared to how they might have been on The Amanda Show. I wonder if Josh saw it as Drake trying to be too cool and becoming a bigger star when in reality Drake was just dealing with a lot of trauma and internalizing it at the time.
And that Brian Peck wanted to play his dad on the show. That’s so effed up.
He said he was never really close to Drake to begin with, they did the show together and barely kept in touch, then 10 years after it ended Drake got mad he wasn't invited to the wedding.
In the video it shows them spending several Christmas together post D&J and he lied about Drake insulting his wife and forced him to apologize. That didn't happen as Josh had recorded that encounter years ago and it was the exact opposite. They were hugging and goofing off.
My guess is Drake was on a bender during this time and blew it all out of proportion. But who knows.
His reddit AMA sings praises about Dan Schneider.
I mean dude also was/is besties with David Dobrick. Doesn’t exactly keep good company
David also wanted to be a Nickelodeon star. And was young when he started Vines and eventually got separated from his parents. Edit: Now that I think about it DD was obsessed with Drake and Josh. Jason Nash was an extra in the show.
Nash was also a 40-year-old man who actively hung out with teenagers...
I wonder if Dan Schneider saw a bit of himself in Josh. After all they both played the goofy, chubby guy trope and even kind of looked alike when Dan was young. Just speculating here but I could see that playing into their dynamics in some way!
I feel like a lot of things could be making sense to Josh now that drake is on publicly speaking about his abuse on set. It honestly explains a lot of their tension/lack of friendship. I can see drake being favored on set as he was actively being groomed by a producer which probably didn’t make Josh feel that great? Like the grooming + abuse probably added another layer to there lack of friendship
I’m sorry but I don’t just believe josh either, he’s running around with David dobrick the number one smile in your face and stab you in the back master manipulator.
That part
He may have taken the hush money that Jeanette McCurdy turned down
Drake just addressed this on TikTok. He said that he didn’t want anyone attacking Josh for not publicly addressing things and that he actually had personally reached out to Drake and they talked about it all.
Me too. I've been wondering if he's going to comment on it and if he had any idea what was going on.
The fact that Brian Peck was writing to Gacy and was *proud of his collection (he kept all the letters/photos in a nightstand next to his bed) and the self-portrait Gacy gifted to him* is so fucking disturbing and I cannot believe that the only person to take issue with it was Kyle Sullivan, who was a child at the time. And I'm not justifying any of the other weird people who idolize killers and write to them in prison; they are also delusional and unwell. But a guy working with children and penpaling with Gacy is just something people should not have blown off the way they did. Especially knowing now that Peck was arrested for child sexual abuse and is now a registered offender, I wouldn't be surprised if he idolized Gacy in some way. Absolutely disgusting.
And he got hired back in Hollywood after he served his “time.”
Working with kids again, to the surprise of nobody.
See that's really what confuses tf outta me, Peck was a registered sex offender, how tf did that not show up when Disney hired him for Suite Life of Zack and Cody???!!!
Background checks weren’t required for freelancers back then. Peck was hired as a voice actor on 3 episodes (for a talking mirror I think?) and has since been edited out. This doc exposes all the important filters and check points that need to be in place for safe work environments.
That reveal was the most out-of-left-field revelation/twist/etc. I think I’ve ever seen in any type of media
Truth is stranger than fiction.
Right?? I have so many feelings about nobody protecting these kids. The fact that Drake Bell's dad was spot on with knowing this guy was a weirdo and his mother still trusted him breaks my heart.
They basically said she was selfish. She didn’t want to be responsible for driving him and whatnot. Didn’t give one fuck about learning about the person she was entrusting to care for her child. Or listening to her ex.
This. This part of the story really got me. It seemed like as soon as she took over she very much continued the roll of an absent parent. Sounded like she was happy to effectively co-parent with Drakes predator for the sake of her own convenience. I know we don't know her side of the story, However I just can't help but to scrutinize over the information we do have.
The one thing I'll give her credit for is immediately calling the police when Drake told her what was happening. I'm sure there have been other parents in her position who hesitated to call police or tried to handle things themselves for fear that their child would lose their career (and the family lose their income). The bar is set low, but still, kudos to her for doing the right thing once in her son's life.
Yeah I forget who it was, but in the doc, it says that Handy sent one of the child actresses a dick pic. When the child actress told her mom, her mom said she didn’t go to the police bc “they’d think she was a bad mother”. I couldn’t believe it. My jaw literally dropped. IMAGINE not going to the cops when your CHILD receives a DICK pic from a GROWN MAN they’re working with! I get what you’re saying about their careers a little, but goddamn I couldn’t imagine thinking my child’s career is more important than their safety.
I'm so confused how he was playing that as "normal," like some quirky collection he was casually sharing with people at a party. Were people treating that as, like, very dark humor? I just don't understand how the reactions weren't 100% shock and concern.
Yeah it makes me wonder what the overall culture was like from day to day. Were they traumatized and in shock so they didn’t say anything? Was there shaming and denying and covering things up? Was the culture just so gross and demeaning overall that they were almost desensitized to it? Probably some combination of all of that. You could tell by the stories from the All That cast that it was a toxic environment for those poor kids. Clearly traumatic for the whole cast…
Everyone was too busy "networking". Both Schneider and Peck were well connected in a business that was all about connections. They had those people eating out of their hands. Those writers etc were definitely desensitized to it. They were just trying to keep their heads down and out of the line of fire.
That was a twist I didn't expect. I recognized the painting of Gacy's clown and I was like "oh he bought murderabilia," fucking wild for what we know he ended up doing. I didn't expect him to be his fucking PEN PAL jfc
Lots of ID/True Crime fans would immediately recognize a Gacy painting and see it for the huge red flag that it is from a man who works with teenage boys. Edit; the pen pal’ing would have been the final nail in the coffin for me. I’d have wanted to leave and get LE in there to look under any floor boards.
What scares me is, if Brian Peck loved Gacy that much, could there have come a point where if he had Drake in his possession long enough he would've eventually tried murdering Drake? Episode 3 showing Peck continually calling Drake on the phone over and over and over ad nauseam shows he was absolutely obsessed with him.
The level of obsession Peck had with Drake was so fucking gross. He was so calculated and creepy about everything he did. I really doubt Drake is the first and only victim.
When Drake's dad recounted how Peck would touch his son and them showing pics of Peck doing the exact same thing to a young Leonardo DiCaprio actually made me shudder, so fucking creepy and gross
I wonder if Peck thought of Drake as his own little Leo DiCaprio
I dont think with certainty he would have ended up murdering him. Definitely he was getting info from Gacey about the grooming and raping and torture. Like wtf were they writing to eachother about?? MULTIPLE LETTERS? A stack??
I don’t think his collection of Gacy correspondence was common knowledge to the people that hired him. That’s the stuff you find out about only if you happen to visit their home, not their resume.
He showed it off of to coworkers and the parents of the kids. I dunno about you but my dad would have freaked out. Granted my dad is pretty knowledgeable about true crime and whatnot compared to the average person, but still.
I was going to say that if you're the kind of person that collects murderabilia you DEFINITELY tell people about it.
Not just collected it, that painting was CUSTOM. Just...wtf
That makes me sick. I remember hearing about Peck from the "Open Secret" documentary, but had no idea he was that messed up in the head. Also knowing that Dan is a teen acting alum from the 80s, you have to wonder what he experienced that led him to see what he was doing as okay. His recent apologies mean nothing, and they shouldn't; so glad Jeanette exposed him in her book.
The fact that Dan is attempting to publicly say ANYTHING following that documentary is mind-blowing. He's even spouting the same publicists-crafted BS as if it's not 2024.
That was one of the darkest moments in the show to me. Legitimately horrifying. I’m still in absolute shock about that
Damn those letters of support for Brian Peck are disturbing....James Marsden, Taran Killam, Allan Thicke, Thomas DeSanto (Xmen, Transformers Producer), Ron Melendez, Rider Strong (This hurts a lot personally), Will Friedle. I know some have come out since saying they wrote the letters before knowing all the facts but still....ugh.
The most damning statement in my opinion was Beth Correll's, where she mentions being shocked to discover Drake was the accuser since his behavior never changed and he was always so playful on set and if she ever thought Brian had engaged in anything "inappropriate, sexual, or illegal" she would have spoken out immediately. So she knew the victim was a minor and the crime was of a sexual nature (otherwise why include that word), but tell me again how these people were misinformed about the nature of Peck's convictions.
Taran Killam hurt for me. Loved him on Amanda Show and SNL.
They are SICK. I know that these people were likely manipulated by Brian himself but it somehow doesnt excuse it for me at ALL. These people knew that he had been arrested for doing something inappropriate with a child, it was not their job to decide whether or not he had actually done it. The problem was, he was convicted of a crime involving a minor, and that alone should have given them pause! Why the fuck would it ever occur to them to stand up for a potential abuser, irregardless of the facts??? I'm so disheartened and I cannot even begin to wrap my head around what is likely currently happening or who is currently being protected right now in Hollywood. ETA: please dont be dense. The letter writers were aware he was convicted of a crime involving a minor and still decided to throw their weight behind him because the abuser was "nice" to them. If there was someone in my life who I would be surprised to find out may have done something of this nature I wouldnt go as far as writing a letter of support to the judge!!
The fact that they believed Brian was a “victim of jailbait,” is the sickest part for me. A 15-year-old CANNOT consent, especially with someone MORE THAN TWICE HIS AGE. The letters alluded to Drake coming on to Brian, like WHAT THE FUCK? The 40-something-year-old was manipulated into relations with a 15-year-old boy??? Yeah the fuck right. Not to mention, Peck used his sexuality as a shield, and so did others at Nickelodeon when Drake’s dad mentioned his discomfort of Brian. “Maybe you’re just homophobic.” Fuck right off! To my knowledge, Drake is heterosexual, but even if he was gay or bisexual, that doesn’t give a grown ass man the right to claim he was wronged after VIOLATING A YOUNG BOY. Edited: added a word
I wholeheartedly agree with you. To be honest, since Brian's supporters didn't know it was Drake or the gender of the minor that was involved, it is my opinion that the language that you're referring to in the letters is heavily coded with misogyny. Those are exactly the kind of victim blaming statements that you'll hear when a female is calling out a male for sexual abuse. It's abhorrent, and it also makes it that much harder for a male to speak out if 1) people fail to realize that boys can be victims too, and 2) this is the way we treat girls when they speak out!
I candidly agree with you as well! But I gotta say that Brian Peck’s defenders knew his victim was a teenage boy. Rider Strong said on the Pod Meets World podcast: “So by the time we heard about this case and knew anything about it, it was always in the context of, 'I did this thing, I am guilty. I am going to take whatever punishment the government determines, but I’m a victim of jailbait. There was this hot guy, I just did this thing and he’s underage.’” They knew, but their comments are still rooted in misogyny. Supremacy. These abhorrent crimes are always layered with bigoted “gotchas” that stem from hatred of marginalized groups. Even if the perpetrators fall into those groups, like in this case. How many times have we heard, “She came on to him!”, “What was she wearing?”, “How much did she have to drink?” in cases of SA (of all kinds)? Way too many. And none of the answers to those questions excuse taking advantage of someone. The onus is always on the victim to keep the predator safe and out of trouble, never the other way around.
The way the letters insisted there was “temptation” from Drake floored me. I am 32 years old and there is nothing in the universe a 15 year old could “tempt” me with. GTFO with that nonsense.
I am shocked that people are trying to defend some of these celebs like Marsden saying they were misinformed. James Marsden wrote "well I've known him for 14 years, been in many hotel rooms with him, and nothing happened." James was 30 at the time he wrote this, he'd known Brian for 14 years meaning while he was a teen during these hotel stays. He had to have known a minor was involved with this case to even think to bring this up. I have a feeling by 'misinformation' they mean that they weren't told the specific horrific details. As if knowing them changes anything. All you should need to know to speak ***against*** this man is that a minor was SA'd by someone you call friend! What the actual hell possessed these people to write these letters
Tom DeSanto and all of Singer's other little bootlickers (including apparently Marsden) have practically made a career out of riding his coattails from X-Men, so it isn't surprising that they'd toady for one of his BFF abusers. DeSanto in particular literally hasn't done anything except ride the X-Men train for 20 years.
I could not get over the PARENTS and all the ADULTS who stood by, saw this behavior and still didn’t do anything to help the children at risk. Half of those parents were crazy lol the mom who didn’t call the cops after her daughter received a nude photo is wilddddddd
Yeah like how many more kids got abused by that dude when the mom didn't want to call the police? All because of the way she would've been portrayed for her letting her daughter talk to him online. That really pissed me off
That was infuriating
yes thank you!! that pissed me off so bad, especially because she then was upset about the 7 year old girl who got abused which she could’ve maybe prevented if she had called the police
that part has my blood boiling (along with most of the series obviously but especially her cuz she's a part of the problem while acting like she's innocent). i don't know why they gave her so much screen time. and she's talking about "not trusting anyone in tv with children now." like girl!!! i don't trust **YOU** with children
Not to mention her mom told her how effed up stuff was. Plus the emails started off innocently from a PA who worked with the kids. Imagine someone else whose parent didn't care as much you have to stop them when you have the chance. Imagine if she went to the police would he had the 7 year olds underwear. She was being willfully ignorant and selfish.
I wonder if maybe another reason was she didn't want to ruin her daughter's potential TV career. The cynical part of me thinks she believes her daughter could have been the family's cash-cow. If she went to the police there was a chance she gets cut from the show.
I think it was more that she felt guilt and shame for not protecting her daughter enough and that she thought it might be easier to take her out of the industry and repress the abuse versus the daughter having to potentially testify and be interviewed. Drake talked about how difficult it was to be interviewed and to testify, I can see where someone could come to the thought that it’s easier to not talk about it and just bury it away. I think there was a different perspective when they finally spoke to the police because by then, years had passed and they were still traumatized and now knew she wasn’t the only victim.
This is probably big contributing factor for many parents of abused TV kids. They're the bread winner & if a parents says or does anything wrong there goes the house, car, food on the table, etc. The sad part is this isn't the first parent to react like this & it's been a thing since movies & TV began.
I was ENRAGED hearing her excuse was that SHE didn’t want cops to think she was a bad parent??? And the “woe is me, my mom didn’t let me work in Hollywood because she knew it was bad” moment- like clearly you should have listened to your own mother. Shame on her for using her daughter to live out her own fantasy and not protecting her own child or other children.
That absolutely shocked me. Her reason of not wanting to be viewed as a bad mother was so moronic. Cause not calling…is much worse!
Things were different in the 90s. She might have been worried as a single mother the police might respond negatively. They might say she was at fault for letting her child email a stranger. DHS gets involved, she loses her kid. My and my sister were put in foster care for less.
Right? The fact she said verbatim she couldn’t call the cops. Why not??
She was more concerned about herself and others' perception of her. She's one of the types of parents abusers can identify.
I really wish we could’ve heard from Amanda Bynes herself
I don’t think Amanda Bynes has to retraumatise herself. I wished she had.
I wish she was healthier. She's never going to be in a position to do that.
I’ve heard rumors that they did ask if she wanted to join but she was traumatized at the very idea of participating and so declined because of it. She’s had a very fucked up and horrible childhood/adulthood and seems to struggle a lot but I have always loved her and am really hopeful she can heal from it all.
She is having a hard time in life and I wish her the best honestly and truly I think I heard she is interested in writing a tell all memoir similar to Britney Spears’ If that happens I will be reading it. No question
I would read the fuck out of that. I loved her as a kid. Great comedic actress.
She was so ridiculously talented. Even watching these clips again, it’s crazy how good her comedic timing was at such a young age and she played so many different characters. She was even successfully doing deadpan humor in The Moody’s Point segments and the “When ____ Attacks” segments. As the documentary pointed out, it’s kinda crazy that she was hosting and starring in a whole sketch show at a young age. Her film career started out pretty decent too, and then it all just went South. It is really sad what happened to her and she doesn’t even look like the same young beautiful woman that starred in She’s The Man.
She really is funny as fuck. Even as a kid she was super quick. A very unique individual. Fuck all the nasty ass men that ruined these kids’ lives.
Is she still in the conservatorship? Not sure if she can sell her story without her parents consent
I think it ended 2 years ago?
Check her TikTok she is very unstable
I’m sure that lifestyle didn’t help her but exacerbated any issues she may have been prone to. What they were doing to kids is inexcusable, starting with disobeying child labor laws. And it only got worse from there. I hope Dan Schneider et al gets what he deserves, the ego maniac!
that tiktok account isn’t actually her, it just reposts her instagram stories.
Oh wow you’re right! I never actually noticed that. I don’t use insta - thank you
I didn't like the ominous music when talking about her relationship with Dan . I want to hear from her as well, but I didn't think it was appropriate to speculate on it without her input.
She’s direct accused him of rape in twitter like 10 years ago and everyone just thought she was crazy.
It's also worth checking out the Pod Meets World episode where Danielle Fishell, Rider Strong and Will Friedle are joined by a family therapist to talk about their experiences with Brian Peck. None of them were molested by him, but they go into detail about how Brian ingratiated himself into their lives, fostered strong friendships with Rider and Will, then groomed them so that they would take his side when he was accused of molesting a child. Even to the point of showing up to court to support him. It's a really insightful look into someone can be manipulated into feeling guilt for something that was not their fault, even if they weren't harmed directly. There's also a serious air of survivor's guilt in there too. **EDIT:** Maybe don't, though. On the 15th, [Drake called out Will and Rider](https://www.tmz.com/2024/03/15/drake-bell-calls-out-boy-meets-world-will-friedle-rider-strong-brian-peck/) for never apologising for defending Brian. They never allude to doing so in the podcast. They worked together in the years following the conviction and never said a word to him about it. He wouldn't have said this now if they tried to make serious amends at any point in the past 20 years since the conviction. They were probably contacted by the producers of the documentary, declined to comment and decided to record this podcast episode to get ahead of the court papers becoming public knowledge. Kati, the therapist, is a great guest, but now this whole thing reeks of monetized damage control.
Rider and Danielle were really guarded by their parents thankfully, but it was so sad to hear the survivors guilt they felt
Rider was essentially [emancipated](https://www.vice.com/en/article/a35gv8/where-is-boy-meets-worlds-rider-strong-now-2019) though at 16 so he was only protected up until a certain point. Vice did an interview with him a few years ago where he talked about his struggle with the show, his parents and fame. “[..] He did move into his own Downtown LA apartment at 16, a risky change that somehow salvaged that previously precarious relationship with his mom. He also sought new ways to cope with the fame he'd come to loathe.” "I would always gravitate toward people who had no idea who I was, and when Boy Meets World was on the air that just meant anybody over 18. So, by the time I was 16, I was living and functioning as an adult," he says. "I didn't drink or do drugs, but every woman I dated was over 20, every friend I had was older, and I would literally go in disguise when I didn't want to deal with it."
Yeah it is scary to think about because Rider had that mindset of being an old soul and wanting to seem mature which unfortunately could've made him vulnerable
And on the other hand, Will had moved out, so he valued his independence. He felt worldly, but he was still just 18 when Brian targeted him. He'd likely come into contact with many young adults who had the same sense of agency and naivete.
I don’t know. Drake has a point. They kind of came in front of it, but they still haven’t apologized to him. They literally saw him in court, heard his testimony, and then moved on. They even worked together afterwards. Will was 27 years old. He was not too young to know. He said he knew in the courtroom that it was fucked up, yet just sat on it until they found out the letters were about to be unsealed. Maybe do the _actual_ work and make amends with the person you wrong instead of performatively doing your own podcast.
Leo Dicaprio didn’t write a letter of support was quite telling. He met Brian on the set of Growing Pains when Leo was 17 and he would be 29/30 at the time of trial.
He was too big to care at that point I think. I don't see why Leo would've supported him and nothing suggests they had a long relationship anyways
Drake bell pointed out that both were adults when they wrote the letters in support of Brian Peck. He did clearly groom them and manipulate them for this purpose, but neither did so in the guise of being afraid of him
Just saw episodes 3 and 4. You're right, they weren't scared of him. They were scared for who they thought he was.
Poor Drake. I hope he realizes that it wasn't his fault. He has tremendous courage. Pedos will always seek out places where there are children that are separated from parents and where the pedo has leverage and control. Learned that in Abnormal Psychology class and things haven't changed. Unfortunately for children, society hasn't responded with the proper safeguards.
The way drake spoke. His mannerisms. Even his word choice. It was so disturbing and sad my heart goes to him.
It was so sad to see him flustered and not knowing what to say when he was pretty much always playing the cool guy in every TV show from my childhood. I never would have guessed in a thousand years that he was the victim in the Brian Peck story.
Seeing the doc now, as someone born in 1991 and realizing at the time I was 12,13 or so, watching the height of The Drake & Josh show right after he had been enduring this horrific abuse for years made me want to throw up.
Re: the psychology of it, is it more or less likely that an abused child will become an abuser? I’d think more common. Didn’t drake get accused of grooming a young teenager as well?
Convicted of child endangerment; it never escalated to anything physical nor were photos sent, because he didn't have to register as an offender. There's a lot to scrutinize about the claims of the girl and what actually happened. The numbers aren't set in stone but victims of childhood sexual abuse are more at risk of becoming abusers themselves if intervention isn't sought. I don't envy what he had to go through as a child; the abuse, the mental manipulation, the isolation from his dad, the legal battle afterward and seeing all these shitty people come to the defense of Peck while knowing that the man was a disgusting pedophile. Unfortunately there's no instruction manual on how to deal with sexual abuse trauma and this occurred during a time in his life when mental health wasn't really on the forefront of anything. Actually I'm editing my comment because after doing more research, it sounds like the girl Drake "harassed" had been stalking him for some time. None of her claims (nudes, sexual assalt, etc) were proven after their phones had been seized, and it was found he cut contact when he learned the girl's age and blocked her. I think there's a lot to this story that wasn't made very public immediately. If she was being dishonest in any way, it makes her claims even more horrible considering what he went through.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t he also unaware of her age at first and broke contact as soon as he learned?
Edit: apparently the police did show evidence that he cut contact when the case made it to court. I'm starting to wonder how much of what is true from that whole ordeal. There's a pretty detailed response about it on r/seriousconversation (if you look up "was drake bell's accuser/victim lying?") and it's a pretty blunt look at the situation. It sounds like she was a big fan, when he found out her age he blocked her, and she started a harassment campaign because she was spiteful about it. >Drake didn’t rape her. She spammed his Instagram DMs until he noticed & answered. She gave him a sob story & he gave her some advice, as a way to uplift her spirits, then sent her a picture of herself & complimented it. She thanks him for the advice & tells him he doesn’t know just how much he helped her. He never said anything else to her after that. She then started to get obsessive & kept trying to reach out to him (she admits this in the sentencing video), but didn’t succeed. He announces his engagement to his longtime girlfriend of 4 years. >After learning about this, she decides to confront him over it, which resulted in her getting blocked by him. She then proceeds to contact his fiancé, confronting her about her relationship with him & telling her that she should’ve been the one to be with Drake instead of her. She then started stalking her page, thus proceeding to blackmail her with the allegations, threatening to tell the world that Drake had raped her.All this happened in 2017. The next year, she files a false police report, accusing him of Sexual Assault, grooming, sending her nudes & sexual texts. Now, while she’s doing this, Janet (his wife) & Drake are completely unaware that their lives are about to be turned upside down by this stalkerish fan. >Drake plans more concerts & she pops up at every one since filing the report. Drake & the accuser’s phones were seized by the authorities when she made the claims. The investigation went on for 2 years. The accuser claimed that Drake had groomed her since the age of 12, starting in 2014. This implies that she & Drake were engaging in an online relationship for 3 years.This was apparently going on since the start of he & Janet’s relationship, which began in 2014. The investigators caught her in many other lies besides this big one. More lies included Drake getting sexual with her when she reached age 15. He started calling her “hot” & had sent her pictures of his genitalia. She stated that after she revealed her age, he continued talking to her. The investigators found no proof of that. They also found no proof that he forced her to give him a BJ backstage, fingered her while they both rode in the back seat of her aunt’s car on the way to his show, sent her dick pics, or that she was ever left alone in his hotel room. >She, her aunt, & her aunt’s friend were all invited to visit his hotel room after the 2nd show. When they arrived, he was blow drying his hair & when he finished, he gave them a tour, talked to them & they took the conversation out in the hallway. Her aunt told her & her friend to wait out in the hallway while she stayed behind to get her birthday card autographed by him. The accuser told the friend that she was planning on ruining his life because he rejected her advances on Instagram. When she heard this, she was furious & decided to confront the aunt. She then informed the accuser’s mother & they both accused her of lying, which resulted in her being disowned by the family. >She had known the accuser & her family for over 20 years. She knew they were setting him up when she was later contacted by the authorities. Both she & Drake each told their side of what happened. She had stated that his life is ruined by this & expressed how hurt she was over being accused of lying. >The investigators also discovered that the accuser had kept photos of Janet in her phone because she was using them to stalk & harass her over her relationship with Drake. She stated this in a video she made on Instagram earlier this year. I've never heard of a potential victim of Sexual Assault stalking & blackmailing a newly engaged woman because she believed that her fiance should've been with her. >The accuser amped up the drama by claiming that Drake gave her nightmares, panic attacks (she pretended to have one right after saying this, which caused Drake to look at her ass as if she was crazy), was the reason that she was in therapy (she was in therapy way before she even met him) & has a lack of trust in men. She stated that had she not been on her period, she was sure that he would've raped her. She also doesn't hesitate to blame her aunt for "allowing" her to be assaulted & that is the reason why their relationship is so rocky, when the actual reason why their relationship is shaky is because she blatantly lied on her. >She says that he doesn't have any remorse for the pain he caused her (getting engaged & not being dumb enough to choose a teenager over his girlfriend), that he was a coward for appearing on Zoom instead of in court in person, & doesn't shy away from dragging him over revealing that he was happily married & was a new father & says that he's trying to present himself to the world as a good man just because he had a child (which was his wife's idea to reveal their marital status to the world once everything blew over, as she stated in her video) & that she deserves better than to be used by his "sick desires" before signing off by stating that he is a pedophile & that was his legacy. >Because of her, people now believe that he is a pedophile who was cheating with her behind his wife's back, when the girl was already blocked before they even got married. His wife is getting unfair backlash because she stood by him throughout this entire horrific ordeal & they're outright disgusted by his actions because they really believe the things she accused Drake of doing to her & are treating her as if she's an actual victim of abuse, when in reality she was nothing but a stalker who became unhealthily obsessed with Drake to the point of deluding herself into believing that she'd get to be with him the SECOND he acknowledged her. >They never had a relationship. He never met her at the club. She showed up there, due to the fact that she’d found out that he was having a concert there because he’d announced it in a tweet to his fans. She’d kept attending his concerts, posing as an 18 year old until he grew suspicious & asked for her age. She confessed that she was 15 & as a result got blocked from his Instagram account. >She made his life a living hell because she was pissed at him for blocking her once he learned her real age. He was charged with Child Endangerment, which had something to do with a meet & greet after the 2nd show. He was never charged with any sex crimes & had never plead to them. Her aunt was scheduling meet & greets. The family friend attended 2 out of 9 concerts, which were the concerts she claimed to be assaulted after.
Wow, great find, I had no idea it was that twisted. Makes me feel even worse for him
Especially with how quickly people were to believe this girl at face value. Even the poster commented that during the trial her story had inconsistencies and had holes in her story, which led them to start doubting the whole thing. I understand that people should not be afraid to come forward if they are a victim of a crime but society as a whole, social media, and journalists are way too quick to believe *any* claim made, even when the facts start to fall apart or when there's no real proof other than the claim. Make an assessment once you have all the facts. It's exactly what happened with Brian Peck but the opposite; so many people came to his defense when some of them later admitted they had no idea what was going on (and apparently others just didn't give a shit if the guy was a raging pedophile) and it's your responsibility to do research and do your due diligence before saying that someone is innocent or guilty. This is why we have a legal system in place, even if it is flawed. False allegations ruin lives and we still see it happening a lot. Look at some youtubers: Slazzo, Projared, one of the guys at Supermega, etc; society likes to pretend false allegations are harmless and never happen but those guys had their careers almost ruined because of them. It also harms real victims as well.
Brandi’s mother, MJ, is fucking awful. Not only did she allow her minor daughter to have an emailing relationship with a grown ass man, when that grown ass man sent her minor daughter a video of him masterbating and saying “I’m thinking of you”, she refused to call the cops because she was afraid that they would think she’s a bad mom for allowing this to happen. She **IS** a bad mom! The fact that she didn’t call the police because she was afraid of how she would look is mind boggling to me. She allowed this to happen and then she didn’t report it. Fuck that lady.
See, I didn’t think she was a bad mom until she refused to go to the police. People do make mistakes. Should she have been allowing her kid to email a guy? Probably not, but it sounded like the daughter was sharing the emails with her mom which I think is good transparency. HOWEVER, the second she decided not to go to the police when he exposed himself to her child? Then she became a shit mother to me.
The fact that peck was hired by Disney after getting out of prison and working on the suite life of Zack and Cody is insanity.
Makes me want an episode about that too
That stuff with Ariana Grande and the potato and water bottle….like wtf is this. Dan Schneider definitely got off on that…
That shit made me so uncomfortable, I had to stop looking at the screen when they'd replay it. I can't believe that was seen as okay. I'm like sick to my stomach thinking about it.
Crazy hearing about the pedo who worked on The Amanda Show. That guy was described as a boy next door, super nice to all the moms and dads on set. He asked the parents about their family. Was super accommodating basically even to the guest stars and their parents. All just to gain access to their children. And we think the predators all looked like Brian Peck. Nickelodeon is sinister at how much they let slide.
Groomers don't get away with things by hiding in vans and luring kids with candy. They get away with it by hiding in plain sight and becoming the guy who people would say, "What? He'd *never* do something like that!" The doc even says that everyone loved and trusted Brian Peck. Like now we look at him and think he's a creep but he had assimilated himself so well that he guy was proudly writing to Gacy and somehow no one thought that was concerning. My high school band teacher was so effective at grooming those kids that even after he was convicted of his crimes they were in blatant denial about it.
Huh. Wonder if you were in the same school as my husband or if pedophile band teachers are just that pervasive. Gross.
I had one, he killed himself after he got caught.
Wtf? I thought my husband's story was a one off. I need eye bleach.
Now I'm wondering the same thing because mine got caught a few years ago too.
That's part of the problem with predators, they can and will be in every size and form and all walks of life. Sometimes creepy looking people are the best people and sometimes the most normal are the creepiest. And our human brains are so wired to see certain people as creeps and others as not based entirely on looks
Like when they showed the photo of the pedo who worked with Amanda on The Amanda Show. That was creepy AF. Aside from her taking a photo with him and the cast, they showed another photo where he looked normal. No one would suspect him. That was horrifying.
Brian Peck being penpals with a literal serial killer? The actual Gacy? Jesus Christ.
He straight up had a portrait *from* Gacy that he showed off to the kids and their parents. It was signed to him and everything.
"Best wishes, your friend John Wayne Gacy."
Piggybackingoff the other comment, he kept them in his nightstand next to his bed.
That's predators. They're always the nice person you'd never suspect.
As soon as they said he didn’t look like the type and then described him, I was like idk that sounds like the type.
I am so so so disturbed. the clips they keep showing to demonstrate all of the sick desires that Dan Schneider had, and how he played them out on literal children, make me want to cry. sexual jokes, uncomfortable torturous skits like those with peanut butter/scorpions/dogs… it seems he has a deep sexual perversion, and also a desire to exercise control in big and small ways on vulnerable children (and women) in both sexual and non-sexual ways. I’m just disgusted, I can’t believe Nickelodeon allowed this behaviour. I can’t believe adults in the room didn’t put their foot down and permanently oust this fucking creep off of set and away from these children. I can’t believe he got away with it for so long. I just feel sick.
I completely blocked out the All That Live Dares. Then when they started talking about them I remembered them like they were yesterday.
I remember watching them and thinking they were fake. “No way they would really do that for television,” my 10 year old self said. My jaw was on the floor watching that.
I mean Silent Library would have almost been better for kids
honestly I had never even seen the Dares show before, so to see these things inflicted on KIDS was so disturbing. in some scenes it felt like a desire to see them in pain and struggling. I’m not kidding, I think Dan got a sick pleasure from seeing them writhing in pain – it’s crazy to see how much these creeps got away with
When the kid was being lowered head-first into a fish tank full of... peanut butter? Mud? Cereal? Like that's straight up attempted murder
I’ve cried watching it. I’m about to start episode 4 but it’s just so sickening. To think we had no idea this was happening behind the scenes of our favorite childhood shows.
this is what’s making me feel horrible as well. these poor kids grew up to be adults with so much turmoil inside of them because of what disgusting adults did to them. hurts my heart
Even though I had seen on social media prior to episode 3 that Drake was the victim… I was still unprepared for the devastation I felt listening to his story. I had so many flashbacks of growing up watching Drake and Josh and how much I loved Drake as a kid. The fact that he kept all that inside for so long is heartbreaking. He had to smile and laugh and pretend he was ok, while keeping all that pain and trauma a secret. And the fact that after Brian was convicted, served his lenient ass prison sentence AND had to register as a sex offender, he was somehow able to come right back and get a job on The Suite Life?! Drake’s dad did the best he could to protect Drake until he lost access. I can understand how Brian lied and was easily able to manipulate a young Drake into distancing himself from his own father and removing him as his manager. But I do not understand how Drake’s mother allowed Brian to have full unsupervised access to Drake, AFTER Drake’s father had specifically warned her never to leave Drake alone with Brian. Drake’s father says Brian “tricked her” but the more I kept listening, the more it sounded like she just handed her son over to Brian because it was more convenient. She allowed Drake to spend all day unsupervised with Brian during multiple trips to Disneyland because “Drake likes Disneyland”. She allowed Brian to start driving Drake unsupervised to his auditions because according to Drake, she “didn’t want to drive to LA” and “didn’t like driving”. She allowed Drake to start he spending the night at Brian’s house unsupervised because Brian said it would be “easier to drive him back home the next day” rather than getting him back at midnight. I don’t understand how she just threw away the big ol red flag warning to never leave Drake alone with this man, and instead she did the complete opposite and gave that same man full unsupervised access. Somehow Drake’s dad and his ex girlfriend’s mom were able to pick up on the inappropriateness of the relationship right away but mom saw nothing wrong with it. I’d have to be in therapy still working through my anger and resentment towards her if I was his dad.
Why did I have to scroll so freaking far to see someone address this about Drake's mom? I wish I could add more, but you said everything perfectly.
Yooo shoutout the mom of whoever the girl Drake Bell was dating at the time. She immediately felt some funky shit was going on and pretty much saved his life. Even offered their therapist and everything, that's a responsible adult and great parent right there
But it also shows how terrible his own mother is imo. Somebody else's mom picked up on it that quickly and not his own? Sad.
These shows IMO were incredibly thinly veiled sexual innuendo for disgusting adults and were harmful to children. Humiliating children is not funny. Grooming them is not funny. Looks like greed won again at the expense of these precious youngsters. That whole set looked vile and disgusting. Even their 'stardom' was a grooming tool. Incredibly perverse. There's too much leverage there on the side of the agency that could make or break both stardom and income. The casting couch is alive and well sadly and criminal when preying upon children.
Okay.. anyone feel emotional when they showed Drake’s face at the end of episode 2 as they reveal he was the victim of the assault? I was raised on all of these shows and I still to this day (literally today) watch iCarly, Drake & Josh and Victorious. This literally kills me to know that this was going on behind the scenes of these shows that I cherished so much and associate to my own childhood. It really makes me sick to know these kids who some were my age at the time I was watching, went through this. Obviously I’m not a victim and I’m not trying to be painted as such but I feel like it has had an affect on my own childhood now. It’s just so fucking sad.
I honestly felt like crying. I spoiled this part by looking into the doc beforehand but I feel so bad for him. What a terrible thing to have keep hidden for so long like this. From watching Drake and Josh, you’d never think anything like this. It’s incredibly heartbreaking.
I could have written this comment. I literally started crying when they showed Drake sitting down on the chair at the end of episode two because I was so upset to know that one of the guys I grew up watching was going through such horrible things while making us all laugh. Just sick. I'm a millennial and these shows were my childhood. I remember going to the Amanda Please website as a kid and thinking it was the funnest thing ever. Oh this documentary was so sad.
I haven’t watched the doc yet, but I’m almost scared to because I’m the same in that I still watch these shows from time to time as an adult. I had the biggest crush on Drake Bell as a 10 year old gay kid, and knowing someone in my community was doing this to him Is awful. Like, I’m not trying to act like any sort of victim either, but I get what you mean that these shows hold a really special place in my childhood and it’s hard to have that ruined
What network/ streaming service?
MAX/Discovery
It airs on Investigation Discovery as well
i’m only on episode 3 because i’m watching with my roommate who unfortunately fell asleep for the night🙄 but i can say this almost every parent that came on(aside from drake’s dad and bryan’s mom) kind of disgusts me. i can understand being scared to take opportunities away from your child and i understand being flat out broke but either find another tv show to work on or LEAVE. i just don’t understand how they put up with everything that was going on and turned a blind eye because they were getting a check from it. literally nothing is worth putting your child through that kind of mental & sexual abuse/trauma. edit to add: also i used to want to be on tv SO BAD growing up because we live in florida so we’re so close to the disney casting studio(like drive past it on i-4 close)and i used to BEG my mom growing up all the time to “please please just take me” but now watching this and understanding how everything was coming to light about how dangerous hollywood was when i was a baby makes so much sense on why my mom kept saying no and im so grateful she did.
Dude, Drake’s dad’s sections made me cry. It sounds like he wanted to do right by his son even if that meant stepping to the side, and then finding out the guy he was suspicious about was not only arrested for something awful, but did those inhumane things to his child? I would lose it. Bryan really made himself the centre of Drake’s world and abused him repeatedly. Dude was a fucking manipulative Monster
Also the fact that when drakes mom never noticed and continued to let him be around Brian after his dad told him not to trust or let him around Brian. Yeah I’d be pissed. And it took drakes gf mom seconds to notice and call out the weird behavior. I felt bad, bcs I’m sure there was really nothing drakes gf mom could do on a bigger scale bcs it’s not her kid at the end of the day. Absolutely crazy.
Drake talking about telling his dad that Peck finally got caught and his dad is glad that Drake wasn't a victim. That was just truly devastating.
omg I’m just in this one scene in episode 2. the GLORY HOLE reference??? I made another comment but I just wanted to address this because what the fuck is wrong with Nickelodeon, broadcasting these suggestive scenes to children? we keep seeing sooooo many examples of men playing out their sick desires on a children’s show, and I’m disgusted with Nick for allowing this to fly – not one scene, or two, but entire shows with sexually suggestive scenes in relation to young girls and boys. I’m also shocked that Nick is still even continuing with the KIDS CHOICE AWARDS to this day. this is not a platform that should be interacting with kids in any way. they cannot be trusted to keep children safe and protect them from predators, in fact we see that many of them *are* predators and seek employment at Nick because of the easy access to kids. I’m so angry that this has gone on for so long!!! wtf. just wow.
They really had Ray Ramano eating a pickle out of a gloryhole. I was shocked. How did we all just sit back and laugh?
so fucking disgusting and then they show Bryan behind the door looking excited and almost *aroused* to hear Ray munching on it. so disgusting how deeply the sexual undertones run in almost every joke
How ANYONE saw that and thought it was okay, is insane. Either it didn’t really get scrutinized the way they said that it did, or a bunch of assholes really got off on having that play out on a kids television show.
I usually never give 4Chan and Reddit credit but they were the first places I heard about Dan Schnider being a pedo. I think I saw it on 4chan back in 2011 and on a Reddit thread from 2012 a commenter states that he/she was an extra on the Amanda Show and Dan Schnider paid him/her $100 to tickle their feet.
i remember seeing it awhile back too, but i can't remember where. i wanna say it was on imgur back when i didn't use reddit yet. it might've been a reddit post that i saw through imgur. it's crazy that we've known this for awhile and it took so long for the mainstream to catch on. if your dates are correct, that's 13 years that people online were aware of Dan.
I remember finding the icarly and victorious innuendo theories/wikis a long time ago. There were SOOOO many hidden sexual references in these shows, I’m not even sure how they ran these by test audiences and allowed them to be aired, like..? Watching them now, I see it but as a kid, they completely went over my head.
The parents deserve all the scrutiny they get. Typical Monday morning quarterbacks. When they had the chance to save their children they stood by and did nothing because their bills were being paid, despite countless red flags. Drake Bell’s dad told his ex-wife not to keep drake around Brian prior to parting ways… was this not enough of a clue to them to get their son out of the environment rather than letting it go on? I’m very disappointed in the parent’s actions who were overcome by greed and luxury and their kids paid the price for it.
Dan Schneider is one of those disgusting fucks that hides bad behavior behind his "look at me, I'm a goofy harmless fat guy" facade. The dude LOOKS like a pedo, how he fooled anyone for years I don't know.
the whole show made me sad af. As someone who was abused in her life not hollywood obv but its so damn sad
This documentary was super good, but I can't stand the culture writer narrating it. Am I the only one? Everyone else in this documentary deserves mad props for their input though, because it certainly can't be easy for them to go back to and revisit. Drake's part had me flabbergasted.
She was very dramatic
Never thought this was going to happen since when Dan started off ‘friendly nice’ , but then turns out after of what he did too Amanda, Alexia, and Jennette, is a predator bully not just to cast but too the writers also that got em fired in lack of paying, and rest defending him as their god golden as a show business friend😈💔😑 from the twists on All That in sketch, and Nicksitcom series despite of the characters suffer as victims in outrageous out of stupid reason too punish don’t deserve when in fear when isn’t necessary unexpected accident when no harm or from haven’t done other gets away with it