NEED TO KNOW
- Kate Gosselin responded to son Collin’s recent TikTok, claiming she “pitted” him and his seven siblings “against each other” amid their estrangement
- She also thanked fans who were supporting her and the portrayal of her parenting on her past TLC reality shows
- Collin recently reiterated his previous public allegations of “physical and emotional” abuse against his mother
Kate Gosselin is addressing her estranged son Collin’s latest claims against her
The mom of eight posted a TikTok titled “Kitchen talk and tips” earlier this week, where she shared a look at her life after a day at work. While responding to fans in the comments, Kate reacted to a screenshot of a recent post in which her son Collin insinuated that his mom was the reason he and his siblings were “forced apart” and “pitted against each other.”
“He knows why.. 😢,” Kate wrote.
She also liked and replied to several messages supporting her amid her estrangement from Collin, 21.
“Looking back now, I can see how you were portrayed as the villain and you weren’t. I apologize for ever thinking that. 🩷,” one user shared.
Kate responded: “Aww I appreciate your words. Forgiven 🥰🥰🥰.”
Another explained that she used to think Kate was “too harsh” on her children, but now sees her as “so intelligent and organized and efficient.”
“I was really trying to do my very best… just a bit overzealous at times,” Kate commented back. “But only bc I cared SO SO much about my kids 🥰.”
When someone asked what she missed most about her days of her TLC show Kate Plus 8, the reality alum said, “I miss our house in Pa. But mainly I miss when the kids were little. Not the stress, just their cuteness. At the time it felt like the days were long.. but in hindsight it sped by. And I’m sad :(“
This came just one day after Collin made a TikTok featuring a throwback photo of himself with his siblings.
The image included the rest of his sextuplets — Alexis, Hannah, Aaden, Leah and Joel — and his older twin sisters Mady and Cara, now 24, when they were younger.“Born to be a team, us against the world,” he wrote across the screen, which had Adele’s 2007 song “Hometown Glory” playing in the background.
The second slide in the post captured Collin wearing sunglasses inside a car with the note: “Forced to do it alone, and wonder every day what our lives could’ve looked like.”
He captioned the post: “Forced apart, pitted against each other. All the fame and money in the world, but what about kids being kids? I will always love them more than anything. The tears I shed behind closed doors, thinking about the memories we could’ve shared. I love you guys.”
Collin has been estranged from his mother, whom he has since made abuse allegations against, for several years.
In response to one comment about him “understanding” Kate more when he ever becomes a parent, he reiterated those claims.“The physical and emotional abuse I was put through, while having to be an animal in her circus on tv,” he began. “Being locked up, isolated, zip tied. Being sent away because I didn’t fit into an equation. Having one visit from her after being completely cut off with no contact at 12 years old, in which the whole visit was her telling me how I deserved the situation I was in because I ‘destroyed our family.’”
“Yeah I’m sorry, but I will never ‘understand’ that,” he continued. “I will break the cycle that she couldn’t.”
The former U.S. Marine also wrote that he hopes to raise children of his own differently from how he was brought up. “I can’t wait to have kids and teach them the importance of siblings. I tell all my friends who have siblings to always value their siblings and hold each other close.”
In September, Collin claimed in an interview with The Sun that Kate abused him starting when he was 8 or 9 years old.
He alleged that she “isolated” him from his seven siblings and that he was “a scapegoat” for his mother’s problems, often taking “the brute end of things.”“My mother had a room built in our unfinished section of the storage basement,” he alleged to the outlet. “She had a room put up with cameras in it, a tiny window in the corner and it was bolt-locked from the outside. It was like a containment room, literally, and it had a mattress on the floor and that’s how I lived.”
Kate’s attorney, Richard Puleo, later defended his client in an interview with Fox News, but declined to comment on the newer claims that Kate physically “isolated” him from his other siblings in a locked room.
“She never wants to comment because she always knows that this gets taken out of context,” Puleo said at the time. “She doesn’t want to comment. Doesn’t need to. The record speaks for itself.”
Kate and her ex-husband Jon Gosselin finalized their divorce in 2009, and Kate was awarded custody of the eight children they share.
In 2016, she sent then 12-year-old Collin to a behavioral health institution in Philadelphia for what she previously stated was “unpredictable and violent behavior.”He left the program two years later, and his father Jon was awarded custody of him and his sister, Hannah. The two siblings graduated from high school in June 2023, and Collin went on to enlist in the U.S. Marines, although he was discharged in August 2023 after training camp.
One of Collin’s sisters, Mady, has also made her own allegations against him, claiming in a July 2023 Instagram post that she no longer speaks to Collin because of his past alleged physical threats toward her.
“I do not owe my allegiance to any person(s) who has physically threatened me and every member of my immediate family (some incidents as recent as last year),” she wrote, in part. “Further, I will never allow someone who has exhibited hateful and even violent behavior toward others based on their racial identity, gender identity, or religious beliefs to be in my life.”