'Jon & Kate Plus 8' Scandal: Nanny's BOMBSHELL Abuse Claims

We have a new twist in the allegations flooding out against Kate Gosling, the mom of a whose parenthood journey was seen by millions of people thanks to reality TV. One of her sons, Colin, claims what was going on behind the scenes was questionable at best and possibly criminal at worst. And now he's not the only one making claims of abuse. Someone else who says they were in the infamous reality house during Colin's childhood says she has his back. We're on the case presented by Law and Crime. I'm Christopher. We have an update on the bombshell accusations being made by Colin Gosling, who is one of the eight in the John and Kate plus eight. Remember the family at the center of the hit reality show. I mean, a family who so many of us thought we knew because of what we saw on television, but in reality, Colin says it was really all a lie. And now a nanny for the family says she is backing up Colin's accusations and we'll get to that here in just a moment. Now this is not the first time that we have heard that things were very different behind the scenes going on in the Gosling house when they were recording their hit reality show in the early 2000s. You might remember this family really skyrocketed the fame thanks to the show John and Kate plus eight, which aired on TLC featured parents John and Kate, their eight kids, a pair of twins, and then a set of sexed haplets. And one of the sexed haplets Colin recently released a memoir called in the shadow of eight surviving the reality of my childhood. In it, he claimed things were much darker behind the scenes than anyone could have imagined. Now back during the summer when Colin announced pre-order details for his book, he posted this on Instagram quote growing up, millions of people watched my life on television. People felt like they knew me. They knew my family. They watched me grow up, but there was so much they never saw. For years, I kept those experiences to myself, some because I was afraid, some because I didn't think anyone would believe me. And some because I just wasn't ready. Writing this book forced me to revisit some of the hardest moments of my life, but it also gave me something I've been searching for for a long time. My voice. This isn't the story. People think they know it's the story I've lived. Now according to Colin, things really took a turn in 2009. That is when John and Kate announced their divorce. Kate was granted primary custody of all eight kids. And they continued doing reality TV, but the new show was called Kate plus eight, because John was no longer in the house. So Colin says that Kate isolated him from his dad and made him sleep in a locked room in a basement. At one point, he claims that Kate dragged him across the room by his earlobe. Now a teacher reportedly saw a swollen ear and then asked him about it. And then they had him talk to a guidance counselor. And when he told the counselor about what he says happened at home, Colin claims that Kate was not happy. And she would eventually go to pull him out of school while his siblings still got to go. In an interview with Good Morning America earlier this month, when this book was released, Colin said, quote, simply put my whole life that I lived was a lie. All the things you see on TV lies. We were redoing takes. It was like cry a little harder, laugh a little louder. And that's what caused me to say, I don't want to be part of this machine anymore. Now there was a 2003 documentary that Vice TV put out that laid out some pretty damning accusations as well. So again, this isn't the first time we've heard it, but it is shocking to hear from a child whose life was put on full display for everyone. And yet he says a lot of it wasn't true. Colin says he actually was often framed on the show as being one of the difficult children. To GMA, he said, I was difficult because I was the only one of my siblings who pushed back against filming and that whole facade my mom spent years building. I was a danger because I could have so easily dismantled that facade. The truth is that my siblings were being overworked and we were being exploited. There was just no adults to say, maybe this isn't okay for children. Now Colin claims that he eventually was sent to an institution where he was given medication. Kate has said in the past that Colin has struggled with mental health issues and that he's been diagnosed with several disorders. Colin, however, claims that he had his own independent psyche valve done and said that he didn't meet the criteria for those disorders. Specific details were not released, however. But now it's not just Colin making these accusations. A former nanny for the family is backing him up. There's a woman who is being identified as Ashley H and she spoke to people magazine and she says she responded to an ad for a nanny in Pennsylvania and she ended up meeting with Kate Gosling. She ended up taking a position as a house cleaner and Phil and Nanny and she told people that she decided to come forward now that Colin has gone public. She told people, quote, she very much outwardly treated Colin different. She 110% abused Colin. It's hard to almost put into words, the specific hate that she had towards Colin. You could just feel it. I saw her grab Colin many, many times. Now according to this nanny, Ashley, Kate had very strict house rules for the children and for the staff. She said, quote, the house was to look unlived in at all times. She would have weekly chores by weekly chores and they would include having a toothpick and going around the edges of the fridge. She wouldn't let the kids do anything. There was never toys out. There was never things out. They couldn't live. Ashley claims one day she opened a drawer of school supplies and found a big red plastic spoon which didn't make sense because Kate was so meticulous. She asked the kids why it was in there and she claims one of the sex tablets replied, oh, that's the spoon mommy uses when she gets mad. Quote, I was like, oh, okay, I can't work here anymore. This really is as bad as I think it is. That red spoon has haunted me for a long time. Ashley reportedly contacted children and youth services on Kate before she left and in his book, Colin says that he learned later in life that multiple CYS reports were allegedly made. The former cleaner and nanny who's now a social worker and mental health advocate went on to say, I ended up getting sick because I started taking it home with me because I didn't have my own kids and I didn't understand how somebody could be so nasty, downright evil and nasty to their own kids. I know for a fact that I was not the only one who did that. I want to use this opportunity to not only bat Colin that his mom was psychologically abusive to him, not to mention the physical. Now for her part, while Kate Goslin has released statements in the past about Colin and his alleged struggles, she's not come out and directly addressed his memoir since his release. However, she has been interacting with followers on tiktok who have offered up encouragement. For example, on a tiktok celebrating her husband's birthday in response to a comment that praised her for making, quote, sacrifices that no mama should have had to make a lone Goslin wrote, while thank you, I needed this encouragement and you are right. I know who I am and my kids know who I truly am. And to me, that's all that matters. Now, there is reportedly a Netflix documentary in the works about what was going on during John and Kate plus eight. Kate now lives in North Carolina. Six of the children appear to have a close relationship with her. Then you have Colin and one of his sisters who want to live with their father, John. Kate Goslin has never faced any sort of criminal abuse charges. Join us now to talk more about this. Mary and Bratja, practice professor of law, temple university, and a former child abuse prosecutor. Thanks as always for being with us along crime. I mean, so many people remember this show from back in the day. How does now you have this nanny coming forward saying that she saw a lot of what Colin is alleging in this book? Like, how does that impact anything maybe legally going forward? So, first of all, hi, Chris. Thanks to you. I'm not sure how impactful the nanny's memory or her coming forward at this point will be. I think perhaps what's more impactful is the fact that she claims to have reported her observations and her concerns to child services when she was recently separated from the family when the events were perhaps more fresh in her mind and closer in time to the observation. So, if anything, I think any records that might exist for that communication in those reports having been made might be more impactful than someone who is kind of joining into a media. I don't want to call it a frenzy, but you know, something that is capturing the attention of viewers and readers in the media currently. Because this isn't the first time that Kate Goslin had been you know, accused of, you know, certainly from the perspective of Colin, he might call it abuse, but you know, she was always seen as like a really strict and tough parent. I was kind of like what the deal was back in the day and then as time has gone on, you've seen, you know, more of these allegations come up. You know, as someone who has prosecuted cases of child abuse and Kate Goslin's not facing any charges, I don't know if she if she will, but just what do you make of his allegations of, I mean, we all saw the show, but clearly from his perspective, there's a lot more going on behind the scenes. Right. So unfortunately, and I don't mean at all to minimize his experiences, his recollections or how they have impacted his life and his upbringing, when we consider recollections like this and words like abuse or allegations that involve the word abuse. We have to perhaps differentiate the recollection of someone who was experiencing it and who may personally or subjectively consider abuse with a more perhaps, even though it's hard to quantify an objective standard for abuse, there is a significant difference in the law between abusive conduct or assaultive conduct and then what the law allows in terms of discipline, discipline for children. So I think you're absolutely right that Gothlin's reputation may proceed her in terms of the rules that she kept in place in her house, the rules that she had for how her house was to appear and where or what her children were allowed to do, either on camera or off camera, but I do think there is a pretty wide divide between what is abusive conduct and what is considered permissible, child rearing or child discipline that is really within the sole decision making of a parent or caregiver. Because I wonder in like a, you know, certainly parenting in general has changed a lot over, you know, generations, right? Like you have previous generations where like the idea of like spanking with something far more common than like if a parent does that today, that could be seen as criminal in some cases, you know, and I'm sure for as like people who are, you know, prosecuting these types of cases, like you may have, like in this case, I mean, it was 15 years ago and he's coming forward and alleging something that maybe if it happened today and you know, he claimed that he was in a small holding cell in the house, you know, we've seen stories where police will uncover those types of things and it's, and it's these terrible cases of child abuse. But then when you look at some of the allegations that he's making, like people could look at that and say in the context of 2002 or whatever it was, like that's strict parenting. And I'm sure that there are also a lot of examples where someone will come into a prosecutor's office and then kind of years later, you know, make these types of allegations, like how do you handle those? Like how does a prosecutor handle that when some of these claims come in? Yeah, so that's something that has been referred to as a delayed disclosure. So if there were experiences, if there were assault or other traumas that were inflicted at one point in time, and then there was a significant delay between the actual perpetration of those potential crimes or those alleged crimes, and when the report is actually made to authority, that's typically what we refer to as a delayed report or a delayed disclosure. They are not uncommon in child abuse cases, that is typically something that will come to light when someone either has received treatment or has been able to reflect on their experiences from childhood and be able to perceive them through the eyes of an adult as problematic as abusive or assaultive because unfortunately for children, children who are surrounded by abusive environments and children who quite frankly don't know any other environment other than a traumatic or abusive one do not oftentimes realize or appreciate what's happening to them is wrong or violent or perhaps even criminal. So the delayed disclosure cases are not something unusual in child abuse cases. They of course present challenges in terms of being able to prosecute because as you can imagine with the passage of time also means a weakening of certain memories or a mudding of certain memories, it also means that there is no longer physical evidence if there was any to begin with of potential abuse or assault, there wouldn't be bruises, there wouldn't be broken bones, there wouldn't be other indications physically speaking about what may have transpired. So while these cases involving delayed disclosure of abuse are certainly viable and they are tried all over the country on a regular basis, they do require an additional layer of patience and an investigation and being able to piece together a story from testimony solely and from credibility when certain other pieces of cooperation that we might expect like physical evidence or even records, contemporaneous records of reports might not exist any longer. Well, I look at so there was a child use services investigation that was apparently done back in the day and then Ashley H who is this nanny, I'm just pulling it up here who spoke to people magazine. She was the one who she claims called CYS on Kate Goslin back in the day saying quote, "I ended up getting sick because I started taking it home with me because I didn't have my own kids and I didn't understand how somebody could be so nasty, downright evil and nasty to their own kids." It only sounds bad for Kate Goslin there and Ashley then adds, "I know for a fact that I was not the only one who did that. I want to use this opportunity to not only back calling that his mom was psychologically abusive to him not to mention the physical." But at the same time as bad as that sounds like CYS apparently investigated and they didn't find any evidence and now like years later how impactful is that part of the story where like if someone is saying like, "Hey, Kate Goslin should be investigated for child abuse." Well, apparently she was investigated back in the day and no matter what you think about Kate Goslin, like they didn't find anything. I think you're absolutely right, that is the challenge. We have ostensibly an investigation that was undertaken contemporaneous with the report, so undertaken years ago. Of course those records are sealed for the protection of all the parties involved so we don't know specifically who reported or who reported what on what particular dates we don't know what results of the investigation there were or what observations were made, what findings were made on the part of the investigators from the child protective services. So there are a lot of unanswered questions, at least that we from our vantage point from the public still have, but again, if this were a case that would that would ever proceed to a criminal investigation or even a criminal prosecution, the fact that there was an investigation undertaken however many years ago and the fact that there was perhaps a social worker assigned and that social worker perhaps conducted their investigation and then closed the investigation for either insufficiency or finding that the reports did not amount to abusive behavior. If this were a criminal case, I think that that is evidence that a dispense would seek to introduce to tell the fact finder that listen, this delayed disclosure and this investigation which is now being undertaken or this prosecution which is now being undertaken years later could have been affected, could have been pursued however many years ago when all of these instances were fresh in everyone's mind when the investigation was contemporaneous with the report, but that didn't happen and there's a reason it didn't happen and it didn't happen because of the possibility of the evidence because there just was an insufficiency in terms of the findings of the investigators. So again, we are a long way from seeing this ever go to court and go to court certainly in the criminal context, but if this were a case that did that the evidence of that prior investigation I think would be relevant to a defense to say there was a report made, nothing was acted on it, why? Because it was nothing there to begin with. And I'm certainly not trying to discredit anything Colin is alleging in the book because it sounds like it was just a very traumatic childhood. The question is like are we talking about a criminal case against Kate Goslin and I also think of the fact of there's this divorce between John and Kate and then John goes his way and then Colin kind of aligned himself with John and then I believe one of his sisters did and then you have six children who still seem to have a good relationship with their mom because I can't imagine if you're a prosecutor you're trying to figure out everything about these people like if a case were to come in I mean even go back to like the CYS case back in the day and it's like you're trying to figure out like is this a case of a son who is upset with his mom because he's living with his dad or is this like truly a case like how does a prosecutor or even a social worker go through this and try to make a decision and I even think like generally speaking I mean you think of the workload that social workers deal with on a regular basis and they're doing this over and over and over again like how does like an investigation like that work where you're trying to figure out you know who these people are and who's really telling the truth. So Chris that is certainly part of the challenge of a delayed disclosure case because you are building a case on essentially the words and the memories and the testimony of all those involved and you're trying to piece it together not only with what they personally recollect but what may have been memorialized in the records and what was not memorialized in the records. So when you're investigating all of these years later, you are in SAS going back to those initial reports to child protective services, but you're also looking at things like school records, you're looking at things like the pleatings in the family court case where the divorce proceeding happened. You're looking at custody arrangements, you're looking at statements that were made on the record from the children at the time concerning which parent they felt more comfortable with and why in the reasons for those statements, you're looking at even medical records. You're looking at how often the children went pediatrician, what was reported to pediatrician, even though certain records of mental health treatment are considered background, they are considered sealed and so protected for the privacy and for the benefit of the patient. Unfortunately, in a case like this, the fact that Colin did receive mental health treatment and was, I believe, hospitalized for a period of time, may also factor into the fact-finding process. It would factor into any potential state of mind or frame of mind that he detestifying from and arguably, again, if this were a criminal case, it might even go to his bias or his interest in the outcome of the case because in some instances, I could see an argument from a defense to say he's got an axe to grind. He has a grudge that's been held against his mother for all of these years and this is an attempted retribution. I could imagine a world where that argument is made, but you really are trying to piece together a story from years and years ago, again, based on the passage of time, the lapse of the memory and records that may or may not have ever been memorialized. Could Kate have, if she is someone who is a strict parent and that's it, and she had a son who had issues, I know he was diagnosed, though he says he was wrongly diagnosed, but he was diagnosed with several different types of mental health disorders and then there was talk about mental health issues that he had growing up, even though he says that was kind of just like being put upon him by his mom. Would she have a civil case against her son if she really wanted it, especially after this book and all the allegations that have been made over the years? So for a libel or a flander cause of action, for false statements to have been made public, so there is a different calculus because Kate Goslin is considered a public figure. She's not necessarily a public official, but she is a public figure, she's in the public eye. So there is a different standard of what falsehood needed to have been published or needed to be put into the public discourse about her. For a civil case, for either libel or flander, truth is an ultimate defense. So it would be, again, if she wanted to bring a cause of action, if she said that my son put into the public discourse false information about me, if friends would be everything I said, everything I put out either in writing or in interviews and spoken form is the truth. And here's my basis for that, my recollections, my diary entries, things that I told my counselors at the time, things that I told social workers who were investigating, things that I disclosed to teachers, things that I disclosed to my nanny or to my other parent at the time. So again, all of that would kind of open the flood dates to having anyone with knowledge, anyone to whom these disclosures were made at any point in time, available to say these, this is the corroborating information that exists for these claims. Colin has truth as a defense, and then it would come down to a fact finder as to who to believe. Because really like the discovery process in some of those cases can be, you know, with wherever the truth lies, like pretty damning when it comes to some of the evidence that could be on her, like when you talk about a civil case, like you really have to like lay it all out. And I know like Colin had kind of made comments in the past about his mom saying that she wouldn't sue him because that would be something he says would be incredibly damning to her. So it sounds like he would he's been well advised on what his potential response would be if that ever did give rise to a cause of action. So it sounds like he's alluding to a defense of truth. That truth is an absolute defense in those circumstances and that it would at least in his opinion, it sounds like what he's alluding to is opening the flood gates for all of the information that might be even more detrimental to his mother's reputation. And would she necessarily want that information coming to light? It sounds like that is the suggestion that he's making. Yeah, I mean certainly shocking allegations in this book, this memoir, Kate Austin, though she is not facing any criminal charges in connection to how she raised her kids, Marion Bratcha, practice professor of law, temple university, always great to have you on long crime. Thanks for helping us break this story down. Thank you, Chris. Good to see you. That will do it for on the case presented by law and crime. I'm Chris Stewart. We'll see you next time.