While "Jon & Kate Plus 8" star Collin Gosselin spent more than 20 months in a behavioral institution, he celebrated birthdays and holidays alone, as he watched dozens of kids come and go. As he entered eighth grade, he faced a sociocultural dilemma: he hadn't heard of AirPods and didn't know what a Snapchat streak was. "I was this awkward kid," Gosselin tells USA TODAY. "I didn't know anything. That's where I really had to play catch up."
Before Collin Gosselin entered Fairmount Behavioral Health system, audiences knew him as one of eight rambunctious siblings on "Jon & Kate Plus 8." Cameras documented his early adolescence on the popular TLC show, and his parents Jon and Kate later rehashed their family drama on social media and in the tabloids.
In Gosselin's memoir, "In the Shadow of Eight: Surviving the Reality of My Childhood," he tells his story on his own terms. Gosselin, a contestant on Fox's "Special Forces: World's Toughest Test," gives a raw, unfiltered take alleging he faced isolation from his siblings, physical abuse and verbal attacks that left emotional scars. The reality-TV star, now estranged from his mother, details his runaway attempt, his basement bedroom that locked from the outside and his treatment inside a behavioral institution.
"I knew that there was something abnormal about my life that needed to be talked about," he tells USA TODAY. "As an adult, it just clicked and it was finally time to do what little Collin always wanted to do."
Here are some of the biggest revelations from the reality-TV star's memoir, based on a pre-released copy reviewed by USA TODAY, from the moment behavioral facility staffers sedated him to his abrupt departure from a Marines training program.
Fairmount Behavioral Health system did not respond to calls and requests for comment. Kate Gosselin's representatives did not responds to requests for comment.
Collin Gosselin describes harsh discipline, ear-pulling
Collin Gosselin alleges his motherKate Gosselin took a different approach to disciplining him and his seven siblings. Collin, in a chapter titled "What Happened to Your Ear?," remembers moments when she would grab his ear and drag him across the room. He accuses Kate of spanking him and smacking him hard enough that the side of his face bruised. He says he learned to angle away from her, in order to anticipate the next blow.
"I don't think putting your hands on your kid on the daily is what I would consider discipline," Collin says. "It's not doing anything in the brain of a child besides damaging it."
While sitting in an elementary school classroom, a teacher noticed his bruised ear and escorted him to the school counselor where he described what happened to him. When a Children and Youth Services representatives later visited their home, Collin recalls shrinking himself and denying any negative experiences at home, writing "If I say yes, I'm dead."
Collin Gosselin says mom zip-tied him in basement bedroom
His mother later hired a contractor to erect a wall in the basement, Collin alleges in the book, creating a room with an air mattress. He has previously discussed the basement bedroom, and wrote most days he spent 70% of his time there. It locked from the outside, he alleges, requiring him to ask for permission to leave the room or use the bathroom. His mother also installed two cameras inside the room, which she used to monitor him when she stepped out of the house, he says.
The book offers new information about an escape attempt at age 11, where he pushed his twin mattress to the wall, crawled out of a window and started to run. After realizing he had "nowhere else to go," he turned back. He says that going back to the place where you're "unsafe" was one of "one of the hardest things to do." After he returned, he offers vivid detail of the moment Kate dragged him by his ear to the room, wrapped zip ties around his arms and ankles, which he previously told theU.S. Sun, cut the lights and walked out. “You’re a burden, Collin!" he writes his mother told him. "You’re a burden to this family!”
Collin Gosselin says he felt 'imprisoned' in behavioral institution
Following the incident, Collin writes he was admitted into Fairmount Behavioral Health System just before his 12th birthday in May 2016. Ahead of his mother's one-off visit, he excitedly made origami gifts for each of his siblings. During the visit, she detailed his siblings' birthday cakes, talked about holiday celebrations later adding that he wasn't going home and that "You broke our family,” he alleges in the book.
"When I think back to that, I was imprisoned as a child and I'd see all these kids come and go and I try to make friends with them, and then they'd leave," he says.
He also claims Fairmount staff behaved aggressively. After Collin pounded on a doctor's office, demanding to know why he was there, he alleges staff members restrained him and sedated him. In an attempt to get out, he later scribbled a letter with crayon to his father, asking another kid to deliver it. After spending more than 20 months at the institution, he writes he was transferred to a residential program, got in contact with his father and later began living with him in 2018.
Collin Gosselin receives results of medical evaluation
In the summer of 2023, he began a monthslong Marines training program. Amid his training, his mother made a July 2023 Instagram post where she alleged he had "multiple psychiatric diagnoses" and for the safety of her family, she placed him in an institution. She wrote she was also influenced by doctors following an outburst he had involving "his use of a weapon." Following her explosive post, Collin alleges a Navy doctor discharged him from the program after learning about his bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. He has denied the claims and clarified he had no reported psychological issues, according to a October 2023 medical evaluation.
"What really may have ignited that flame was everything that happened with the Marines," he says about writing his memoir. "That was the last straw with a dream that my mom took from me. I was like, 'This is it. It's time to tell my story.'"
Gosselin, a junior at Penn State, tells USA TODAY that after he graduates he plans to reenlist.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Collin Gosselin says mom locked him in a basement 70% of the time
