Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 989 | Nickelodeon Has a Predator Problem

Episode Date: April 22, 2024

Today we discuss HBO's recent Nickelodeon documentary "Quiet on Set" that details alleged and proven instances of child abuse in the child-acting industry and specifically at the kids' network Nickelodeon. The series highlights the careers of Amanda Bynes, who famously struggled with substance abuse and mental health issues after she stopped acting, and Drake Bell, who has now come out with his own shocking and tragic testimony of being abused by a Nickelodeon dialogue coach. What does this mean for the acting industry at large? What should parents do if their children want to get into entertainment, and do kids have a place at all as the household breadwinner? --- Timecodes: (00:43) Intro to Nickelodeon documentary (08:50) Dan Schneider / Amanda Bynes (19:55) Questionable “jokes” in show (36:05) Jason Handy and Brian Peck (38:30) Drake Bell (1:00:40) Protecting kids --- Today's Sponsors: A’del — Try A'del's hand-crafted, artisan, small-batch cosmetics and use promo code ALLIE 25% off your first time purchase at AdelNaturalCosmetics.com We Heart Nutrition — nourish your body with research-backed ingredients in your vitamins at WeHeartNutrition.com and use promo code ALLIE for 20% off. Cozy Earth — go to CozyEarth.com and use promo code 'RELATABLE' at checkout to save 35% off your order! --- Relevant Episodes: Ep 714: The Balenciaga Story is Even Worse Than You Think https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/relatable-with-allie-beth-stuckey/id1359249098?i=1000587809431 --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise – use promo code 'ALLIE10' for a discount: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Quiet on set, the dark side of kids TV reveals the pedophilic predation happening at Nickelodeon in the late 90s, early 2000, and extending even years after that, we are going to dive into the details of this documentary as well as draw out lessons from it that I think we all can learn. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Goody Ranchers. Go to Go to Ranchers.com. Use code Ali and check out this good ranchers.com code alley. Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Monday. Okay, as promised, several weeks ago at this point, we are going to talk about quiet on set, the dark side of kids TV. This is a documentary about Nickelodeon on HBO Max, I think it is. And it delves into the corruption at the network and the cover-up of how. exact some higher-ups and some employees of Nickelodeon treated children and the sexual attention that was on set and the sexual innuendos that were very disturbingly seemingly placed into these kids' shows. And so the documentary, the series highlights the testimonies of several actors. who are now grown up, who talk about the experiences that they had and even some staffers

who 20 years ago were working on set with some of these predatory higher-ups and what their stories were. And it reveals a lot, not just what happened at Nickelodeon, what happened to these kids, but really what can happen to children in the entertainment industry in general, even when parents are involved, when we look at the multiple pressures that are incorporated when kids become stars. And also, I think it gives us a lot of insight into even today's version of creating child stars when we have mom influencers and family influencers who are using their kids commercially who are making money off of their kids experiences. I think a lot of the same pressures and dangers and predation are possible in like modern, more modern day

kind of kids celebrity culture similar to how it was when Nickelodeon and Disney were first starting. So we're going to delve into all of that and look at a lot of the different lessons that I think that we can draw even particularly as Christians from this documentary. I'm going to rely a lot on producer Bree. She also watched the series. She's got her own insight and commentary on it. So we'll give you some summaries and she and I will kind of go back and forth and we'll insert some of our commentary on it. So here's the kind of summary that we have in addition to what I just told you.

So prominent Nickelodeon producer and show creator Dan Schneider, included jokes that would clearly be considered sexual or even pornographic to adults, but were not understood by the children performing them at the time. He also created, it is alleged, a toxic and abusive work environment for the adults who worked with him. During his leadership, Nickelodeon saw two pedophiles arrested during a three-month span. One of the pedophiles arrested was Dialogue Coach in Hollywood Insider Brian Pack. We will be talking about him quite a bit. At the time of the arrest, the victim's identity was not revealed because he was a minor.

But now we know it was Drake and Josh star Drake Bell. He revealed that he was the victim of Brian Peck's ongoing sexual predation as just a 15-year-old boy. So this is very dark and very disturbing. But I think it's so important for us to know what is going on, probably not just in this. industry, but in all industries that involve vulnerable people, children are vulnerable people. They are absolutely the most marginalized class of people in the world. They are most vulnerable to sexual predation, to abuse, to molestation, sexual abuse, of course, murder, abortion, because they are mentally and physically compared to adults,

helpless and they require a lot of protection. And when protection is not there, they are very likely to be victims, even when, and maybe especially when they are elevated to stardom. So when I started watching this, I wasn't, I don't know if I was surprised necessarily, but there is kind of like a weird feeling when you are watching this. shows that are like deep back into your memory hole. You're watching them on this documentary, like all that, Keenan and Kell, the Amanda show, all these Nickelodeon shows that I remember watching when I was, when I was little, some of them like all that were, you know, it was when I was really little. And then some of the later shows like the Amanda show was, I don't know, I don't

know how many years younger I am that Amanda Bind, a few years younger. So I don't know, maybe like 10 or so, maybe eight to 10. 10 when the Amanda show was out and all these shows that you kind of have fond memories of that you remember sitting at home and watching and thinking, wow, it would be so cool to do that or, wow, these are people that I want to emulate or they have a great personality, they have great style, they make me laugh, you think that their life is perfect, how awesome would it be to be a TV star when you're a kid that's so amazing or you think the guys that are on there are cute, like all that stuff that kind of uh helps shape your childhood or at least played a part in your

childhood memories and so seeing that there was actually a very dark and disturbing underbelly um under these very seemingly innocent shows was like an odd feeling for me. Bree did you watch like growing up did you watch Nickelodeon? Yeah, Nickelodeon and Disney Channel. I, Drake and Josh was kind of like the show for me. That was like the golden spot where I think I was the perfect age to be watching a gloomian. So yeah, you're a couple years younger than me. And so I think that I was like just pass that.

I don't remember watching Drake and Josh. Like I never watched all that or Keenan and Kell. But I remember the end of the Amanda show. I remember Drake and Josh. And so this. I remember the songs. Yeah. And the opening.

Keenan and Kell was good. Ah, here it goes. That's how they started, I think. Yeah, there's some good stuff. And I just like watching this, especially because a lot of this series is very like Drake Bell heavy. Yeah. It like really, it's a hard watch. It was a hard watch because that was a big part of my childhood.

Yeah. And thoughts that she or like memories and scenes that you haven't thought of in like 15, 20 years. I'm rushing back. And you know, I thought it was interesting. I had never, before we get into the heavier stuff, I never thought about it like this, but when they talk about Dan Schneider, this awful guy, who was obviously also creative and had some good ideas, coming up with the idea of having SNL except for kids. That's really what all that was. And same with Keenan and Cal in the Amanda show. Like sketch comedy for children didn't exist. That's not something I've considered. It still doesn't exist today. That was very unique. And they found a lot. of very talented people at a young age because I would say most kids just don't have the comedic timing or ability to do that. And so I can see why those ideas really took off and why he felt a sense of superiority and power and arrogance because he had created this very new thing.

Yeah. So super interesting. I had never really thought about it like that. And he did. Dan Schneider, who was, they described him as a guy who wasn't really the cool guy growing up. up. He was very overweight, certainly not very physically attractive. He got into comedy, though, and he kind of rose to prominence pretty quickly, charming. People really liked him. They liked his humor. And when he created, helped create some of these shows. And especially the Amanda show, I think they said that was the first show where his name was listed as the creator. It very quickly, I guess, went to his head. And a lot of the staff, described him as being a toxic boss, very, very disturbing descriptions of the things that he would

make his writing staff do specifically on the Amanda show. And I know that this is going to be disturbing, but a lot of this is going to be disturbing. So I just want to like give you an idea of who this person was. This was not, Dan Schneider was not just someone who was a difficult boss to work for or who had high expectations or who was maybe kind of sexist, but he was really disgusting. First of all, he very blatantly and openly discriminated against the female writers and how he paid them and how he treated them. But he would also openly sexualize them. There's this one scene where the writing staff is remembering when he told one of the female writers to tell a story, to convey a story. to convey a story to the staff, but to do so like she was being raped.

So that's the kind of guy that he was. He would invite someone into his office and he would happen to be looking at pornography at the time. He would degrade the women in his office by saying things that were objectifying or sexual to him. And that's not even maybe the most disturbing part about Dan Schneider. Dan Schneider was also very close with the children that he worked with, specifically Amanda Binds. I don't know if you have seen pictures or videos of Amanda Binds recently, but she doesn't look like the same person that she did when she was on, for example, of course the Amanda Show, but like she's the man.

That's really the last thing I could remember her in that she was just like this beautiful, bubbly, all-American teenage girl. And now we can put a picture up on YouTube. She looks and sounds like a completely different person. She looks drugged out. She looks zoned out. And through this first episode, you see that she had a very, very weirdly close relationship to this grown, gross man, Dan Schneider. And there's videos of them behind the scenes. very physically touchy. And on all that, a lot of the other actors said, you know, there were times

where Dan and Amanda, when she's like, we're talking like nine years old, would be off by themselves and no one would know what was going on. What did you think about that? They show a clip also. I don't know who filmed it, but of them in a hot tub together, just the two of them when she's like very, very young. And then later it's revealed that he helped her basically Amanda. herself from her parents. So she started dating this older boy and didn't, you know, had issues with her parents when she was like 16, 17. And, and she ran to him because that was the relationship that she had and he helped her. So, yeah, I don't know. I mean, there aren't the same allegations as there are for certain other people that are mentioned in the stock that we'll get to for him.

But something weird was going on there. Yeah. And we don't know exactly how that affects her. Yes. A normal healthy man is drawing those boundaries and does not even want anyone to think there is a hint of an inappropriate relationship with a child. And so he would be going above and beyond to keep everything above board. But he had a secret relationship with her. And we don't know exactly what happened behind closed doors, but there never should have been closed doors, period. And the weird thing is also I think with him, although now it kind of, I'm thinking it kind of follows the same pattern as Drake Bell. I don't want to get too ahead of ourselves. But we first hear that Amanda Binds' dad was very involved in her career. So the laugh factory was a comedy club

where people could go up and they could, you know, do their comedy sketch or they could do their stand-up routine and they could possibly get discovered. They could get hired for different gigs. And when Amanda was very young, she went up and she did her comedy sketch. She did her stand up, which I saw a clip of it. They played it. I mean, it was incredible for being as like young as she was, eight, nine, ten years old. I mean, just her facial expressions, her physical comedy, her tone of voice was just amazing. And Dan Schneider saw this and saw, okay, she's super talented. And then basically got together with her dad. And they crafted her career. And they crafted her career. So it was, he was very hands-on and very involved. I think it's odd that his hands-on and present

as her dad's dad was that he didn't step in and say, okay, but why is this man, why is this man spending so much time with my daughter? Why is she hanging on him? Why is she hugging him? Why do they have their arms around each other? Why are they in the hot tub together? If he was so present and involved, it's strange to me that the dad wouldn't have stepped in and say, eh, this is too far. Yeah, I wondered that too with the Drake Bell situation, which we'll get to. But I also just, this isn't making excuses for it, of course. But I wonder what the dynamics, like how different the dynamics feel like when they're

in that environment where she's doing that all the time. That's like her job as a child. And if he sees it as like, this is like her uncle. this is a family member. This should be normal. Like he would never hurt her. It's like they've gotten into a position where I feel like it's forced trust almost with this person who is not trustworthy, of course. But yeah. Yeah, I just wonder, I don't know.

I don't know. Yeah, I was thinking about that when they were interviewing one of the people. I can't remember if it was one of the kids that had been on all that or if it was one of the journalists that they were using for insights. but someone mentioned something about these kids being the financial providers for their families. And that's, yes, of course, that's something I had thought about. Like I read Jeanette McCready's book a couple years ago where she talks about how her mom was so driven to make sure that she was famous and pushed her into an eating disorder and also sexually abused her. It was very toxic relationship there, which also seems to sometimes be a pattern in this whole industry. with the parents, but they depended upon her fame, her success as a child star, for the stability

of their family. And I think that was probably the case for a lot of these kids. And when you become the sole provider for your family or the main provider for your family, you have incredible pressure on you as a 9, 10, even younger than that, or a teenager, whatever it is, your success is dependent upon you staying in the good graces of Dan Schneider of all of the execs. And so if you're a child, you're certainly not going to say anything because not only do you not want to get in trouble by your bosses, you don't want to get in trouble by your parents. If your parents are coming in and saying, you better do what they say because we're not going to be able to pay our bills. And you don't, to hear that, what you want as a child is to please

people. You want to please the people in your life. You want to hear praise. You want to be accepted. And so you are basically willing to do whatever it takes to keep everyone happy. And to keep the roof over your parents' head, what a cruel burden to place on a person. I'm not saying every parent of a child actor is like that. I'm not saying that. But I'm sure that that is the case in a lot of, in a lot of cases. And the parents are then financially incentivized to stay out of the way. Yeah. Because they're told this is just how it is. And if I say something, they're going to find someone else. My child isn't going to get a job here. Then they're not going to be able to get a job anywhere. Then we're not going to make our mortgage payment. We're not going to make our car payment.

And so you are incentivized to keep your mouth shut and to drown out every instinct of protection that you have because, oh, well, it'll be fine and this is just how it is. And that's, Scary. Yeah. And some of that, I think some of it comes from a good place for some of these parents. Because, like, again, with Drake Bell, his, he want, Drake wanted to be an actor. He, like, that was his dream. And he, it's very clear in these interviews. He loved it. And so I'm sure his parents saw that and we're like, we want this for him. We want him to enjoy. He's good at it. Yeah. And he's good at it. He's talented and he loves it. So why would they want him to ruin that? you know, if that's how they thought about it. So, yeah. Okay, we'll get more to that because I know we keep alluding to Drake and not everyone knows exactly what we're talking about.

So let me kind of back up a little bit and go through some of the other accusations of Dan Schneider that we saw in the first episode of this series. So around 2017, videos of past Schneider behavior on set started surfacing along with people publicly questioning the inappropriate content and the sexual innuendos that were included in his show. this is one of the good things, the power of social media, that it's really like the democratization of media, that it's not relying upon a journalist at a news outlet to report these things that really anyone can. Anyone can take a clip from one of these videos, can post it on X, and then it goes viral, and now everyone's talking about it. And then a journalist is forced to talk about it.

Because it's, you know, it gets kind of sticky with all of the different media conglomerations and whom is... you know, whom is owned by who. And so it gets kind of confusing when you look at all of the different partnerships in media and what journalists can really be honest about what went on behind the scene. So this is one benefit to social media, that social media can actually spread a message that the regular mainstream media can't. And that's exactly what's happened as people have dug into the inappropriate gags and see. that were in these Nickelodeon shows that Dan Schneider was a part of over the years. And so here are a few examples of that.

It's not one. And sometimes there were scenes where there was a prop that was like, What's he doing? That could be a sexual innuendo. Those are good ones. Dan went overboard and just zoomed in too often on the feet. Wow, they're really soft. zoomed in too often on the tongue licking things or something that just went too far.

Yeah, there were a lot more examples too. I would say like even more disturbing examples. And they talked to some of the actors that had been in all that in different shows when they were children and they were thinking back to some of the things that they were made to do, some of the outfits that they were made to wear. Some of the scenes that they showed, for example, of Ariana Grande. definitely too old for whatever show she was in. What was the Disney show? I didn't even know she was Disney Star or sorry, Nickelodeon. Yeah. It was victorious. I was a little too old for it too, but yeah, I was shocked. Yeah, some of the things that they show her having to do in her scenes were very obviously sexual. I mean, you can just tell that a porn sick individual, aka Dan Schneider

and the other people, I guess, that he was working with, were creating these scenes. And he knew that they were going to fly under the radar of most kids watching it, but he enjoyed it. I think he enjoyed the humiliation of these kids. He enjoyed imagining them sexually. And he enjoyed making them do degrading things without them realizing that they were doing sexually degrading things that he had seen in pornography. This is true in all that. This is true in Zoe 101. This was true. In victorious, as we just said, Sam and Cat, I think I Carly, several shows included these very weirdly sexual scenes that he says, of course, oh no, they were just, they were just innocuous. For example, one of the writers, the female writers, who was really

mistreated and actually ended up suing Dan Schneider for creating a toxic workplace, she was on the Amanda show. And one of the names of the, one of the characters that Amanda played was Penelope Taint. And all right, we don't have to give a graphic description of like what part of the body that is. But this writer brought this up and said, well, isn't that like in reference to this like a private part of a male body? And Dan Schneider was like, yeah, just don't tell anyone that. So it was acknowledged. It was known that this is that there is another, that there is a meaning. to that word and that he chose that name. He could have chosen Smith. He could have chosen any name. And yet he chose that particular name and he ran with it. And even when the execs at Nickelodeon said, no, that's kind of a weird name. He was like, what are you talking about? And so we actually see several times the Dan Schneider is an excellent gas lighter. So when people ask him, okay, what about these inappropriate jokes? What do you do with these accusations? He's basically like, ooh, you sick pervert.

what are you talking about? Here's SOT2. All these jokes that you're speaking of that the show covered over the past two nights, every one of those jokes was written for a kid audience because kids thought they were funny and only funny. Okay? Now we have some adults looking back at them 20 years later through their lens and they're looking at them and they're saying, you know, I don't think that's appropriate for a kid show. And I have no problem with that. If that's how anyone feels,

let's cut those jokes out of the show. Yeah. So that is an amazing PR response. It is the perfect combination of pushing off responsibility while taking a little bit of responsibility, acting a little bit humble and contrite, while ultimately saying there was nothing wrong with what I did.

and it's manipulation. I personally think he is just a manipulative person. He's been in this industry for a long time. He's not stupid. He's a master of writing and messaging. That's how he's gotten to the place that he has. That's how he's become as successful as he has. That's how he's gotten these kids, I think, personally, to have a relationship with him.

He's no dummy. And so, of course, he seems contrite, invulnerable and honest there, but I'm not buying it. I don't know. What do you think, Bree? No, of course not. I'm not buying it either. But I also, there was a scene from Zoe 101 that one of the girls who was in, I think the first couple seasons, Alexa, her name is Alexa. She is explaining this backpack scene where something, something that prop is squirted onto Jamie Lynn Spears's face.

And she's explaining how awkward it felt for her, because she's the one who's like squirting it on her face. And the whole idea of their kids, they don't understand the innuendos here. She says in this interview that the boys were behind the camera, the young boys who were actors on the show, and they were saying what it looked like. So even if the girls didn't know, the boys were saying it already. So they knew. It's so ignorant to say that these preteens, especially preteen boys, would have no clue what their. insinuating with some of these props and scenes and stuff. So it just seems like Dan Schneider, he obviously enjoyed particularly the humiliation of women and girls because the scenes that we see, because that's not the only scene like that where that kind of action was taken.

That was also true on all that. They happened to women. I'm not saying that boys weren't also degraded like the big nose, what that we were kind of referencing earlier that. looked like male genitalia that the boy on all that was made to wear. But when it comes to those kinds of shots, the squirting in the face, it seemed to always happen to girls, the female writers being sexualized and being told to simulate, being victims of rape in his writing room, he got off on degrading women. And of course, children are easy to humiliate. They're easy to embarrass because they don't know what's going. I really, I can't think of very many things

more evil than that, taking advantage of someone's naivete, of their innocence for your own lustful pleasure. It, yeah, there, yeah, yeah, there's a lot that I could say in justified anger to that, but needless to say, it's evil and it is disgusting. And the only comfort that I have is that Unless he repents and he saved by Christ, he's going to spend forever in hell. Okay, let's move on because we can talk about this for three hours. But let's talk about episode two. This is hidden in plain sight. So episode two begins by telling the story of a girl who received a role as an extra on the Amanda show.

She was later sent nude pictures by an adult staff member. This pedophile was arrested in 2003. three months later, another staff member was arrested for child sexual assault from the same show at the same network. The episode also looks at the trajectory of Amanda Bind, outgrowing Nickelodeon and Dan Schneider's role in her family rift. Bree, do you want to tell us a little bit more about this episode? Yeah, so this was actually this first part where they're talking about this girl who was an extra on the Amanda show. Very disturbing. And she's not interviewed.

Maybe she didn't want to be. I don't know. Her mom is interviewed. And so her mom's telling the story of getting her. It was her dream to be on the show. She finally got on the show. And it was a PA, a production assistant, who was sort of, his job was to like wrangle the extra, the kids, the extras.

And they were separated from their parents when they came on to the set. Their parents were told to wait outside. And he exchanged phone numbers with the kids and emails. And he would just be emailing them. And for months after he was emailing this girl who, I can't remember. remember her age, maybe like 10 or 11. He was just emailing her like they were pen pals. And then one day she got a picture in her email. And she was just like so embarrassed. Of course. That's traumatizing. She'd probably never, of course, never seen that before. And then I mean, it's basically like being

visually, sexually, sexually assaulted. Can't get that image out of your head. Yeah. Yeah. And it bothered me because in the interview her mom says that she did not report it because she was afraid that she would get in trouble for not intervening before that. Oh, that's why she was. And it probably also had to do with like her daughter's opportunities and things like that. No, actually, because this girl, that was the end. That was the end of her acting career. She, I don't know exactly if it was her who was like, I don't want to do this anymore or her mom.

but there was no acting after that. Okay. So it really was selfish on the part of the mom. That's the sense I got. I felt weird by it. But yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So again, like on Amanda Binds, we don't have that much more information about what exactly was going on between her and Dan Schneider. But we do. we actually have a picture of her in court back in 2013. She was detained for mental health evaluation after allegedly starting to fire in a neighbor's driveway. And this is like not that long after she was in some like pretty prominent movies.

Like for example, hairspray that was in 2007. And so something happened during. that time that I think probably has to, I mean, it could have to do with a lot of things. We don't know what was going on in her home, but it can't have helped that she had such a close friendship in some kind of physically affectionate relationship with a grown man when she was a child. What else did this episode reveal about that? It didn't dive into it too much, to be honest, aside from what I just mentioned about her, the situation. with her parents and him kind of wedging himself in between that.

And eventually she got emancipated from them. I don't know if it was because of that, but he certainly helped do that. And so, yeah, he was sort of like, I know there was a lot of tension toward the end. He started to show like a more, a less kids show for Amanda when she was growing up called What I Like About You in 2002. That was on, I think, WB. and after that show, I think that was the end of their relationship. But who knows what actually happened to her or if he did something to her or she's very candid now about her drug use and relying on alcohol and drugs to probably numb some of what happened to her.

But I don't know if we'll ever get like the full story. Yeah. Well, because she seems like she just, I don't even know if she has the ability to bring back those memories. in talking a coherent way. Again, if you watch her videos, like she's really not coherent. She's not there. She's not with it. Her entire self looks different.

I've heard some people, I've seen some people say this is a clone. This is not really Amanda Binds. I think she's just a very unwell traumatized person. And again, I'm not blaming it all on Dan Schneider. Obviously, the parents play a role here. But that kind of pattern of predation of driving a wedge between the parents and your victim. I mean, you have, you see it every single time there is a child victim, every single time. You push the parents out of the way. So by the time she was 16, like him

helping her through emancipation, not surprising to me, but it's possible. Like if he is, uh, you know, a pedophile, then he probably lost interest in her. Drop her like a hot potato. And who knows what she experienced from that? She probably had experienced a lot of very complex, disturbing feelings in her relationship with him from a young child is probably like feeling like he's a father-like figure, but also maybe a little weirded out that this grown man was in a hot tub with her in some scene. And he's saying, by the way, in that scene on the Amanda show, he's saying, I'm the head writer. I created this. Like, I'm the creator of the show. He's taking responsibility for putting himself in a hot tub with a little girl at the time. And so I can't even

imagine all the things that she was trying to, that she was trying to deal with at the time and what she is experienced. Before we move on from Amanda Bines and into the Drake Bell interview, is there anything else from this episode that we want to touch on? The end of this episode basically just transitions into the Drake Bell story. They talk about this, you had mentioned this in the summary, but there were two pedophiles that they talk about that were at Nickelodeon. Jason Handy, he's the one who sent the picture to the 10, 11-year-old girl.

He was found out to have tons of images of child pornography when he was finally caught and did this, sent pictures to a lot of kids in that situation. And then they introduced Brian Peck, who was a dialogue coach for a lot of these Nickelodeon shows. So that's sort of how episode two ends. Yeah. Unfortunately, I mean, just like in any industry that has to do with, that has to do with vulnerable people, whether it's elderly people, whether it's sick people or whether it's children, you get both the best people in the world and the worst people in the world. The best people in the world who are self-sacrificial and want to sacrifice their time, their energy, their skills on behalf of a population that needs to be served. and then the worst people in the world who see their vulnerability as an opportunity for predation and to satisfy themselves.

And so you see a lot of these types when it comes to working with children, whether it's in schools or churches even or these kind of shows, entertainment industry, where there is like a high trust environment. And there has to be because for at least a temporary amount of time, the parents are giving up their presence and their responsibility to steward their child to someone else. And in those kind of high trust environments, I think the parents are too scared to speak up sometimes and to say, wait, I know better and I think something's wrong. And also, I think a lot of times parents are scared to be wrong.

They don't want to accuse someone of something if it's not true. And so they just won't speak up. And I think that's what happened time and time again with Brian Peck. So let's talk about this third episode with Drake Bell. And before we get into all of the details, you already said that Drake Bell came forward as the victim of this dialogue coach, Brian Peck, who worked with him on several shows. He had worked on growing pains with Leonardo DiCaprio. So when Leonardo DiCaprio was young.

So this was like an inside guy that people paid a lot of respect to who was very connected. And people saw him as a guy who's just like really good at working with kids. And so when he took an interest in, especially on Drake and Josh and the Amanda show to Drake Bell, I think that probably Drake and his parents at first thought that this was that this was great. And so that's kind of how it starts. That's how it's framed. But one thing, Bree, that I just noticed in talking about his story and then eventually getting to the portion where he talks about actually being a victim and we'll go through the details that led up to that. Drake Bell was very uncomfortable. He was very uncomfortable in this conversation.

Not that he didn't handle himself well he did, but you can tell this still really hurts him. He said, I have not talked about this outside of therapy. This is the first time that he's really sharing his testimony of being a victim of Brian Peck publicly. And he can't even bring himself to say explicitly what was said to him. Yeah. He says when they get to the portion of talking about, okay, but what did Brian Peck do to you? he says just imagine the worst form of sexual assault that you can think of and that's that will answer your question that's what happened to me repeatedly and he's talking about as a 15 year old boy yeah

so how in the world could this could this happen especially to someone like drake bell who had parents who were very involved again like a man to binds how did that go down so uh drake bell he started as a child actor. And his dad was very involved in his career. And this was like kind of what Brie referenced earlier that he was just good at acting. He really liked it. And he was booked on several commercials and then several small roles. And then when he was booked on the Amanda show, this was kind of like his big break. And this was a big deal for him. And his parents had separated when he was young. And so his dad and him were really close. His dad, became his manager. His dad was always with him at all of his different, all the different

filmings and auditions. And they interview his dad. And from what he said, he said that he always had eyes on Drake. He always wanted to make sure that he was not becoming prey, that he was really being protected. But he noticed on set that Brian was getting really close to Drake and not just relationally, but also physically, that they would be going over lines and that Brian would put his arm around Drake's waist or around his shoulders or give him a hug or kind of like stroke his arm. And Drake's dad thought, this was really weird. I don't like this. And good on him, he spoke up.

He started talking to other parents on set, to other staffers, some higher level people. at the network and on the show, and he was immediately shut down. He was ostracized, he said. And in fact, he was accused of being homophobic. One person that he reported this to said, oh, you're just homophobic because, you know, Brian is gay. So I think that that is an interesting seeming admission there that if you're gay, that's the reason why you are being touchy to a preteam. teenage boy, that's a justification for that is being gay synonymous with flirting with a minor? Because that seems to be, that seems to be the comparison or at least the connection that is being drawn there. So he was accused of being homophobic. He was completely pushed out. And he continued,

though, to be uncomfortable. But he was put in this really difficult position. he felt like it was a difficult position. The Drake loved his job. He was doing what he loved. Everyone else was gaslighting Drake's dad into thinking, you're just crazy. You're the weird one. You're being overbearing. And look, you're going to get in the way of your child's career if you keep on complaining

about this. So just stay quiet. In 2000, after the Amanda show, Nickelodeon pitched the idea of the Drake and Josh show. and then Brian Pack told Drake around this time, you know, they had gotten very close relationally and Pack kind of had taken him under his wing, tried to be his mentor, and said, you know what, I don't think that your dad needs to be hanging around here anymore. He shouldn't be your manager. You're getting too big for that. You know, parents really shouldn't be managers of their kids. If you want to be successful, if you want your career to really skyrocket, you need to fire your dad.

And Drake's dad actually confronted Brian Pack, but Pack just insisted that this is, nope, this is just what needs to happen. And so actually, um, through a series of events, that's exactly what happened. Brian Peck was able to drive a wedge between his dad and Drake. And how that happened is Brian Peck called the mom. And the mom said, hey, or, uh, Brian Peck said to the mom, hey, if you care about Drake's career, then you need to help me ensure that the dad over here is not the manager anymore. Attorneys were involved. It was a really ugly mess.

And I'm not saying that the parents don't have responsibility here. I actually think both the mom and the dad, that there is a dereliction of duty on both sides in various ways here. But again, talking about all of those various pressures that were put on Drake. and that were put on the parents and making them think you have to work, you have to make this career work whatever the cost. That's probably what led to the successful endeavor of completely alienating and pushing out the only person in Drake's life at the time who was in any way looking out for him.

And so here is Drake talking about this at Sot 3. So he started to really drive a wedge between my dad and me. he started talking about how my dad's stealing my money nobody likes that my dad's on set he's a real problem so he just started making me believe that he was horrible for my career I wasn't going to be able to move forward with him in it he found an attorney to find out about Drake's financial situation there was never any mishandling of any funds

but it was like an army against my dad Just awful, just so evil. And Drake's dad agreed because he said, okay, like if I'm getting in the way of my kids' dreams and his success, then I guess I'm going to bow out. That was obviously a mistake. I think he would agree with that now. But at the time, I guess he just thought, okay, you know, I guess so. And so he backed out of that role that he told his ex-wife, Drake's mom, do not let him around Brian Peck unsupervised. Well, she didn't. not listen because the mom lived far away from where Drake needed to go for different auditions and of course for taping Drake and Josh. And so he started to carpool with Brian Peck. Brian Peck would pick him up from his mom's house, would take him in to the auditions and to his filming. And then it got to the point where, oh, well, logistically, it just makes sense for Drake to stay at my house. And so Drake would, uh, spend the night, uh, with Brian Pack to go to his auditions and things like that. And, um, it's not it actually, I forgot about this part. But even before his dad was

pushed out of the picture, he, Brian Pack was grooming Drake, um, not just on set, but also trying to build a relationship with him offset. So Drake is also a musician. He would play in various concerts in different parts of the country, different parts of California, and wherever he was, even if it was hours away from where Brian Peck lived, Brian Peck would show up there. He would show up with his friends. They would want to talk to Drake backstage after the show. Anything that Drake was doing or where he was performing, Brian Peck would end up. And again, his father saw this, was uncomfortable with this, but felt like he just had to stay quiet about it. And so that is, of course, what led to the normalization of their relationship, which then led to the sexual abuse that Drake started experiencing after he started spending so much time at Brian Peck's home.

Here's up for. Use was extensive and it got pretty brutal. Whatever you feel comfortable or do you think of it? Why don't you do this? Yeah. Why don't you think of the worst stuff that someone can do to somebody as a sexual assault? And that'll answer your question. I mean, I just, I felt for him so much watching this.

He's clearly, like, he's very, obviously, he's so articulate and he's obviously very clear-headed. And you can tell he remembers all of it. And he seems to me, I know you can't really tell. And of course, he's an actor. He seems like stable to me and has like a grip on the situation. but he could not say the word rape. There were multiple times where he was kind of asked and he would reference it. He could not say that he was raped.

And I just like, my heart just breaks for him so much. I just want him, I don't know his faith, but I so want him to be like fully healed and redeemed by Christ because I think that the creator of our hearts and our bodies are the, he's the only one that can really reach down into the depths and fully heal us and give us a new self. And I just want that for him so much. That's what I was thinking as I was watching him. But it seems like from what he was saying, when he was a teenager, he was raped multiple times by Brian Peck.

Yeah. And actually later in the documentary, it shows, maybe it's an episode four, it shows snippets from the court documents. And it shows what happened to him. And it wasn't, it was, I mean, I get it. I get why he can't say it, to be honest. because it wasn't just one thing. It was a lot of things. And it is the worst stuff you can think of.

Yeah. So, yeah, it's awful. Awful. So evil. And I just can't even imagine. He says this. Drake says at the time, like, I don't even know how I survived. And he also says, like, he remembers all of the instances of abuse.

He doesn't remember any of the happy times. And he's like, it's sad because I had a lot of, like, a lot of good things were happening in my life at the time and I don't even remember it. He talks about one day he was at his girlfriend's house. So he got a girlfriend when he was a teenager. He was spending all his time there because he was trying to avoid Brian. And one day he was, Brian was calling him like incessantly on his cell phone when he was at his girlfriend's house trying to, you know, tell him, oh, we had plans to go to Disneyland. And the girlfriend's mom, go girlfriend's mom, called him into the kitchen. And he said, close the door and said, what's going on? And Drake was like, oh, it's nothing.

I know he's like, you know, he's so persistent. He's annoying. He's calling me. I'm paraphrasing here. And the mom was like, no, nope. 40-something year old man does not need to be calling my daughter's boyfriend like that what is going on and so i don't think he told everything at that point but he was like yeah it's gotten really weird i do kind of feel weird about it the girlfriend's mom called his mom and said i'm taking him to our therapist because something is going on here i don't know what drake's mom said and i know i'm not getting like drake's mom's part of the story but i can't help but have a very negative impression yeah of her she's really she really bothers me yeah um but he went to the therapist, but he knew what to say. He was, he knew what to say to kind of cover up what happened.

Because I think he probably didn't know how to articulate it. I think he was scared to articulate it. He says that Brian Peck told him, if you tell anyone this, you're never going to work again. And Drake loved what he did. And so I think he just kind of skimmed over it and said, yeah, it's like kind of bad, but like, you know, it's, it's not that bad or whatever. That was not the moment that he, um, ended up confess. everything that led to the accountability of Brian Peck. Drake kind of randomly, actually, like during the pilot, like filming the pilot, I think they had to film a couple pilots for Drake and Josh. He said that he doesn't even know what exactly spurred him to do this, but one day he called his mom and he just spilled everything.

Now, to mom's credit, at this point, she called the police. Yeah. And he does say that he had to tell the police everything that had happened to him in gruesome detail. And he said one of the hardest parts was calling Brian and like basically baiting him into confessing what he did, which I just can't imagine. Like I just can't imagine how difficult that was. And so tell me about Brian's. punishment. Like, how did that all go down? Yeah. So he was arrested after he basically, he confessed on that call that Drake had baited

him on the police, I guess, asked him, asked Drake to do that. He was arrested in 2003. And he, the next episode basically goes into his trial. And Drake testifying. And I don't know if you want me to get into like what actually his sentencing and what actually happened. Yeah. So I think mostly the next episode begins with sort of his trial and sentencing with Brian Peck's trial and sentencing. And Drake, it starts with Drake explaining his experience of going into the courtroom and having to testify. and he is explaining that he saw on Josh, or I'm sorry, on Brian Pecks, not Josh Peck, no relation. On Brian Peck's side of the courtroom, all of, it was full of supporters.

And on Drake's side was just his family. And he explains that he addressed, he didn't feel like he needed to address his statement to Brian Peck. He didn't want to look at him or talk to him ever again. So he addressed it to the people who were supporting him. And so this is that. This is SOT 6. I addressed my statement to everyone in the room. I looked at all of them.

And I just said, how dare you? And I said, you will forever have the memory of sitting in this courtroom and defending this person. And I will forever have the memory. of the person you're defending, violating me. It's just so sad. James Marsden, among other celebrities, sent executives, Hollywood execs, letters on behalf of Brian, like, speaking positively to his character despite knowing at least what some of the charges were against him. So James Marsden, we've got Terran Killum, Ron Melendez, James Marshall,

Kimi Robertson, James Marston said, I assure you what Brian has been through in the last year is the suffering of a hundred men. Screw you, dude. Literally screw you into the sun. I wish bad things for you. That is, I'm sorry.

That is awful. That is, oh, he's suffered. The child rapist suffered. Aw, that's so sad. I hope he gets a job sometime soon. What an evil person. Really, James Marsden? That makes me never, ever, ever, ever want to watch another lame movie that he's in again.

And it saddens me to say that includes the notebook, James Marsden. Evil. Yeah. I know. Yes. And Drake has said since then, since this documentary has come out, that not one of these people has reached out to him or apologized to, I think a couple people have publicly said they regret sending the letter, but they haven't reached out to him or said anything to him. So yeah, it's just, it's disgusting.

Yeah. So Brian Peck, Drake says that he wished that him coming out and being truthful about what happened would ensure that Brian Peck would never work in children's entertainment ever again, that he would go to prison and that would be the end of it. but Brian was sentenced to 16 months in jail, and then he was ordered to register as a sex offender. But when he got out of jail, he was hired on the Sweet Life of Zach and Cody with Disney. So, yeah, he just went right back, right back to it. And what is he doing now?

Now, so after the Me Too movement started, that's when these allegations started coming out about Dan Schneider and I think more about Brian Peck. And that's when they severed ties with both of them is at that point, I believe. So when the trial happened, it still wasn't known at that point, right, about Drake, like publicly? No. Even though I guess it was technically, it could have been public knowledge. Right.

Yeah, Drake says it was a different time when you could go to a courthouse and not really be seen going into a courthouse. So I think it was pretty under wraps. Yeah. So after 2017 in the Me Too movement, Schneider actually had an end at Nickelodeon. And you know what? Like obviously there are problems with Me Too and the hypocrisy of some of the celebrities that virtue signaled. Like they care about sexual assault and yet had been, you know, cozy with Harvey Weinstein. It hadn't said anything. But the fact is, is that it did become for better and for worse. there is a better part of it though, politically advantageous and even trendy to cut ties with sexual offenders. Of course, I don't want something to just be a superficial trend, but if it leads to

the alienation of and the accountability of abusers, child sex abusers, then I would say that that is one benefit to the Me Too movement. Should it have taken the Me Too movement for that to happen? No. I also think that like all of this and I mean there's so much more that we could talk about. But all of this just scratches the surface, I think, of what is really going on in the media industry. Am I saying every person? Am I saying every parent? Am I saying every actor is a victim? No, I'm not saying that.

But if this is what we know and it took years for us to know that Drake Bell was repeatedly raped as a child, then we can guarantee that there is more going on, even right now, even post Me Too. And it does make me think about the kind of like influencer culture that we have that is not exactly the same as your child becoming like a child actor, which I'll get to, you know, kind of what I think about that. And if it's... it's possible to do that in a healthy way. But I think about the, as I mentioned at the beginning, like parents who use their children for contents and really commercialize their children, sell products based on their children's image or their interests. So like trying to sell

toys or clothes or accessories based on what their child likes. They're monetizing their everyday, the everyday experiences of their child. They're using their child's behavior, and bad, experience is good or bad, to gain more followers, to get more clicks, to garner more revenue. And the reason that it's similar is obviously, there's obviously a similarity in, you know, getting financial stability from your child's performances. But also because of that and because of the audience that you've built and the identity that you have built as a brand around your child, there are very similar pressures to keep it going no matter what. So there are still family parent influencers that continue to post their child

online, to post images of their child in a bathing suit in the bathtub, going to the bathroom or, you know, videos of their child crying or having a temper tantrum, even though they know. that these images and videos, that this content is being manipulated, that it is being used by creeps out there, that they are undermining their child's privacy, that they are potentially making them vulnerable to predators. They know even sometimes about the technology that pedophiles and creeps use to remove the clothing of the images of, the images of children that are placed online. They know all of the dangers, and yet they still do it because they have to. This is what their family relies on for income.

They can't, they think, they can't stop posting pictures of their kids, even though they know it's dangerous. And it's probably pretty sketchy to not even allow your child to decide whether or not they want a private life or like a private childhood or not. They feel like they can't because it's probably. of their brand. It's part of their platform. What else are they going to do for money? Once you taste that financial freedom of being your own boss and getting into a check every month, because of what you post online, like, you can't even imagine going back to an office job and having a boss. And so even if you know that it's wrong, even if it feels icky, I think is like a parent influencer, even if you know it's kind of dangerous, I think a lot of

these, you know, parent influence or parents, they push down the instincts the same way that these parents of the child actors did because I got to make it. And this is how we pay the bills. And so you push down that protective instinct and you just say, you know what? This is affording them more opportunities. That's how they justify it. Well, this is getting us a bigger house and better cars and allowing them to go to private school. I mean, there are other ways. There are other ways to make money and this is what I would say, even though I don't have, like, I don't have experience and being in child entertainment, I would say if, like, you have a child that is particularly talented at performing in some way, whether it's dance or singing or acting or, you know,

all of those things being on Broadway, I understand as a parent, like wanting to see them flourish in those talents that God has given them, I think that there are probably a lot of different ways to protect your child and maintain their innocence as much as possible, even while trying to kind of cultivate those skills that they have. I think one way to protect your family from potential corruption and to ensure that you are not compromising their safety or compromising your values is to ensure that your financial stability is not at all dependent upon them, that your finances need to be stable outside of whatever their talents are garnering. You do not need to depend on your child.

They're modeling gigs, they're acting gigs to pay your bills. Don't do it. Do not ever do it. If you have to work three shifts or extra shifts at Walmart, if you need to have three different jobs, whatever you have to ethically and morally do to make it, do that before you sell your child and sell their image and sell their talent. So I'm not saying don't do it at all. If that is like how God is blessed them, I mean, I still, I don't have like the best feeling about them, you know,

going into the entertainment industry. Maybe there's a way to do it. If you're going to do it, make sure that you're financially stable and whatever money they do earn, have it go to them, have it put in a trust for them. Don't take it yourself. I think it would be tempting to do that. I say don't do it because then it just becomes really difficult when you've got to make decisions. Do I hold this executive responsible for how they're treating my child or do I pay my mortgage? Don't put that pressure on yourself. Don't put that pressure on your child. I think it is absolutely unethical to do. And by the way, like, this is just true for all parents for us to remember, your child is not in charge. If your child is eight years old, 15 years old, and they say, I love acting and I love singing and I love dancing.

I love ice skating, whatever it is. And they are angry at you because they don't want to stop doing it or they don't want you to be on set or at practice. They're at rehearsal because you're embarrassing them or you're complaining to you. much or you're rocking the boat too much. You can tell your child no. I'm sorry. We're not doing this anymore. You're not going to be able. We're not either we're not going to this gym for gymnastics or we're not going to hang out with this person anymore or you know what? This is where it's going to stop. And I know that you might resent me and I know that you're talented and I'm happy for you. We can find different ways to cultivate this talent, but this is not healthy anymore. This is done now. your child doesn't have to do competitive cheerleading they don't have to do gymnastics they don't have to have

the private coach the private tutor the private lesson with the person that is so good and so powerful and so awesome and is trained all the best you know athletes or singers or actors who makes you uncomfortable do not suppress that feeling that little inkling of ick that makes you feel like i don't love how he's looking at my daughter. I don't love where he just put his hand. I don't love how much attention, special attention, he is showing my son. I don't think that's right. Do not suppress that. That is your God-given instinct to speak up and say, nope, no more. You will not regret it, but there is a good chance that you will look back one day and you will either say, that was too close for comfort. Or I really, really messed up and that you potentially fail to do, like,

the main thing that we are supposed to do as parents. There's a reason why God created the family. There's a reason why God gave children parents, why he created in the very first chapter of the Bible, mom, dad, be fruitful and multiply, have children. Marriage, family, this is another thing that we see so many parents of these child actors and child models are divorced. But parents, a family in which there's a married mom and dad is the most child protecting, child preserving institution that exists. Where there is a strong mom and dad, especially a strong and present dad, predators like Brian Peck and Dan Schneider, have a lot more of a difficult time preying upon their. their prey. Now, if they can push the dad out, if they can emasculate the dad, if they can

gaslight the dad, if they can get maybe some kind of toxic mom involved to further do that to the dad, then it's a lot easier. That's what you see with all predators. They first isolate the child away from their parents and especially away from the dad. That is also why we see the kind of predation that we see, for example, in schools. Like why there is so much predatory sex, education in schools where the parents aren't there. That is why, for example, you see guidance counselors, psychologists, the endocrinologists that are transitioning young kids, why they are trying so hard to push parents out, why they don't tell parents, why they say if you don't call this kid by the right pronoun, then maybe you'll lose custody of your kid, we'll put them in foster

care, where they will be free to cut off their brass and identify as the opposite sex. Yaley Martinez, perfect example of that in California who ended up committing suicide after the school did that very thing in the name of liberation and freedom. That's what predators do. That's what pedophiles do. It's all connected. This child liberation movement that is on the left to liberate them from the authority of their parents.

It's a bunch of predators. Children need you. Speak up. If you are watching this, do not let this. As far as you can, not everything is within our control. Do not let this be. your child. Protect them, even if it means crushing the childhood dreams of them becoming an actor or a model or whatever, it's worth it. Poor Drake Bell. I really do. I just like pray for him. And I pray for

his heart and mind and soul and like all the memories that he has to wrestle with. And I am thankful that he did survive that time and he's still surviving. And I hope he finds Christ. And I hope that for all of these actors who have been traumatized in this way. I mentioned Jeanette McCready, and I think her book was called, I'm glad my mom died. It's really good book. Like, it sounds terrible. It was a really good book.

You should read it. But I thought the same thing about her. I'm like, gosh, I really want you to know, like, who died for you? And how much you're worth because God says that you are. And this is like a very godless industry, too. There's that. And again, I think there's so much more than even meets the eye. Bree, do you have any final thoughts on all this?

No, I concur with all of that. Yeah. It's just, it's incredibly sad. And I also am praying for Drake Bell that he can find true, true peace. Yeah, man, there's a lot more. Maybe we'll do another segment on it or another episode on it at some point because there's a lot that we didn't get to. But, man, oh, man.

All right. That's all we got time for today. We will be back here tomorrow.