KATE GOSSELIN: HOW SHE FOOLED THE WORLD - THE RISE AND FALL OF A REALITY TV QUEEN (40 page)

“The bottom line is you have to be responsible for your own actions,

And if your actions get out of control, there’s consequences.

That’s the bottom line.”

– Kate Gosselin

EYEWITNESS
ACCOUNTS

Kate’s bad temper wasn’t much of a secret. This is an excerpt from my
U
S
Weekly
reporting where some sources recounted seeing Kate in action:

Jon and Kate Gosselin PA Reporting

September 2009

My xxxxx source told me about Kate’s terrible temper and how she spanks the kids all the time for little things. “When they don’t listen to her just once, she would snap out and spank them. Kate would get crazy when the kids wouldn’t pick their toys up and didn’t give them a second chance.
She once kicked a Lego building the boys made into a million pieces because they didn’t put it away the first time she asked them too. Then she made them clean up the mess she had made, all the time yelling at them to put their toys away.
The kids are afraid of Kate. All she has to do is look at them and they get scared of her because they know what she’ll do to them. She’s completely different from what you see on TLC. She’s always yelling at them and that’s one of the reasons they split up. Jon was always the fun parent while Kate was the mean one. Jon would let them have fun and make a mess while Kate wanted everything to be neat and tidy. She would get mad at them for getting out their toys to play with.”

Another former neighbor that I spoke to several weeks ago told me that Kate was always screaming at the kids, even when they were very small. “She would run the house like a military base, expecting the kids to jump whenever she yelled for them. I saw Kate spank the kids many times. She believed in old-school discipline. If she said something and they didn’t listen, they’d get spanked. It got to the point that the kids would cower when she yelled at them because they didn’t know if they were going to get hit or not.”

BULLY, BULLY

Kate Gosselin has bullied, and continues to bully, EVERYONE who has ever been a part of her life. You can simply watch any episode of either of her television shows to see proof of this. But reading her tweets from April 2012, Kate has the nerve to chime in on the topic of bullying. Her reply tweets are in bold:

xxxxx @Kateplusmy8 Since bullying is such an important and relevant topic these days, do you talk to your kids about it?

I talk to my kids about bullying ALL THE TIME! No ‘mean girls’ allowed here! There’s psych why people do it & view/attitude change can help it!

xxxxx @Kateplusmy8 No wonder why cyberbullying/bullying is at an all time high. Parents are teaching their children that its ok.

I know! I talk about bullying with friends often! How can kids not bully at school when the parents are doing it online??!

I’d love to be the national spokesperson for cyber bullying. I cannot believe it is tolerated & mostly ignored! BULLYING MUST STOP!!!

Kate Gosselin, the woman who wrote that she grabbed her toddler son and spanked him as hard as she could to the point that she thought she would seriously injure him, had the nerve to actually say that she would “love to be the national spokesperson 4 cyber bullying.” This is a woman who is a champion at mocking and criticizing and threatening others.

In March of 2012, Kate Gosselin, non-bully, tweeted these happy thoughts:

Good day! Busy Sunday here! Church, C&M baked two birthday cakes, now family weeding project outside! Then dinner to make etc. Are you tired? Yeah, me too!:)

But on that day, the reality was that Kate was screaming at her little children as they worked all day doing yard work for her … while she jogged around the driveway and sat in the shade. She was visibly mean as she was screaming at the children to stay away from her car and to move faster and to stop fooling around. The kids were crying, but they were not allowed to stop working. Kate wasn’t just yelling at them, she was being cruel and degrading, and treating them with complete disrespect. She should have been more careful about who was standing nearby watching her abusive behavior.

THE WHEELS ON THE BUS GO ’ROUND AND ’ROUND – ALL OVER JON

Kate not only physically abuses her children, she emotionally abuses them as well. She criticizes Jon publicly at every chance she gets – in interviews and on TV. This is the father they love, but she can’t put aside her hate for him to try to take care of their emotional well-being. One can only imagine the terrible things she says about him directly to the kids.

None of that matters to Kate, however, as long as she continues to have the kind of support like this on Twitter, where her followers bad-mouth Jon right along with her:

xxxxx @K
ateplusmy8 watched last ep with John in it on Sat.He was horrid to the kids very bitter and twisted!You never took your pain out on them

No parent should punish innocent kids for the way things turned out. Extra love is needed…Kids/I thriving now so all is good!

Once again, instead of asking the tweeter to stop criticizing the father of her children, Kate eagerly joined in and threw Jon under the bus yet again. She accused him of “punishing” the kids, while in her mind she was busy giving them “extra love.”

THE BUCK STOPS HERE

Many adults have come and gone from the Gosselin children’s lives over the years. Some may have even witnessed abuse, but chose to remain silent about it. This begs the question: Who should have reported the obvious abuse of the Gosselin children at the hands of their mother? The answer is, well, everyone who knew about it.

People who report abuse are protected by law. Even that very restrictive and threatening Confidentiality and Nondisclosure Agreement pertaining to the Gosselins had to include wording that the Confidential Information could be disclosed “in response to a subpoena or other legal process.”

The
Pennsylvania Code
, which is an official publication of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, sets forth regulations regarding child abuse and explains who is a mandatory reporter. A key clause in the
Code
states that to protect children from abuse, reporting requirements take precedence over any ethical principles or professional standard that might otherwise apply. This pertains even to those people who signed Kate’s super-special Confidentiality Agreement. Here is the text concerning child abuse taken directly from the
Pennsylvania Code
:

Subchapter G. MINIMUM STANDARDS OF PRACTICE—CHILD ABUSE REPORTING

http://www.pacode.com/secure/data/049/chapter16/subchapGtoc.html

(a)
General rule
. Under 23 Pa.C.S. § 6311 (relating to persons required to report suspected child abuse), Board regulated practitioners who, in the course of their employment, occupation or practice of their profession, come into contact with children shall report or cause a report to be made to the Department of Public Welfare when the Board regulated practitioners have reasonable cause to suspect on the basis of their professional or other training or experience, that a child coming before them in their professional or official capacity is a victim of child abuse.

(b)
Staff members of public or private agencies, institutions and facilities
. Board regulated practitioners who are staff members of a medical or other public or private institution, school, facility or agency, and who, in the course of their employment, occupation or practice of their profession, come into contact with children shall immediately notify the person in charge of the institution, school, facility or agency or the designated agent of the person in charge when they have reasonable cause to suspect on the basis of their professional or other training or experience, that a child coming before them in their professional or official capacity is a victim of child abuse. Upon notification by the Board regulated practitioner, the person in charge or the designated agent shall assume the responsibility and have the legal obligation to report or cause a report to be made in accordance with subsections (a), (c) and (d).

To protect children from abuse, the reporting requirements of § § 16.102—16.104 (relating to suspected child abuse—mandated reporting requirements; photographs, medical tests and X-rays of child subject to report; and suspected death as a result of child abuse—mandated reporting requirement)
take precedence over any ethical principles or professional standard that might otherwise apply.

Every producer, crew member or person employed by Discovery/TLC/Figure 8 Films who witnessed any abuse of the Gosselin children bears some responsibility for allowing it to continue and for not reporting it. Every executive who knew about the abuse is responsible. Everyone who turned a blind eye to the abuse bears some blame. It is probably safe to say that no damning, un-aired Gosselin film where Kate is screaming at, threatening and spanking her children will ever see the light of day. That unseen film is proof that all the adults who witnessed the abuse, or saw signs that made them strongly suspect abuse, and who could have and should have done something to protect those children, failed them – all because there was a boatload of money to be made off of them. The Gosselin children were nothing more than collateral damage in a business driven by greed, where profit trumps the safety and well-being of our most innocent. The welfare of those children was everybody’s business.