A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - Drake Bell and the Cycle of Abuse

00:00:00.000 hello hello and welcome back to a bit fruity the show where it increasingly feels like the

00:00:12.000 conclusion that i reach by the end of every episode is that there aren't good people and

00:00:16.840 bad people but just people who have the capacity to be complicated and conflicting and when you

00:00:24.020 realize that it becomes a lot easier to take in new information about them without fighting

00:00:29.940 against it for the sake of upholding some cartoonishly two-dimensional version of personhood

00:00:36.040 that we often wish was reality. That was the longest intro, the longest sentence I've ever

00:00:41.360 recited. Today, we are here once again with recurring friend of the show, Kat Tenbarge.

00:00:48.060 Such an honor. Well, thank you for having me back. I love to be here. I'm a tech and

00:00:53.920 culture reporter at NBC News.

00:00:56.160 i think my dream for this podcast is to ultimately in the long run do what i've begun doing which is

00:01:00.880 just like there's like four guests and every couple of months you can know that you're going

00:01:05.280 to hear from one of them and uh on issues like this there's no one but cat quick trigger warning

00:01:09.960 for today's episode we are going to be talking about uh sexual abuse we're going to be talking

00:01:15.260 about child sexual abuse if that's something that's hard for you to take in stories about

00:01:20.740 then i completely understand and we'll see you at the next one and and i love you and

00:01:25.280 take care of yourself today we are talking about drake bell who was recently featured prominently

00:01:32.340 in the explosively popular docuseries quiet on set which chronicles the lives of late 90s and

00:01:40.940 early 2000s nickelodeon child stars and the abuse that they suffered behind the scenes of the

00:01:47.080 popular shows they were working on like all that zoe 101 the amanda show and drake and josh from

00:01:53.980 march 18th to march 25th quiet on set was the most streamed television series in the united

00:01:59.820 states bringing in 16 million viewers and a key storyline in the docuseries was about drake bell

00:02:06.700 who famously played drake on drake and josh and the truly horrific abuse that he suffered as a

00:02:14.320 child at the hands of his acting coach brian peck no relation by the way and i had to google this

00:02:19.920 to his Drake and Josh co-star, Josh Peck.

00:02:22.540 To me, the documentary was as notable

00:02:24.960 for what it included as what it didn't,

00:02:27.700 which is a big part of what we're gonna talk about today.

00:02:30.520 We're gonna be talking about the cycle of abuse,

00:02:32.620 the way that we consume stories about abuse,

00:02:34.920 and how sometimes media can sort of shoot itself

00:02:38.080 in the foot as far as perpetuating the very thing

00:02:40.720 that it attempts to raise awareness against.

00:02:43.700 Kat, do you think that's a good synopsis?

00:02:45.460 Yeah, I do.

00:02:46.520 I think that it says a lot

00:02:48.260 that the show is as popular as it is. And I think that there is a real appetite for this type of

00:02:55.440 content, which is why it's important that this content be done well. And if it's not why people

00:03:01.480 kind of correct the record. So the way that we're going to start the show is we're going to be

00:03:05.660 talking about some parts of Drake Bell's early life, which if you watch the documentary, you

00:03:10.120 might remember some of this stuff. And then we're basically going to pick up where the documentary

00:03:16.140 timeline essentially leaves off and continue the story in ways that complicates it, but that is

00:03:23.100 ultimately part of the story, whether we like it or not. And so let's start with Drake's early

00:03:29.900 childhood. Where does Drake Bell begin? So Drake Bell was a child actor from a really young age,

00:03:37.960 and he really grew up in the environment of child acting. In the docuseries, one of the people who's

00:03:45.200 interviewed alongside Drake about his story the most is actually Drake Bell's dad. And the way

00:03:52.020 that they tell the story is Drake was born in California and his dad is the one who really

00:03:58.780 oversaw Drake's sort of entry into the entertainment industry and who was sort of there for Drake

00:04:05.320 while he was auditioning in the early days. And as he began to get cast in movie roles,

00:04:11.960 aiming eventually for some kind of consistent job, which right off the bat, I think, says a lot about

00:04:20.640 the type of environment that Drake dealt with at a very young age. Because while he's talked about

00:04:26.960 enjoying his acting career, as a lot of young children do, it's also very stressful to have

00:04:32.660 the expectation of needing consistent work when you're a very young child. And that's something

00:04:37.880 that all of the children, the former child actors in the documentary talked about was sort of the

00:04:42.820 pressure of having this kind of expectation placed on them at a young age. And that pressure is

00:04:48.600 significant and consistent throughout Drake's entire life. Early on, he gets a number of small

00:04:54.140 roles in movies as a young child. And then sort of his big break comes along when he starts getting

00:05:00.540 cast in Nickelodeon shows. He became a recurring cast member on The Amanda Show, where he played

00:05:08.200 a bunch of different caricatures, similar to like a Saturday Night Live cast member, I feel like.

00:05:13.360 And this is where the story begins also in terms of him meeting Brian Peck.

00:05:19.660 I feel like part of Drake's story that they really hone in on in the documentary in ways that I find

00:05:24.660 sort of uncomfortable is the fact that his parents are divorced and that like his parents have

00:05:30.020 different approaches to his career as a child actor. By the way, we're going to get into

00:05:35.480 analyzing the documentary a little bit later in the episode, but it does seem like the fact that

00:05:41.840 his parents are divorced and that his parents take these different approaches is important.

00:05:46.820 Yes. Something that this really reminded me of while I was watching the docuseries

00:05:51.360 is stories that have come out that I've read in recent years about child influencers.

00:05:57.400 The environments are very, very similar. And there was a story I read that was really coming back to my mind about this dynamic with a child YouTuber and TikToker, where one parent was originally in charge of the career, and the other parent had less to do with it.

00:06:17.520 And the child's sort of like manager boss figure eventually pushes the first dominant parent out of the picture so that the less involved parent becomes more in control.

00:06:29.600 And this allows the manager to have more access to the child.

00:06:34.000 And it wasn't exactly the same situation as with Drake Bell, but it was a really toxic, abusive environment.

00:06:40.960 So this is not irregular within children's entertainment to have this kind of setup.

00:06:46.300 and just like with drake it's easy to exploit right and so it seemed like based on the docuseries

00:06:52.400 that drake's dad was the more involved one yes and that and at least you know again as far as

00:06:57.500 it was portrayed like it seemed like his mom was kind of the hands off yes and they portrayed her

00:07:02.980 as as like an absent figure yeah negligent to some degree right okay so he's getting his start

00:07:08.940 on the amanda show and he's sort of like rising into like child stardom at at nickelodeon and

00:07:15.880 he starts working with brian peck yes who is brian peck brian peck is a dialogue coach on

00:07:23.380 the set of the amanda show and he works for nickelodeon in this capacity he also is someone

00:07:29.240 who at this point in his life has like a long career in hollywood and this is something that

00:07:35.320 actually came through we'll get to this later but in statements that brian peck's friends would

00:07:40.820 later write during his case involving Drake Bell, it comes through in these statements that Brian

00:07:46.400 Peck was someone who knew everybody and got along with everyone really well. And he was like one of

00:07:51.660 those people in Hollywood that was the glue who held people together. So like he knew a lot of

00:07:57.540 producers. He knew a lot of directors. He also worked closely with a lot of actors, including

00:08:03.240 rising child stars like Leonardo DiCaprio. He had worked on a bunch of really well-known TV shows

00:08:09.760 in movies. So he was an extremely powerful figure at the time when Drake Bell entered his life as a

00:08:16.060 very vulnerable child. There's such a similarity in a lot of these stories, right? Because similar

00:08:20.800 things were said about Harvey Weinstein and about Larry Nassar and the USA Gymnastics scandal. It's

00:08:26.760 like these are beloved people who everyone has worked with, who everyone trusts, who's the kind

00:08:32.660 of center of the party. So he starts working with Brian Peck. And what's the nature of their

00:08:38.760 relationship early on? So in the beginning, Drake and Brian worked really closely because Brian

00:08:45.260 worked as Drake's dialogue coach. So he was seeing him on a super regular, even daily basis.

00:08:51.600 And they were working in a lot of times one-on-one sessions. But in the early days,

00:08:58.100 Drake's father talked about how he would always be in the room with Drake. So he would never let

00:09:02.960 drake be alone with other adults right his his dad like seems as far as the way he spoke in the

00:09:09.140 documentary it seems like he was like always very suspicious of how close brian wanted to be with

00:09:13.780 drake yes like brian took a liking to drake really early on and some of the things that drake's dad

00:09:20.820 described that made him uncomfortable were like brian would physically get really close to drake

00:09:26.480 he would stroke his arm or be kind of like leaning over from behind him. And it just struck

00:09:34.040 Drake's dad as an uncomfortable thing. And he didn't want to leave Drake alone with this guy.

00:09:39.380 Right. But then there are also those, I mean, something that I think was interesting that

00:09:42.800 they included in the documentary was the tensions that parents feel about not wanting to overstep

00:09:48.660 and intervene when they're uncomfortable with something that's happening to their children,

00:09:51.900 because they don't want to be the reason that their kid is ousted. They don't want to be the

00:09:56.040 trouble parent. Yes. And I feel like the environment, whether it's the mainstream TV

00:10:01.540 industry with children or the influencer industry now, which has basically replaced the TV studio

00:10:08.380 systems, the environment contains power dynamics that are inherently exploitative and inherently

00:10:15.760 dangerous. And so you even hear about it in terms of the calculations that these parents are making

00:10:22.100 while they're on these sets. And like you just said, they interview one mother of one of the

00:10:27.420 former Nickelodeon child stars who talked about how she felt like she was seen as the problem

00:10:32.260 parent because she would ask questions. I know that stories from sets, legally, parents are

00:10:38.480 always supposed to be able to be with their children. But in some cases, parents are encouraged

00:10:42.740 to put distance between themselves and their children. You even see that on shows like Dance

00:10:47.980 moms where they put the parents in a separate room. So Abby is like screaming at the girls 1.00

00:10:54.680 while their moms are like behind a glass panel. Like you kind of see how parents are physically

00:11:00.180 encouraged to stay away so that the adults in power have more direct access and influence over

00:11:06.360 the children. So then as described in the documentary, Brian starts to like drive a wedge

00:11:11.900 between Drake Bell and his father, who, correct me if I'm wrong at that point, is his manager.

00:11:16.280 It seems like, I mean, what we understand now is like pretty standard grooming.

00:11:21.080 Yes.

00:11:21.380 But at the time, I imagine there was like a lot less dialogue for this and like language

00:11:25.960 being used around it.

00:11:27.300 Yes, I think so.

00:11:28.760 And like you just said, it was textbook manipulation and predatory behavior.

00:11:33.820 And you see this in most abusive dynamics.

00:11:37.800 This is a hallmark of how abuse functions, because in order to make the victim more vulnerable,

00:11:44.620 you have to separate them from people who would otherwise intervene. So you see this in all types

00:11:51.240 of abusive dynamics. In abusive relationships, a lot of times friends will be pushed out of the

00:11:56.860 picture. Like the abusive partner will say, I don't want you to hang out with these people

00:12:00.940 anymore. Or they'll do other things to sort of restrict the partner who's being abused from

00:12:05.960 being able to connect with their support system. And in this case, with the child adult dynamic

00:12:11.560 and the child parent dynamic, it's even more insidious because Drake is extremely vulnerable

00:12:18.580 as a young boy and his father is there to protect him. So Brian insidiously attacks the nature of

00:12:26.780 this relationship and he attacks the foundation of trust between Drake and his dad. And he over

00:12:33.720 time begins to increase the amount of responsibility and the amount of roles he has in Drake's life.

00:12:40.800 Like at some point he hosts Drake's birthday party at his own house.

00:12:44.640 He takes Drake to Disneyland.

00:12:46.960 He takes Drake and puts him in all these scenarios where he's building trust with Drake and then using that to say, I don't think your dad is a good manager for you.

00:12:56.280 I think your dad is like stealing money from you.

00:12:59.960 Leveraging the way that he's able to like get in Drake's ear and be like, you shouldn't trust your dad.

00:13:04.960 And it works.

00:13:06.120 Yeah.

00:13:06.420 Yeah.

00:13:06.900 It's so the whole thing is so calculated.

00:13:09.020 Yeah.

00:13:09.200 so here's where we're gonna talk a little bit to an extent graphically about what happened

00:13:14.300 between drake bell and brian peck but so drake describes waking up one morning after fostering

00:13:20.220 this kind of like it sounds like years long professional but like blurry professional and

00:13:24.700 social relationship with this man who i think at the time he's like around 40 and drake was 15

00:13:29.480 yes and he wakes up one morning to what they describe in the docuseries as brian peck sexually

00:13:35.620 assaulting him. Yes. So at this stage, Drake's dad, he's out of the picture. He's no longer

00:13:40.760 Drake's manager. And Brian has actually stepped into that role. So like Drake's dad had said in

00:13:46.980 the documentary, I told Drake's mom, like, don't ever let Drake be alone in a room with Brian.

00:13:52.140 But presumably Drake's mom kind of ignores this. And Brian uses that opportunity to cement all

00:13:59.700 types of control and presence in Drake's life to the point where Drake is used to spending the

00:14:05.660 night at Brian's house. And he's also used to drinking alcohol with Brian. So Brian is giving

00:14:12.060 Drake as, you know, a young tween teen boy, he's giving him like pina coladas and then being like,

00:14:18.580 you're drunk, Drake, just sleep it off on my couch. And after getting used to this,

00:14:23.340 that is when finally drake testifies to waking up and sexual assault occurring already something

00:14:30.360 the documentary i know i'm like jumping the gun a little bit i know we're not gonna quite talk

00:14:34.400 about the documentary yet but like something the documentary did that i really didn't love

00:14:41.120 was like portray drake's mother as kind of the ultimate villain yeah in this and it's like i

00:14:48.120 don't know i was seeing like tweets yes people being like i just watched quiet on set and i want

00:14:53.060 to kill drake's mother yeah what happened to drake is so horrible and i think it's very easy to look

00:14:59.740 back on something horrible that happened with all of the facts that everyone has now as they're

00:15:03.700 presented to the public and think like if i was the parent in charge i would have done better yeah

00:15:09.520 and i don't know we don't know much about drake's mother right we just don't we just she's not

00:15:15.060 interviewed for the documentary right and we just don't know about much about her and so for all i

00:15:18.960 know she could be she could be a shitty mother right but i don't really think that the evidence

00:15:23.840 presented in the documentary points to her being the person that a lot of people who watch the 0.87

00:15:29.620 documentary are assuming that she is yeah and i just think that laying all of the blame on a

00:15:35.360 parent who didn't sufficiently stop it feels misguided yes it's totally misdirected and i

00:15:41.620 think that two things can be done at once you can hold a perpetrator accountable while also

00:15:47.480 being like who enabled this and who else is like partially not responsible for like the act but

00:15:53.260 who is like in the enabling group you can do that but the problem is there is a cultural trope and

00:16:00.720 a cultural script around always finding a woman to blame regardless of whether she's the one who

00:16:07.540 like committed the acts and you most frequently see it play out exactly like this where it's like

00:16:13.120 well what was his mother doing like why didn't she stop this and i think that that can both be

00:16:18.760 like a valid question while also being something that has become way bigger of a focus than it

00:16:24.680 needs to be and like you said people aren't just saying like where was drake bell's mother

00:16:29.160 people are literally saying like i want to kill drake bell's mother and i just think that that

00:16:35.120 is really misdirected anger because who's actually deserving of the most blame in this situation 0.86

00:16:42.240 The abuser.

00:16:42.820 The abuser.

00:16:43.280 And I think that ultimately this logic trickles back into a very pernicious form of victim

00:16:49.780 blaming where you're finding all kinds of circumstances where you're basically like

00:16:56.040 this person, this happened to them because their parents weren't responsible enough.

00:17:00.820 Yeah.

00:17:01.360 And ultimately predators are going to look for people who are vulnerable for a variety

00:17:08.020 of reasons including if they have parents who are kind of absent or negligent or just inattentive

00:17:14.940 we don't know what was like you said we don't know what was going on in drake bell's mom's

00:17:18.660 life at this time we don't really know anything about her and she doesn't have a voice in this

00:17:22.780 documentary so all we know for sure is that whatever brian peck took advantage of he was

00:17:30.300 the one seeking out this vulnerability and taking advantage of it yeah i mean one of my goals on

00:17:35.280 this podcast generally is to like show compassion to people who I don't feel are receiving compassion

00:17:41.380 and that doesn't mean everybody but you know I just see these like shots being fired really

00:17:47.040 aggressively at Drake Bell's mother for not having stopped it and one of the only concrete details we

00:17:53.020 do know about her which does come through in the documentary is that she's the one who calls the

00:17:56.880 cops yeah and you know I think at the end of the day regardless of what you think about her capacity

00:18:02.540 to have stopped it this is still a mother whose child was the victim of egregious child sexual

00:18:08.780 abuse yes and someone for whom i don't know why she wasn't interviewed for the documentary but

00:18:14.620 i can only imagine there's an enormous amount of trauma for her too in all of this i think

00:18:20.000 whenever stories like incredibly devastating stories like this enter the public imagination

00:18:25.460 we all like to think that like if we had been there then it would have happened differently

00:18:30.740 and we would have prevented the bad thing from happening and also like turning everyone who

00:18:36.360 actually was there into fictional characters who are only again i'm jumping the gun a little bit

00:18:42.140 thematically on this because we're going to talk more about this but everyone is only capable of

00:18:45.680 doing something good or something bad yes in the documentary drake's mother was cast as having done

00:18:52.140 something bad by not stopping it earlier one thing that i thought was really interesting about this

00:18:58.200 characterization of Drake's parents is Drake's dad, by the time he is forced out of the situation

00:19:04.880 through Brian Peck's manipulation, he's seemingly pretty aware that this guy poses some sort of

00:19:11.140 threat to his child. And I don't blame Drake's dad for not getting Drake out of that situation.

00:19:18.140 But if you're going to blame Drake's mom for not protecting her kid from Brian Peck,

00:19:23.480 I think that that also then raises the question, why did they keep him in this industry? And why

00:19:29.140 did they keep him at this company if they had any doubt whatsoever that this guy could pose a

00:19:34.640 danger to him? I think that a lot of the characterization of both of these people

00:19:38.060 comes from the fact that one of them had the chance to be interviewed for the documentary

00:19:41.260 and the other one didn't. Yes. And they feel the need to make a hero out of Drake's dad.

00:19:47.720 and the audience overwhelmingly feels the need to make him into a hero.

00:19:52.040 But as we keep saying, there's no such thing as someone who is just a hero.

00:19:56.860 We all make decisions along the way that are good and bad.

00:19:59.700 And I'm sure that Drake's dad, as he expresses later on,

00:20:03.760 regrets not pulling his child out of that environment when he had the chance.

00:20:08.340 And I'm sure his mom regrets that too.

00:20:10.360 Exactly.

00:20:11.080 Which is why at the end of the day, the one who really deserves the judgment is the abuser.

00:20:15.740 and yet people become very preoccupied with coming up with other people to blame yeah because if you

00:20:22.860 had been there it wouldn't have happened right if i had been there it wouldn't have happened

00:20:26.460 because we're all perfect people we all have amazing judgment and foresight at all times

00:20:31.000 everyone does so the abuse continues i think for a number of months drake explains sort of vaguely

00:20:40.300 but then it's basically revealed in the charges against brian peck that are later brought against 0.74

00:20:45.360 him that include like sodomy penetration with a foreign object oral copulation with a minor oral

00:20:51.520 copulation with a minor pretty like really really sickening stuff and so drake ends up breaking down 0.51

00:20:59.400 after a period of time telling his mother about the abuse she reports it's the police brian is

00:21:05.620 arrested and i want to fast forward just a little bit to the trial yes and i also think you know

00:21:13.980 notably, we're going to lay out some of the similarities and differences between the trial

00:21:19.520 of Brian Peck and then 20 years later, the trial of Drake Bell. But one thing that I think is

00:21:25.260 important is the way that Brian Peck was actually caught, because in a lot of cases involving sex

00:21:33.420 crimes, even against children, perpetrators are not convicted or held accountable by the legal

00:21:39.360 system, it actually is statistically unlikely for predators to truly face justice within our legal

00:21:46.780 system. And so how they went about catching him, and this is something that this is actually a

00:21:52.960 successful tactic that I've seen repeated in multiple cases involving sex crimes. The way

00:21:58.140 that they were able to convict him is the police had Drake call Brian Peck while the police are

00:22:05.380 listening into the call and recording the call. Brian Peck has no knowledge of this.

00:22:10.140 And Drake sets up this phone call at the police's instruction where he tells Brian how much he's

00:22:16.040 struggling. And then Brian launches into what essentially is a full confession of all the

00:22:21.600 various things he's done. And so they were able to convict him based on his confession that they

00:22:27.780 were only able to get because he didn't know that he was being recorded or being listened to by the

00:22:32.380 police. That's significant because it's rare, but it's really actually effective at catching

00:22:38.880 predators. And I can only imagine. So they put 15-year-old Drake Bell in a room at the police

00:22:44.440 station with a phone and they said, call Brian Peck and do your best to get him to confess.

00:22:48.980 Yeah. I mean, that is a wild amount of pressure to imagine for me as an adult, but a 15-year-old?

00:22:54.160 Yeah. That's who is like actively still enduring abuse. I mean, that's fucking wild.

00:22:58.680 The process of bringing someone to justice is traumatic for everyone. It's re-traumatizing 0.98

00:23:04.900 entirely. Because even if the police treat you really nicely and hold your hand, which there's

00:23:10.320 no guarantee that they did that, you still have to re-traumatize yourself through the process of

00:23:16.340 explaining in meticulous detail everything that happened to you. And you still have to engage

00:23:22.160 with your abuser if you go through the legal system. So we get to the trial and we get to

00:23:26.460 sentencing specifically right and drake describes walking into a courtroom with brian peck and brian

00:23:35.260 peck's you know supporters on one side and he says that that side of the courtroom is entirely full

00:23:40.460 partly with celebrities yes who yeah who brian has worked with and has strong relationships with

00:23:47.860 and then drake describes his side as being like him his mother and i think his sibling he's he

00:23:53.560 says in the documentary that he spoke directly to the crowd of people sitting on brian peck's side

00:23:57.880 saying you'll have to live with the fact that you sat on this side of the courtroom for the rest of

00:24:01.420 your lives yes a lot of these celebrities wrote letters of support to the judge letters of support

00:24:06.820 for brian peck asking for the most lenient sentence i think that these letters are really

00:24:12.120 revealing and contain strong parallels to a lot of what's happening now in the wake of this

00:24:19.080 docuseries. These letters were sealed up until this year. Business Insider and I think TMZ also

00:24:26.860 petitioned the court to unseal these letters. Wow, that's the first good thing TMZ has ever

00:24:33.060 done. Right, right, right. So, you know, this is actually really interesting and not what this

00:24:39.380 podcast is about, but over the past couple of years, we've seen a lot of incidents, a lot of

00:24:44.520 court cases where these letters of support from celebrities are unsealed and it becomes like a

00:24:49.600 big problem for the celebrities who wrote letters of support for abusers yes that just happened with

00:24:55.580 danny masterson trial where mila kunis and ashton kutcher wrote these letters in support of danny

00:25:01.380 masterson after he committed some heinous sexual crimes yes that was obviously at odds with the

00:25:06.820 fact that ashton kutcher oh we could do a separate show about this ashton kutcher founded this

00:25:11.960 supposedly anti-sex trafficking organization called thorn and then when his best friend co-star

00:25:18.140 turned out to be a rapist it was like out the window yeah and he wrote that letter of support

00:25:22.060 and then they were unsealed and of course mila kunis and ashton kutcher put out their apology 0.60

00:25:25.580 video where they filmed in front of what looked like a very humble looking wooden paneled wall

00:25:31.320 and the wood was undyed but unfortunately as someone who read the architectural digest right

00:25:37.820 up of their home I knew when I saw that video where they were apologizing for writing these

00:25:42.680 letters I knew exactly where they were sitting and it was in front of like one of their like

00:25:46.960 three barns in this estate that they have that is like gorgeously manicured and made to look rustic

00:25:52.420 yep and so I just remember watching that and being and I was like you guys can like do the

00:25:57.960 humble aesthetic YouTube apology thing but I know exactly yes I know exactly which luxury modern

00:26:03.560 farmhouse you're sitting in front of absolutely it happened with the danny masterson case it

00:26:09.920 happened with tori lanes and iggy azalea yeah wrote a letter of support for him and she even

00:26:15.620 said i had no idea that this could become public we kind of are in a new era where people are

00:26:21.000 realizing that they can unseal these types of documents and we're getting a lot of history

00:26:25.580 because of that yeah so when brian peck was convicted drake says this in the series but

00:26:32.940 the people in this courtroom who wrote these letters and who were defending Brian Peck,

00:26:37.420 they knew who Drake was. They knew what the situation was. They talk about it explicitly

00:26:43.500 in their letters. And some of the people who wrote letters in support of Brian Peck included

00:26:48.260 James Marsden, who is probably like the most famous one and I think the most shocking one

00:26:54.180 to a lot of people. So he wrote about how Brian was this amazing person and an amazing friend

00:27:02.260 and really talked about how like morally correct Brian was.

00:27:07.980 You know, toward the end of his letter, he said,

00:27:10.880 I don't intend to victimize Brian, nor would he ever wish that.

00:27:14.700 But I do feel compelled to shed light on the fact that he has learned his lesson.

00:27:19.240 Were like the actors and producers and screenwriters

00:27:21.920 and all these people writing these letters,

00:27:23.300 did they know the extent of Brian Peck's crimes?

00:27:25.700 A lot of them clearly do because they make allusions to it within the letters.

00:27:30.280 other young child actors who had worked with brian wrote letters of support for him like

00:27:36.800 taryn killum he wrote a letter of support he wrote brian is fully aware of his misjudgment

00:27:44.320 and takes full responsibility but brian richard peck my co-worker my friend is not someone who

00:27:50.080 belongs in jail i know brian will do anything and everything in his power to prove the court

00:27:55.420 that he is an upstanding citizen. He has already taken actions of his own accord,

00:27:59.820 such as counseling, in an effort to rehabilitate himself. Alan Thicke. Alan Thicke's letter really

00:28:05.240 stood out to me. And Alan Thicke died in 2016. But he literally, as he says in his letter of

00:28:11.720 support, he said, I am honored to be regularly included in lists of America's favorite TV dads,

00:28:18.940 an identity that I proudly carry throughout the country in writing about and lecturing to families

00:28:23.820 on issues of parental concern i am regarded as a published authority in this genre and because i

00:28:29.380 take that image and its responsibility very seriously i would obviously be very careful

00:28:34.700 about a character reference relating to children crazy so he's saying that because he like is a

00:28:40.960 good actor at playing dads on tv that he knows if this guy is a danger to children while he's being

00:28:46.800 charged with sodomizing a child yeah jesus and he's appealing to his authority to be like you

00:28:52.960 can trust me you can trust me i play dads it's also like it reminds me of with bill cosby being

00:28:59.200 like america's dad you just like it's that kind of terminology that gets brought up again and again

00:29:04.180 so in some of these letters of support they actually talk about drake and they victim blame

00:29:10.280 drake by name a 15 year old a 15 year old women do it which i think is notable this woman wrote

00:29:17.300 her name is Joanna Kearns she was a star of growing pains and she wrote I have never known

00:29:24.680 Brian to engage in the type of illegal activity with which he is charged and can only believe

00:29:30.380 that there had to have been some extreme situation or temptation exerted upon him to influence his

00:29:38.720 actions so they're literally saying that Drake as a 15 year old tempted Brian as a

00:29:46.660 Like a temptress.

00:29:47.700 Yes. 0.94

00:29:48.340 Yes. 1.00

00:29:48.480 Like a seductress of a 15-year-old. 1.00

00:29:50.480 Yes.

00:29:51.080 Jesus Christ. 0.53

00:29:52.120 A seductive child.

00:29:53.140 It's also just like, I have never known Brian Peck to engage in the behavior described here.

00:29:57.600 And it's like, yeah, that's because it didn't happen to you.

00:29:59.300 Exactly.

00:30:00.320 There's such a misunderstanding that predators are people who can easily be spotted because

00:30:05.880 they have an aura of untrustworthiness or maliciousness about them.

00:30:11.300 But that's the opposite of the case.

00:30:14.340 predators are skilled at camouflaging who they truly are because they're hunting prey. They

00:30:20.800 don't want the prey to know. And I think that people have a really detached perspective on how

00:30:26.680 this type of stuff works because they don't want to think about it beyond the easy dichotomy of

00:30:32.840 good versus evil. They don't want to think about who in their own lives could be capable of these

00:30:37.520 types of things. So getting into other ones that talk about Drake specifically, his name was

00:30:42.260 redacted at the time because he was anonymous until quiet on set but in this letter which is

00:30:48.860 from thomas de santo he says he met drake he met drake's father and that he saw drake perform with

00:30:58.400 his band in orange county and he wrote drake always came across as very mature yet complex

00:31:04.440 it was my observation that drake was dealing with a lot of personal issues and brian was someone he

00:31:10.160 could talk to. Drake seemed to be acting one way in front of his family and another around his

00:31:15.880 friends, coworkers, and classmates. This included having lunch with Brian, Drake and someone Drake

00:31:21.600 referred to as his boyfriend, yet he was unable to introduce his boyfriend to his family. Drake

00:31:27.100 also seemed to be very fearful of his father and unable to communicate with him whatever sexual

00:31:32.200 issues he was going through at the time. Wait, so they're saying that Drake is gay?

00:31:36.180 yes what what is even the argument that like right he's gay and he couldn't talk about it 0.86

00:31:41.980 with anyone but brian peck and so the fact that like brian peck sexually abused him was just kind

00:31:46.660 of like par for the course and something that drake wants like yeah it plays into two homophobic 0.97

00:31:52.400 tropes at once one that like that gay children are sexual yeah and are like promiscuous and then 0.97

00:32:00.880 it also plays into the homophobic trope that gay adults are predatory it's it's really two two 0.94

00:32:06.720 birds with one stone it's awful one thing that they did include in the documentary that i really

00:32:11.980 as an editorial decision didn't understand was at one point drake's dad is being interviewed and in

00:32:18.380 his confessional he says i was worried about how close brian peck was getting with my child and

00:32:23.840 when i raised that issue with someone on the set of the amanda show or something the person on the

00:32:29.240 sets told me, oh, well, we don't know if you knew this, but Brian is a gay man. And so the fact that

00:32:34.140 you're bringing this up is just homophobic. I don't doubt that that happened and that someone

00:32:38.500 said that. But as an editorial decision for the people who made this documentary, I really

00:32:44.460 questioned it because then I was going online and I was reading what people were writing about this

00:32:48.040 documentary. And I saw a lot of far right people saying, look, they were even saying it 20 years

00:32:53.320 ago. You can't call out the rumors without being labeled a homophobe. And I just think that anyone

00:32:58.380 with a little bit of foresight making a documentary like this could have seen yeah that including that

00:33:04.640 line which again i'm not saying it didn't happen and like stories like this are messy including

00:33:09.880 that detail seemed unnecessary for me and like it would feed very homophobic like violently

00:33:16.640 homophobic people's online agendas yeah it's sensationalist and it really lacks a lot of

00:33:22.700 context. And I think that this is an overarching problem I had with it, which is that they don't

00:33:28.600 bring in anybody to contextualize any of the issues that are being talked about. There is not

00:33:34.300 one person quoted in the documentary who you could say is like an expert in abuse or an expert in the

00:33:40.980 social climate of these TV shows in this time period. You have none of that. So the audience

00:33:46.860 is left to make its own assumptions about what's going on. And with issues that are extremely

00:33:52.260 sensitive and extremely misunderstood that's how you perpetuate stigma i know we're like trying to

00:33:58.020 not talk about the documentary until we get to like we're analyzing the documentary part but

00:34:02.500 it's so hard because there were so many times while i was watching it where i was like man

00:34:06.520 this is fucking heartbreaking and also the way that they're telling the story feels a little

00:34:12.320 irresponsible yeah it was giving really big youtube channel vibes but we'll get into that later 0.96

00:34:17.740 so no not youtube channel vibes no because people are watching this on youtube

00:34:24.380 a little self-awareness i want to review the last couple of letters and there were like

00:34:32.780 there were a lot of letters that were sent in like potentially dozens or like over a hundred letters

00:34:39.720 i can't remember the exact amount but the ones that have been published so far are just an excerpt

00:34:45.400 And it's just people that we would recognize.

00:34:48.420 So there are also tons of other people in Hollywood defending this guy.

00:34:52.260 This character statement from Kimmy Robertson, it's handwritten and she wrote it in this

00:34:57.780 really like feminine, almost like girly font.

00:35:02.620 And then the things that she's saying in this letter are just so at odds with that.

00:35:07.760 It's like the aesthetic of how the letter looks.

00:35:09.520 Yes, it's creepy.

00:35:11.180 This is the letter that shocked me the most just because this letter takes the most

00:35:15.380 aggressive anti-Drake stance. And I think that that's really interesting in comparing

00:35:21.400 to what we see on the internet today. But so she says, I had the misfortune of working on

00:35:26.840 Drake's TV show. I'll make this short. I noticed this young man kept asking me about Brian and

00:35:32.920 generally being sleuth-like. I also noticed no gay male in makeup or hair or PA would be alone 0.70

00:35:40.820 in a room with him. I knew that Brian was helping Drake with his new resume and talked to Brian

00:35:45.880 about this guy. Brian said he would never be alone with him or anyone under 21 ever again,

00:35:52.100 that he had made amends and not to worry. I believe with all my heart that Brian was pressured

00:35:57.640 and pushed beyond belief before he caved in with Drake, an outrageous, overtly gay, 0.98

00:36:03.300 oversexed person with no idea what he is doing to Brian, Brian's family, and Brian's friends. 0.98

00:36:09.540 he totally took advantage of brian's willingness to help anyone who needs it 0.98

00:36:14.080 jesus fucking christ yeah i mean what's crazy about that letter is you could read the entire 0.97

00:36:20.160 thing and then at the end reveal that she was talking about brian peck yes and that would 0.98

00:36:23.840 make a lot of sense a lot of sense she's talking about a fucking child yeah and she's like actually 0.99

00:36:29.440 the brian peck is the victim of sex-crazed homosexual child drake bell who just like 1.00

00:36:34.860 happens to also be 15, but like, whatever. What? Yeah, it's so wild to me. I mean, that is really 1.00

00:36:39.920 sick. And like, I don't know, I guess when I talk about this podcast and people I want to lend

00:36:44.980 compassion to and people I don't, maybe Kimmy Robertson is not getting compassion from me this

00:36:51.160 episode. The last two letters are from this couple, Beth and Rich Carell. And this is significant

00:36:58.820 because they are two of the people who either produced or are very heavily involved with

00:37:05.240 The Suite Life of Zack and Cody. And after Brian Peck was convicted and served a jail sentence,

00:37:11.320 after he got out, he would later go on to continue working in children's television,

00:37:15.980 and he worked on The Suite Life of Zack and Cody. So these people have said within the past month,

00:37:22.680 you know, in requests for comment, they said that they had nothing to do with casting him

00:37:26.640 or hiring him to work on Suite Life,

00:37:29.140 but they were heavily involved with the show

00:37:30.720 and they did write these letters of support.

00:37:32.840 So in Beth's letter,

00:37:34.820 she wrote that she met Drake in 1999.

00:37:38.720 He would be quite young at the time.

00:37:40.860 She said,

00:37:41.780 I've worked with Drake until April 2004

00:37:44.200 on virtually every project he has ever done for Nickelodeon.

00:37:48.340 During this time,

00:37:49.600 I witnessed a boy with some talent

00:37:51.660 turn into a young man with incredible stage presence

00:37:54.440 and, due in large part to Brian Peck's efforts, a star quality emerged.

00:38:00.540 Drake turned into a personable, self-confident performer, thanks to Brian Peck.

00:38:04.740 I must admit that I was surprised at Drake's behavior after hearing of this case

00:38:09.340 and the charges being brought against Brian.

00:38:11.740 Nothing seemed to change in him at all.

00:38:13.900 On set, he continued to be playful with other cast members and crew.

00:38:17.260 He was always talking about his band and music

00:38:19.720 and appeared to be excited about his future, the show, and his musical career.

00:38:23.700 he even moved into his own apartment on more than one occasion while watching her son perform on the

00:38:29.060 set of blocked out drake's mother would say to me look at him i'm so proud of how mature and 1.00

00:38:35.460 responsible he is so she's just saying that he was acting great on set and so he couldn't have 0.99

00:38:40.940 been abused as badly as he's claiming to have been abused exactly who the fuck like super wacky 0.89

00:38:47.200 what are we doing super wacky may 2004 brian peck pleads no contest and is sentenced to i believe 0.81

00:38:54.120 16 months that's like kind of where the timeline of the documentary ends as far as like drake bell's

00:39:02.240 history with abuse kind of being on either sides of the abuse equation the docuseries of quiet on

00:39:08.420 set is this like multi-part multi-hour long thing and with six minutes left in the last segment of

00:39:16.000 they spend two minutes doing kind of like a passing mention of drake's pretty complicated

00:39:22.760 history of alleged abuse yes right it's like it's mentioned in an interview with drake and it's only

00:39:29.400 discussed in the context of drake being like i had a pretty complicated healing process from the

00:39:34.040 abuse that i suffered and i thought i don't know to just make this whole documentary about people

00:39:39.820 who were victims of horrific abuse but then mention that like he may or may not have done

00:39:46.900 something to someone yes later on in his adult life the people who drake allegedly abused in

00:39:53.760 some form they're not interviewed they're not named they're not really spoken about in any

00:39:59.180 detail whatsoever it's just a passing mention and then and the docuseries ends yes and then he's

00:40:04.660 like but you know and i had a hard time and i dealt with you know some drug and alcohol abuse

00:40:08.840 And like I had a little bit of a run in with the law regarding some abuse allegations of

00:40:13.020 my own, but it was a crazy time and I paid my dues and now I'm back and I'm releasing

00:40:17.680 music and it felt like the last few minutes of the documentary were just like, it was

00:40:22.680 like, whoa, like there's a lot of information here.

00:40:24.640 And then it was over.

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00:41:44.660 Now back to the show.

00:41:46.560 And so I now want to pick up on the timeline of like what happens after Brian Peck goes to jail.

00:41:53.760 So at the time that Drake was being abused by Brian Peck, he talks in the docuseries about how he had a girlfriend. And then a year after Brian is convicted and ultimately begins serving his term, Drake starts a new relationship with a girlfriend named Melissa Linkafelt.

00:42:13.580 and at the time Drake is 20 and Melissa is 16 and she is a young aspiring musician Drake is a

00:42:22.220 touring and performing musician she has been homeschooled up until this point and she connects

00:42:28.480 with Drake I believe either online or through music and Drake is kind of hitting like the peak

00:42:35.240 of his fame at this point yes while still Brian Peck has only been in jail for a year and he went

00:42:40.820 to jail pretty shortly after the actual abuse took place. So Drake has had effectively no time

00:42:46.240 to process his own abuse, you know, because Brian Peck goes to jail while Drake and Josh,

00:42:51.800 I think is in its second season. And so Drake Bell is ascending to levels of fame that he's

00:42:56.480 never known. And they date for about three years. They start dating in 2006, and they break up in

00:43:03.280 2009. And we don't hear anything about this relationship until 2020. So 11 years later,

00:43:11.600 Melissa comes forward on TikTok. This is 2020. So it's during COVID-19 lockdowns, quarantines,

00:43:18.040 et cetera. Melissa comes forward on TikTok and begins to describe and make abuse allegations

00:43:25.820 about her relationship with Drake Bell. She accused Drake of emotional abuse during their

00:43:32.300 relationship, but she also accused him of physical abuse. And she would expand on this later in an

00:43:38.660 interview with the Daily Beast in 2021. She said that Drake would drag her down the stairs in their 0.99

00:43:45.980 home and her head hit every step on the way down. She said that Drake tried to hold her down in the

00:43:54.300 bathtub while burning her with hot water from the tap. So she makes these really horrific

00:44:00.740 allegations against drake and in 2020 when this all comes out this is before there's any sort of

00:44:09.220 knowledge of drake as either a victim or as an abuser this is the first time that anything comes

00:44:14.620 out but you know previously drake had experienced publicly other issues like i believe he had a dui

00:44:23.540 he declared bankruptcy yeah he he in 2013 his house was foreclosed on yes uh yeah he declared

00:44:31.660 bankruptcy he had he had two dois yes i think i know we're kind of bouncing around the timeline

00:44:36.020 a little bit but he's in the relationship we don't really hear much about the relationship

00:44:39.200 at the time drag and josh ends some years later he's goes through this difficult time financially

00:44:44.420 emotionally and so then in 2020 melissa linge felt comes forward on tiktok with this pretty

00:44:50.100 pretty awful abuse allegations yes and so this is stuff that took place allegedly between the

00:44:55.640 years of 2006 and 2009 um so very shortly like immediately after the conviction of brian peck

00:45:02.920 and after melissa posted her story on tiktok she received a lot of outreach from other women who

00:45:11.360 had dated drake as well as fans of drake who had allegations of their own so in 2020 kind of all

00:45:20.020 hell breaks loose in regards to the allegations against drake bell but because there's so much

00:45:25.380 going on at the time right it didn't really peak in the mainstream in a big way right i was gonna

00:45:31.460 i mean did anyone ever go to trial was there you know what ends up happening with kind of melissa

00:45:36.480 in her story yes so one of the things that melissa talked about with the daily beast and i believe

00:45:41.120 she talked about it in her tiktoks as well is she described the um physical violence in the

00:45:48.680 relationship as something that did result in the police being called. But she said that when that

00:45:54.500 would happen, her mindset was to protect Drake and that he had drilled into her that it was her

00:46:00.940 responsibility to protect him from his own actions. So she described running away when the police were

00:46:08.680 called. And so she had not participated in anything that went anywhere beyond those calls to the

00:46:16.100 police. Yeah. And I'd imagine probably people end up calling her a liar for that. Yes. Saying

00:46:21.140 that, well, why did you never take legal action when it was happening? But it's also like,

00:46:24.960 I don't know, for the majority of their relationship, she was a child and he was

00:46:28.720 famous and I'm sure she was coerced. But even, I don't know, I can understand feeling as a child,

00:46:34.400 like, no, I don't want to ruin this star's reputation. Absolutely. I don't want to be

00:46:38.560 the person who fucks everything up for him. The vast majority of victims of domestic abuse

00:46:44.880 do not report the crimes against them. They don't go to the hospital. They don't seek attention for

00:46:51.120 their crimes. They don't seek to publicize the crimes that are against them. And part of the

00:46:55.920 reason is because it's so difficult to do that. But another reason is that typically victims of

00:47:03.100 domestic abuse seek to protect their abuser. They don't want to be the reason that their abuser is

00:47:09.820 exposed. There's numerous reasons why that can be. So she publishes this stuff in 2020 and like

00:47:15.660 what comes of it? She would eventually delete her TikToks. I don't know if that's because she was

00:47:21.520 getting a lot of harassment. I don't know if Drake threatened her legally or really what happened,

00:47:27.600 but she does do an interview later about the allegations where she shares the same stories.

00:47:34.700 She does this interview because of another thing that begins happening. And it's the thing that

00:47:39.740 quiet on set does reference in the docuseries which is the 2021 ohio case ohio state of ohio

00:47:47.800 versus drake bell kat has no if you're if you're you know just listening to the audio version of

00:47:52.720 this kat has no notes in front of her about any of this like kat is a scholar on all of these cases

00:47:57.800 and i just want to quick interlude commend you on like the fact that you know every detail of 0.84

00:48:04.040 all of this stuff i remember talking with you about amber heard i know that you've covered

00:48:08.520 Angelina Jolie's case pretty extensively. And your ability to recall all of the specifics of

00:48:15.940 all of these events is pretty remarkable. So tell me about this 2021 Ohio case.

00:48:20.960 The 2021 Ohio case, here's how it happened. There was this anonymous girl at the time who lived in

00:48:30.220 Canada, who around 2020 reports to her local police that when she was younger, she had been

00:48:40.740 sexually assaulted and groomed by Drake Bell. She reports this to her local Canadian police

00:48:46.540 department. And in the process, she's describing where the assaults, the alleged assaults took

00:48:52.080 place. The way that she tells it is she was a big fan of Drake. She had been communicating with him

00:48:58.480 for years and she met up with him at various concerts, one of which was in Ohio and one of

00:49:05.140 which was in Illinois. She also said that she had a connection to Drake through her aunt

00:49:09.140 because her aunt knew like a third party, like a mutual friend who connected this girl to Drake at

00:49:16.100 a young age. So she was a huge fan of him, but she also had this relationship with him.

00:49:20.760 and when she reports this to the canadian police the jurisdiction of the alleged assault

00:49:27.880 is both ohio and illinois is that because that's where he was performing and that's where

00:49:33.920 she went to meet him at like meet and greets and stuff yes and she was how old when this happened

00:49:38.260 so it started when she was either 12 or 13 and then she alleged the assaults happened when she

00:49:45.120 was around 15. And he was how old? In his 30s. In his late 20s or early 30s. The Illinois Police

00:49:53.080 Department says that they are only going to investigate if Ohio declines. And that might

00:49:59.160 sound weird to people because I think most people understandably have the expectation

00:50:03.920 that if someone reports that they were assaulted as a child, that like, that's a really big crime,

00:50:10.100 there's going to be a lot of movement. What people don't know is that frustratingly in a lot of

00:50:14.960 these cases, there isn't action. And that can happen for a variety of reasons, but like cross

00:50:21.280 jurisdictional issues, it makes a lot of sense. So the jurisdiction that's ultimately decided for

00:50:26.780 the case is Ohio, because that's where one of the concerts took place, where she alleged that Drake 0.95

00:50:32.500 had her perform oral sex on him. Like after the show or like backstage or something? Backstage, 0.93

00:50:37.920 Yes. As a 15 year old? Yes, around that age. In the process of this case, Ohio prosecutors are

00:50:46.500 representing the anonymous girl. By the time Drake gets sentenced, she's 19. So she's a woman at that

00:50:53.460 point. But all of the events took place when she was still a minor. Ohio prosecutors are investigating

00:50:59.220 Drake has defense counsel. And what happens in a lot of court cases is both parties present

00:51:09.180 their case before you go to trial. There are pretrial hearings and pretrial motions,

00:51:15.420 and the process is very long and arduous and involves a lot of steps that aren't public.

00:51:22.220 Especially when you're dealing with a sex crime involving an anonymous minor,

00:51:25.940 most of what happened during these pretrial hearings was sealed.

00:51:29.580 Is that to protect the minor?

00:51:31.200 Yes.

00:51:31.660 Right. And that makes sense.

00:51:32.800 Yes. So a lot of what happened in those early discussions is sealed. But eventually what

00:51:39.740 happens is Drake Bell pleads guilty to two things. He pleads guilty to attempted endangerment of a

00:51:48.460 minor. And he pleads guilty to disseminating material that is harmful to juveniles.

00:51:54.880 The attempted endangerment, I believe, is like a class four felony or something like that.

00:51:59.380 And then the other one is a misdemeanor. But he doesn't have to do any jail time. It's just a

00:52:05.000 probation offense. So he pleads guilty to two charges that are not related to anything physical

00:52:11.400 that happened. Correct. But that are about text messages. Yes. This is not uncommon. A lot of

00:52:18.180 times when you bring a case to court there will be a range of allegations that are made and the

00:52:26.080 responsibility of like the prosecution is to provide evidence for these various allegations

00:52:30.720 but a lot of times there isn't strong enough evidence to prove the full extent of what's

00:52:36.580 being alleged in this case they seem to have reached an agreement the prosecution and the

00:52:41.840 defense that they had strong enough evidence for Drake to plead guilty on these two charges and

00:52:49.220 then he wouldn't have to go to trial. He would just have to serve probation and they would

00:52:53.500 essentially drop the rest of it. And that is like not an uncommon way for a case like this to

00:52:57.740 proceed at all. Drake pleads guilty to these two charges and the last sort of hearing in the case

00:53:05.720 is the sentencing. So this is in 2021. And by this point, it had been made public in the media,

00:53:13.740 like the media had started reporting on this case. And the sentencing hearing was actually

00:53:18.940 recorded and later posted on YouTube. So as of today, this has like 1.4 million views on YouTube.

00:53:24.920 Which is at odds with the woman's desire to remain anonymous, right? 0.98

00:53:28.860 Correct. 0.91

00:53:29.020 Like, is she in this video?

00:53:30.740 Yes.

00:53:31.360 So her name is not shared, but you see her face and you hear her voice and she speaks

00:53:38.860 and gives a statement during the sentencing hearing.

00:53:41.760 And this was published on the Law and Crime Network YouTube channel.

00:53:45.480 Another quick interlude. 1.00

00:53:46.980 Fuck the Law and Crime Network. 0.99

00:53:49.000 The Law and Crime Network is a YouTube channel that publishes like a lot of true crime content 0.97

00:53:55.340 with like kind of sensational legal commentary along the way and they're so instrumental in like

00:54:02.100 the smear campaign against amber heard why are you publishing this video of this woman who wanted to 0.99

00:54:07.420 remain anonymous about being abused when she was a minor like fuck the long crime network cat 0.91

00:54:11.280 continue there are like arguments to be made that it's important to have a public record of what 0.98

00:54:17.760 happens in the courtroom however what we end up seeing happen with sexual abuse cases is that

00:54:24.860 having this material online makes it easy for people who were not involved, who do not have

00:54:31.260 conflict or interest in this case, to just weigh in with their judgments and rip whoever the victim

00:54:37.360 is apart. Right. One could argue that making a YouTube video out of this person's victim

00:54:42.340 statement at the sentencing of the man who allegedly abused her as a child is not so much

00:54:46.740 about keeping public record as it is for entertainment. It is a YouTube video. And yes,

00:54:52.500 I can only imagine that what followed was the same thing that follows any video of anyone

00:54:57.780 doing this, which is like body gesture analysis, right?

00:55:01.140 So a couple of things happen at the sentencing that's really important for what's going on

00:55:05.540 now.

00:55:06.480 You know, during the sentencing hearing, the victim in the case reads a statement.

00:55:12.060 And in her statement, which is pretty lengthy, she describes the full entirety of her allegations

00:55:18.740 against Drake Bell. 0.55

00:55:20.160 She also calls him a pedophile. 0.94

00:55:22.260 Wow. 0.98

00:55:23.000 She talks about her allegations that he sexually assaulted her. 0.91

00:55:27.500 She talks about allegations that he sent her pictures of his genitals on Instagram and Snapchat.

00:55:34.920 She talks about Drake's wife at the time, and she says that Drake's wife knew what was going on.

00:55:40.880 She talks about, just at length, the effect that all this has had on her.

00:55:45.860 But the things that she talks about, she goes way past what Drake pled guilty to.

00:55:50.140 When she does this, her statement is picked up on in the media, and it's important to note that after the sentencing, it still wasn't nearly as discussed online as it is right now, but there was a lot of media attention to this case.

00:56:06.240 And the New York Times actually screwed up and published that Drake Bell had to register as a sex offender because of this, and that wasn't true.

00:56:15.240 That is something that Drake Bell has since harped on as, like, evidence that the media was kind of out to get him.

00:56:21.260 Right.

00:56:21.980 And it's tricky because they shouldn't have done that.

00:56:24.140 They did mess up.

00:56:25.220 Right. 0.99

00:56:25.580 They did fuck up. 0.99

00:56:26.400 But also, the media is out to get me is a refrain that I, at this point, almost exclusively associate with people who are, like, involved in human trafficking. 0.99

00:56:35.320 Right.

00:56:35.760 Like, I don't know.

00:56:36.240 Andrew Tate did the media is out to get me yeah Russell Brand did the media is out to get me like

00:56:41.440 I don't know I'm not I'm not I'm not here to play judge jury and executioner but when I do hear a

00:56:46.840 famous man saying the media is out to get me I'm like the thing about the like refrain of the media

00:56:53.040 was out to get me or the media got it wrong or the media is not paying attention to this the thing

00:56:58.800 about it is the media is not a monolith so like you have to be specific and explaining that the

00:57:04.920 new york times incorrectly labeled and then later retracted drake bell as a sex offender is a lot

00:57:11.380 different than the claim that the entire media was out to get him right it distills it down to

00:57:16.120 what it actually was which is a mistake that someone at the new york times made this right

00:57:21.540 the media is not a monolith the media is comprised of like a million different media companies and

00:57:26.340 14 trillion different journalists yes and like that i mean i think about donald trump anyone

00:57:31.880 who's claiming the media is out to get me it's like you're just you're you're creating a boogeyman

00:57:37.220 and if people across a variety of reputable media channels are reporting about one thing that you

00:57:43.760 did it's not the media out to get you it's journalists reporting on journal like it's just

00:57:48.100 and like quiet on set really feeds into this idea by letting drake have a platform to just stay all

00:57:53.980 this stuff and then not responding to it in any way yeah drake did in quiet on set he made at least

00:58:00.940 one remark about like i did some bad stuff but the media was really reporting on so much

00:58:06.060 misinformation and it absolutely destroyed me he's actually not taking responsibility

00:58:11.040 because he's positioning himself as the ultimate victim of what happened this is the thing right

00:58:15.840 this is the why i wanted to make this today which is that he is a victim he's just not a victim in

00:58:21.940 this situation yes and this i'm jumping the gun but this idea that people can only ever be a victim

00:58:30.400 that's not real life no that's not real life and like drake bell was a victim and drake bell

00:58:36.660 was allegedly an abuser so in preparation for this episode i like went on tiktok which

00:58:43.500 was my first mistake it always is so i searched drake bell on tiktok and like a lot of the most

00:58:51.880 popular videos are just basically calling his survivor a liar yes which i guess i don't know

00:58:58.420 if you've ever spent any time looking at any media online about sexual abuse, viral content

00:59:04.720 calling women liars is basically par for the course and something that you can always expect. 0.98

00:59:10.600 Yeah. But I'm curious, because you've spent a lot of time in this sort of like ecosystem 0.98

00:59:14.620 too in the Drake Bell case, what specific things do people tend to point at when they're trying

00:59:21.560 to discredit his survivor? When you watch the sentencing video, what ends up happening is

00:59:27.540 the first half is the woman reading her impact statement. The second half is Drake's defense

00:59:35.280 attorney responding to that and being like, literally, he's like, I need to call her

00:59:40.680 credibility into question. And then it's like 15 minutes of him just throwing out like every

00:59:46.120 victim blaming example in the book. And he also, as lawyers do, as is their job, he uses legalese

00:59:55.540 and he uses the way that the legal system works against the victim and in the favor of his client.

01:00:02.980 And this is what lawyers do. And this is what's so dangerous about what TikTok is doing,

01:00:07.680 which is they're just discounting everything the victim said. And she is the victim. They have to

01:00:13.560 refer to her legally in the case as the victim because Drake pleaded guilty. And so people are

01:00:19.600 just completely discounting everything the victim says. And then they're taking everything that

01:00:24.040 drake's defense attorney says at face value and they're even taking it one step further

01:00:28.600 and being like they're they're labeling the victim with all of these allegations that we

01:00:35.040 don't know to be true you know as a member of the elder portion of gen z there is so much discussion

01:00:40.420 about like boomers on facebook boomers on facebook being susceptible to partial or total misinformation

01:00:47.860 and like something that i stand by so hard is that like i just think that every generation

01:00:54.340 broadly speaking is equally susceptible to misinformation and i just think it's like

01:00:59.520 aestheticized in different ways and like yes some of the memes that traverse facebook and that fool 0.99

01:01:05.240 our parents into believing like really stupid shit are things that most people in their 20s 0.96

01:01:10.960 and teens wouldn't fall for but also like misinformation tailored to the aesthetic and 1.00

01:01:16.220 age of TikTok is something that these people do fall for. And we saw it with Amber Heard. I think

01:01:21.180 we see it with this. And basically, I mean, anytime anyone comes forward against a celebrity.

01:01:27.420 Yes. And I think that like, it's so eerie to me because what happened to Drake Bell in the

01:01:33.720 Brian Peck case is now happening in the exact same way to the Jane Doe in the Drake Bell case.

01:01:41.560 Say more about that.

01:01:42.400 The rhetoric is exactly the same.

01:01:45.620 You mean like the way that people wrote about Brian Peck in their letters?

01:01:49.680 Like, we know him and we know his heart.

01:01:52.100 And like, people say that every time that they defend someone who's been accused of

01:01:55.380 abuse, right?

01:01:55.940 Like, he would never do this.

01:01:57.700 Additionally, I think the part, the parallels the most is in those letters written by those

01:02:02.840 celebrities, many of which were written by women.

01:02:05.220 You see these women characterizing this child as like a temptress or promiscuous or literally asking for it or forcing the hand of the adult.

01:02:17.160 And with Drake, they were like, oh, Drake was mature for his age.

01:02:22.120 And we think that he tempted Brian into doing something that Brian regrets immensely.

01:02:27.820 Yeah.

01:02:28.340 And here's the rhetoric that they're using against the Jane Doe in the Drake Bell case.

01:02:33.180 they're saying that this young girl lied about her age nobody ever claimed that it is a fiction

01:02:41.400 of tiktok people took it upon themselves to just make up the claim that this young girl lied about

01:02:49.380 her age i saw those there's a lot of videos and comments saying that she lied about her age and

01:02:54.620 when drake found out about that she was actually a minor he cut off all communication yeah which

01:03:00.480 that raises a couple of ethical questions because first of all i mean this is not the first time

01:03:06.720 we've heard that sort of scenario calling i mean james charles comes to mind right because that's

01:03:11.740 the thing that people scrutinize him for where you know he was allegedly talking to minors and

01:03:17.920 then you know he found out their age and ran the other way it does call into question like

01:03:21.300 what is the responsibility of a rich and powerful celebrity right to regardless of like how old

01:03:28.520 someone says they are say they say they're 18 if you're talking to someone who looks very young

01:03:32.700 and you are rich and powerful like it's very easy to make sure that they are an adult and so i think

01:03:39.980 that even if what people are saying the drake bell situation which is that oh well she said

01:03:45.340 that she was an adult and then he found out that she lied i think even if that's true it doesn't

01:03:51.160 really put anyone off the hook especially considering he's in his 30s yeah and also but

01:03:56.160 also it's not true. Exactly. It's like, it's a fiction. And if you actually watch what she says

01:04:02.700 is that she was 12 and her aunt introduced her to Drake Bell and they don't deny that. Drake's

01:04:08.440 defense attorney never denies that. And in fact, Drake's defense attorney establishes the facts as

01:04:14.820 Drake knew this girl for years between the years of 12 and 15. Drake was messaging with this girl

01:04:20.620 for years and drake asked her how old she was she told him the truth and then drake responded hurry

01:04:29.100 up so nobody alleges that the girl ever lied about her age people just made that up and in fact

01:04:39.060 she was 12 years old so in what world do you mistake a 12 year old for an adult yeah no world

01:04:46.800 that's i mean that's the thing that comes top of mind for me is like we can we can investigate the

01:04:50.740 details and like did did he think that she was an old didn't she but like bigger picture bigger

01:04:55.220 picture what 12 year old looks like an adult exactly another thing that i saw people on

01:05:00.620 tiktok saying a lot was that this woman well at the time girl was stalking drake and it's it's

01:05:09.280 another one of these kind of like the adultification of child sex abuse survivors yes of like what you

01:05:15.080 know and the same thing that they did to drake when he was a child and when i started reading

01:05:19.160 comments like that that this girl was stalking drake the first thing that comes to mind to me

01:05:24.740 is like okay yes i so i had read some of this stuff and i knew that she was a fan and that

01:05:30.040 she went to multiple of his shows and multiple of his meet and greets yep by that definition

01:05:34.160 of stalking i don't know like most swifties are stalking taylor swift but also it's just like

01:05:39.880 Again, big picture. Can a 12, 13, 14-year-old girl meaningfully stalk an adult celebrity?

01:05:48.460 No. And yet again, they're just inventing things because Drake's attorney, the things that he says

01:05:57.220 during the sentencing are, in my opinion, crazily unprofessional and just like classic victim

01:06:03.440 blaming that should not be allowed in court. He reveals the anonymous woman's real initials,

01:06:09.460 And then he asks, like, are we going anonymous in this?

01:06:12.740 After he says what the first and last initial of her name is.

01:06:15.540 And then he's like, prosecution just let me know that we're just referring to her as the victim.

01:06:20.220 So he goes out of his way to reveal her identity.

01:06:22.640 Then he starts trying to undermine her credibility.

01:06:26.640 And the defense attorney engages in the exact same rhetoric that was used against Drake Bell.

01:06:30.620 He positions this young girl as being jealous of Drake's wife and like basically fabricating

01:06:39.960 allegations against Drake because of her jealousy.

01:06:42.840 It really is crazy.

01:06:44.480 Once you've heard enough of these stories, like they all sound the same.

01:06:48.380 And the way that victims are discredited every single time by defense lawyers, but also like

01:06:53.940 by the public who becomes, you know, a de facto defense lawyer.

01:06:57.180 It's just the same thing every time.

01:06:59.560 It's the same thing every time.

01:07:00.620 What's so frustrating about it, and I'm sure what's so frustrating about it to you as someone who like reports on these as your job, regardless of it being the same every single time, if it's presented in the right way, it's like hook, line and sinker.

01:07:12.200 People just buy it the same way every single time and smear campaign every single time and discredit the victims every single time and stand with the abuser every single time because celebrity parasocial relationship.

01:07:23.360 And that's actually something that a point that I wanted to make, which is that like all those people who wrote letters in support of Brian Peck, right?

01:07:28.960 like they were close professional colleagues they sometimes from the time of childhood they felt

01:07:34.380 maybe in their their careers were indebted to him there was like a close personal relationship

01:07:38.820 with drake all of these people defending him against allegations that to an extent he pled

01:07:45.440 guilty to yes all these people online they don't know him but the parasocial element of celebrity

01:07:53.040 is in its own way a relationship and the way that people like go kind of like balls to the wall to

01:07:58.700 defend him online and that they also do for brad pitt and for johnny depp they're doing the same

01:08:04.540 things that again those people who wrote those letters for brian peck they're saying well we

01:08:08.280 know him and we know his heart and he could never have done this people express confusion and

01:08:13.880 basically act bewildered at how someone like brian peck could succeed and remain in the children's

01:08:21.920 television industry despite having these horrible allegations and then a conviction the exact same

01:08:27.800 people are responsible for cultivating an environment where this is happening right now

01:08:33.540 it's happening right now and people are complicit in it and instead of recognizing that they jump

01:08:40.560 to conspiracy and this is something that quite on set actually i think kind of encourages we're

01:08:47.260 we're scrolling through our outline we are officially allowed to analyze the documentary

01:08:51.620 Get into it.

01:08:52.580 Okay.

01:08:53.240 People look at the situation at Nickelodeon and they see that this entertainment company

01:08:58.240 that specialized in children's entertainment by and for children had all of these convicted

01:09:04.360 child sex offenders working for them.

01:09:07.620 And a lot of them became convicted in the process.

01:09:10.640 Like they didn't hire them as convicted sex offenders, but they hired them.

01:09:14.640 They abused kids who worked for Nickelodeon and then they were later convicted for those

01:09:17.880 crimes.

01:09:18.360 and people look at this and they're like how could this possibly happen it has to be that 0.86

01:09:24.740 nickelodeon is like founded on principles of abusing children and hollywood is like a pedophile

01:09:31.680 cabal yeah q anon alert q anon alert q anon alert which is the other thing is i was watching this

01:09:37.400 documentary and i was thinking oh to be clear my first thought was with all of the victims

01:09:42.700 but then i sort of had like an outer layer of like q anon's gonna run with this one which is

01:09:47.100 not to say that these stories should not be told in the exact way that they happened but they should

01:09:50.920 also be presented with some context right what we find out in this docuseries is that these people

01:09:57.500 were hired not with the knowledge that they were going to abuse children but rather they were hired

01:10:03.800 and then used the position to abuse children so there's a difference then after people were

01:10:10.620 convicted in some cases like brian peck's case they continued to have their image rehabilitated

01:10:16.840 inside the industry. And people look at this and they're like, this could never happen anywhere

01:10:21.820 else. But that's not true. It happens everywhere. It sounds a lot like the church. It happens in

01:10:28.300 the church. All of them, like all the different churches. It happens in every industry. Sexual

01:10:35.220 offenders are rehabilitated and allowed to remain in every industry. This is like what the Me Too

01:10:40.840 movement was actually about. But the problem is the fixation on Hollywood and celebrity itself

01:10:48.580 drives people to believe that celebrities are uniquely capable of these things or that people

01:10:54.460 in Hollywood are uniquely capable of these things. But it's just that they get the most attention

01:10:59.760 because they're celebrities. And like Drake Bell, something he brought up in the documentary

01:11:04.880 was that Brian Peck, his conviction, didn't get nearly as much attention or media coverage.

01:11:11.960 And in fact, none of the child offenders at Nickelodeon got any notable media coverage.

01:11:18.940 But then when Drake was accused in 2021, that got a lot of media coverage.

01:11:24.220 And he raises that as a point of like, well, why didn't this other stuff get coverage?

01:11:28.700 Like basically insinuating that the media is out to get him.

01:11:31.360 Right. My interpretation of this is that the people at Nickelodeon who were convicted of

01:11:37.680 sexual offenses against children, they weren't famous. And at the time, you did not have a

01:11:43.980 prevailing cultural narrative or conspiracy that Hollywood was full of pedophiles.

01:11:50.060 Right. That's a newer invention.

01:11:51.520 It's slightly newer. I think it's recycled. But at the time, the climate was different. And also,

01:11:57.080 social media didn't really exist yet in its current form so you didn't have forums of people

01:12:02.200 online like digging for this stuff today you literally do but also drake bell is more famous

01:12:08.980 than brian peck than all the other people who were convicted who had worked in children's television

01:12:15.560 exactly i mean like nobody knew who brian peck was and so like sexual abuse unfortunately happens

01:12:21.140 all the time and it's just not breaking news all the time because for the most part they're random

01:12:25.080 people who we don't know when it's someone like drake bell who's like everybody's favorite child

01:12:28.980 star it's going to be more widely reported on not because the media is out to get him because he's

01:12:33.180 a famous person and at the end of the day these media companies are in charge of producing articles

01:12:37.760 that people will click on the exact same factors that led to drake bell's ohio case being really

01:12:44.260 covered in the media are the exact same factors that lead to his allegations against brian peck

01:12:49.760 being the focal point of this documentary and the focal point of the cultural reaction to the

01:12:55.840 documentary has centered around Drake's allegations because out of all the horrible

01:12:59.980 things that were shared on that show, Drake is the most famous one to have experienced any of it.

01:13:05.300 And I do think that the severity of the allegations that Brian Peck was convicted of,

01:13:10.300 I do think it was more serious than some of the other stuff that was in the show.

01:13:14.840 But the fact is, the framing of the documentary perpetuates the same focus on celebrity above all else. And I think you could argue that's probably why they don't spend that much airtime going into what Drake himself has done.

01:13:30.180 and that was the thing that jumped out to me right at the end i want look i thought it was

01:13:34.840 a very engaging documentary i thought it was entertaining which as a piece of media on hbo

01:13:40.200 its ultimate goal is to grip you and i don't mean entertaining in a in a positive way but it was

01:13:44.760 like i wanted to keep watching but then when it ended with a passing mention of like drake may

01:13:49.940 have done something but it was ultimately in pursuit of his own like healing journey and then

01:13:55.280 and then the documentary ended i just thought well wait a minute but who did drake allegedly

01:14:01.240 hurt why are we not hearing from them at all is that part of this story and if the editorial

01:14:06.440 directors of this documentary are choosing to not make it part of this story then it's like

01:14:09.940 is this a documentary about survivors of abuse or is it a documentary about a certain set of

01:14:15.900 celebrities who we all have this kind of nostalgic parasocial relationship to and i don't necessarily

01:14:20.440 think it has to be one or the other when it ended so abruptly i just thought maybe this could have

01:14:25.160 used a fifth installment where we talk about the cycle of abuse and how drake bell is not exempt

01:14:32.280 from that cycle but then i was like you know this is a big budget streaming documentary and maybe

01:14:38.920 something as complex as the cycle of abuse is at odds with what it's trying to provide which is

01:14:45.220 a few hours of entertainment but also and i really do think this was part of what this specific

01:14:50.540 documentary was trying to provide a sense of righteous moral clarity that the viewer can have

01:14:55.360 about who was right and who was wrong and who was a victim and who was a predator and media

01:15:02.300 that ultimately pushes that very simple narrative about abuse feels good to consume because it just

01:15:09.840 reminds you that had you been in that situation you would have been on the side of good and even

01:15:13.760 watching it and reflecting on it you are in support of the good side but that's also just

01:15:18.620 like an oversimplification of abuse and not how it actually works which just makes me really

01:15:23.840 skeptical when i'm watching things like this i don't know is the goal to raise awareness about

01:15:29.460 abuse and how to stop it or is it about feeling good my fear with the documentary ultimately

01:15:36.640 is that it is perpetuating some of the exact sentiment that it initially sought to explain

01:15:44.680 which is that literally Drake Bell is in a position where his image is being rehabilitated

01:15:51.440 because of this docuseries and it has provided him a bigger platform than he would have had

01:15:58.040 otherwise and also a bigger platform than he's had since Drake and Josh itself to appeal to the

01:16:05.300 public. And we can see that working. We can see people in the public positioning Drake as the

01:16:11.840 ultimate victim, positioning Drake as a hero, and giving him cover to further re-traumatize

01:16:19.240 victims. I think that two really important takeaways that the docuseries didn't explore

01:16:26.500 and that are kind of foundational to understanding the cycle of abuse. One,

01:16:32.320 most people who are victimized do not go on to victimize others. However, people who victimize

01:16:40.920 others are more likely than not to have been victimized themselves right and that is the

01:16:47.580 cycle of abuse who is to say right that brian peck wasn't abused as a child and this isn't me

01:16:54.500 trying to launder the image of brian peck certainly i have no interest in that and this

01:16:58.900 isn't also me like trying to make drake bell the the ultimate predator it's just like all of these

01:17:04.960 people are complicated human beings and the complexity of any of this is just left out of

01:17:11.080 the documentary yes i think when we misunderstand the cycle of abuse right like perhaps brian was a

01:17:16.560 victim as a child perhaps drake did go on to abuse other young women and girls like i think

01:17:22.340 ultimately the story that was shown in quiet on set about the abuse that drake bell suffered

01:17:28.120 you're taking this quite lengthy and complex timeline using a snippet of it you know and

01:17:33.940 presenting that snippet of the timeline as like the start and end date of the full story and then

01:17:38.460 saying like this is what happened and this is the story of the abuse and it's really just not the

01:17:42.820 full story it's not the full story and and i think when you frame it as such right and you don't

01:17:48.820 address that abuse can and in this case is a cycle you're doing a disservice to preventing further

01:17:55.700 abuse i think that when you examine the motivation at the heart of the series and the heart of any

01:18:01.820 sort of production that involves themes of abuse. It's like, what are you actually setting out to do

01:18:06.880 here? Are you hoping that by exposing these things, you're going to combat abuse and challenge

01:18:13.680 misperceptions in society? Or are you going to tell people what you already know they want to

01:18:19.360 hear? Because if it's the latter, you're not actually going to make things better. You're

01:18:24.460 only going to make things worse. And I think that that is the ultimate fatal flaw of the docuseries

01:18:30.340 is that we're not seeing what actually happened here.

01:18:35.220 Like you said, we're only seeing part of it.

01:18:37.560 The docuseries feeds into the sentiment that people watching

01:18:43.420 are able to correctly identify abuse

01:18:47.460 based on sensational aspects of what they're seeing on TV.

01:18:52.060 But when we actually look at what the Quiet On Set audience is now doing,

01:18:56.720 they are subjecting drake bell's victim and the other alleged victims of drake bell to the exact

01:19:05.000 same kind of environment that drake bell had to go through as a child himself the documentary

01:19:10.940 in itself is part of this continuing cycle of abuse and that's the hard pill to swallow because 0.94

01:19:16.840 i liked watching it you know until the very end where i was like what the fuck i enjoyed watching

01:19:21.800 it throughout i thought it was really informative and obviously a lot of other people did too

01:19:26.800 because it became the most streamed piece of television for a week in the united states

01:19:33.220 and i don't think our goal here is to like shame you for having watched it and felt something i

01:19:38.200 think you absolutely should feel something when you watch stuff like this but i think when you're

01:19:42.460 talking about something as delicate and complicated as this to not even include an expert on like how

01:19:51.480 abuse functions was a choice. What I would challenge people to do is not only acknowledge

01:19:59.880 victimhood when someone tells you to, because what this documentary was a vehicle for was

01:20:05.560 explaining to its audience that Drake Bell was a victim of abuse. But people need to be able to

01:20:11.480 look at situations without having a narrator tell them what to think and come to that conclusion

01:20:17.340 on their own. And what we're seeing with like the online reaction on TikTok and on social media

01:20:22.980 to the 2021 case and what Drake Bell is doing now, we're seeing that people don't possess that

01:20:29.820 ability. They're easily falling for the same pitfalls that are what allows abuse to be enabled

01:20:35.480 in the first place. The last kind of point I want to make here about the cycle of abuse is that I

01:20:40.480 actually think this is something that most people know about. I think people tend to know that abuse

01:20:44.580 is cyclical I think most people listening to this podcast are probably at least vaguely aware of

01:20:50.000 that and that a lot of abusers were abuse victims themselves and it's so strange to witness people

01:20:57.180 just refusing to acknowledge that this situation could also be that right it's I go online and I

01:21:03.160 see like all of these people shaming people who have spoken up as survivors of Drake Bell and it's

01:21:08.100 just like we we all know how this works but in this situation it couldn't be because my parasocial

01:21:14.420 relationship with drake bell when i was 10 years old which hey i had one too but prevents me from

01:21:20.460 seeing him as anything other than the ultimate victim the day that the documentary came out

01:21:26.420 drake bell launched and dropped this music video and it's part of like a new music era that he's

01:21:32.600 doing and at the end of the music video he embedded a youtube video into it that is a

01:21:40.580 conspiracy video from a really small channel that is attempting to discredit and undermine

01:21:47.780 drake's 2021 victim her personal statement that she made during the sentencing hearing

01:21:53.540 yeah i noticed that uh so drake bell essentially lined up a music video release with the release

01:21:59.020 of this documentary because like you said i mean this is the most culturally relevant it feels like

01:22:04.080 he's been since drake and josh yeah i noticed that was really weird when you're watching the

01:22:08.400 music video at the very end of the music video this pop-up shows up for for another video and

01:22:13.700 it's called drake bell accuser story falls apart and it's from like a conspiracy drama channel

01:22:19.740 yes i thought that was a really i didn't even know what to make of that i think it basically

01:22:24.120 shows and there are other ways that we've seen this happen online but drake bell is really

01:22:30.380 actively aware and participating in the online discourse around his 2021 case and his current

01:22:37.740 image rehabilitation since the documentary dropped, but also before. And also even going

01:22:44.260 back to the 2021 case, the victim discusses how Drake was online encouraging the mockery of her

01:22:52.500 during the case itself. And that has just perpetuated to this current day. He embedded

01:22:57.200 the conspiracy YouTube video. He is in TikTok comments. You'll be on a TikTok defending Drake

01:23:04.620 and like deep in the comments he's replying to people being like yeah i never abused my ex

01:23:09.840 girlfriend it was all lies like he is he is extremely online he also will dm people who

01:23:18.100 post negative things about him and try to like pressure them or intimidate them into taking them

01:23:23.700 down i don't know when i saw that he embedded the conspiracy theory youtube video about you know

01:23:28.620 like disproving drake bell's accuser into his music video it just came across as at odds with

01:23:35.500 the story that he sold to the documentary because he when he pled guilty to the lesser charges

01:23:40.740 i don't think i mentioned this he ultimately got i think two years probation and 200 hours of

01:23:46.140 community service and so he alluded in the documentary to like i kind of did my time

01:23:51.500 i did my piece responsibility i took responsibility which is very much at odds with

01:23:58.320 embedding this conspiracy YouTube video at the end of the music video that you launched with

01:24:02.880 the release of the documentary, it seems like, I don't know, the healed individual that he

01:24:10.120 portrayed himself as in the documentary might not be the full picture. And to be clear, of course,

01:24:16.220 I want Drake Bell to be healed because he's a traumatized survivor in his own right. But

01:24:22.040 that healing really shouldn't include the like ongoing participation in the harassment of

01:24:28.480 someone who accused you and who you pled guilty to abusing.

01:24:31.620 Yes. And Drake talks about how significant of an impact it had on him to have people in the

01:24:38.840 entertainment industry defend his abuser. Imagine how much of an impact all of this is having

01:24:45.900 on the victim in the 2021 case because it's not just hollywood who is on her abuser's side

01:24:53.120 it's the entire internet yeah and every time that drake re-ups this he's putting her through that

01:25:00.220 again and again and again and again and she is never getting her documentary no because she is

01:25:06.120 not famous exactly where does this leave us if you could say something to just people who have

01:25:13.440 watched this documentary? Because everyone I know has, and if you're listening to this,

01:25:17.080 there's a great chance that you have too. What would you leave people with?

01:25:19.780 I would say that if people feel moved by the subject of child sexual abuse and want to do

01:25:28.380 anything within their hearts and minds or externally to combat this issue, it's always

01:25:36.280 happening. And there is always an opportunity to continuously support victims. There are new

01:25:42.820 victims every single day, every single hour. And just defending or supporting somebody who's like

01:25:50.560 a famous victim is not enough. People have to take the energy of defending and supporting victims

01:25:56.800 and actually do it. They have to do it with people involved in cultural issues, cultural discourse.

01:26:03.960 But in addition, you also have to do it for people in your own life. And I think that it's

01:26:09.780 really comforting to be able to watch a documentary and be like, I'm on the right side of this.

01:26:14.880 I'm on the right side of this. Like this horrible thing, like I'm doing the right thing by watching

01:26:19.380 this documentary and supporting Drake Bell. But at the end of the day, that's not enough. And as we

01:26:25.360 just discussed, that is the attitude that perpetuates this whole cycle and continuously

01:26:31.600 leaves victims unsupported. Yeah. The energy that you're bringing to the Instagram comments of

01:26:37.680 everyone who is mentioned in the documentary for having supported Brian Peck, like take that

01:26:42.440 energy and also like use it to support victims who aren't famous. So the last thing that I want

01:26:49.800 to share is some of what the victim in the 2021 case shared in her victim impact statement. And

01:26:58.460 I think that Drake Bell, because of this documentary has been given so much space

01:27:03.040 to speak about the effects of trauma, that it's only right that the victim in this case be given

01:27:09.260 space as well to talk about how this has impacted her. In this statement, which is pretty lengthy,

01:27:14.980 and you can look it up and read it online, she talks about how the sleepless nights that she

01:27:22.300 experienced as a result of this impacted her ability to perform academically in high school

01:27:26.840 because she was following a sleeping class. She talked about the thousands of dollars that her

01:27:32.020 family spent on therapy to try to correct the trauma or cope with the trauma that she was left

01:27:38.260 with because of this. She talked about how her relationship with her aunt and her aunt's

01:27:42.760 relationship with her family will never be the same because of the responsibility her aunt takes

01:27:47.860 in introducing her to Jake Bell. And then this is the part that I think is really important and

01:27:53.040 what we can end on. She said, the defendant's crimes against me are the worst things that he

01:27:59.280 could have ever done to me. He was such a huge part of my childhood, and in return, he ruined

01:28:04.540 my life. Back when I confronted him, he told me that he didn't want me to hate him. I don't hate

01:28:10.660 him. I loathe him. Now, I would like to ask you something important. Whether a person has a lot 0.97

01:28:17.180 of influence, some or none at all, these are crimes that are unforgivable and inexcusable.

01:28:23.560 They can never be taken back.

01:28:25.640 He was calculating. 0.98

01:28:27.240 He preyed on me and sexually abused me. 1.00

01:28:30.220 He is a monster and a danger to children. 0.97

01:28:33.260 I am kindly asking you to send a powerful message that these crimes are never okay, 0.94

01:28:38.700 no matter who a person is.

01:28:40.900 I also want to bring up the letter that I wrote to you.

01:28:43.840 In my letter, I explained why the defendant is not remorseful for his crimes.

01:28:48.740 I described how he has publicly found humor in them and how he has used tactics to gain sympathy from the public

01:28:55.680 He could have easily ignored the people online who were making a mockery of this case

01:29:00.840 Instead he went out of his way to let them know that he thinks it's funny

01:29:05.120 And he can give me that look all he wants. He knows exactly what i'm talking about

01:29:09.240 The crimes that he committed against me are some kind of sick joke to him

01:29:13.460 My suffering is not for him to laugh at or his leverage to brag about becoming a good

01:29:17.700 man now that he is a father.

01:29:19.560 So today, if the defendant tries to tell you that he is remorseful, I am asking you to

01:29:24.780 appreciate that actions speak louder than words.

01:29:27.900 Since his arraignment and plea hearing, his actions have been loud and clear, and they

01:29:32.200 have shown that he simply does not care and does not have an ounce of remorse.

01:29:36.620 I won't be surprised if he tries to manipulate everybody into believing that he's changed,

01:29:41.460 but he can't fool me.

01:29:42.920 If he is truly sorry for anything, he is sorry that he has finally been caught.

01:29:47.900 I can assure you of that.

01:29:49.580 He committed these crimes against me with pride.

01:29:52.100 A defendant who clearly feels no remorse for his crimes deserves to be given the maximum

01:29:56.640 sentence possible.

01:29:58.040 I will never forget what he did to me.

01:30:00.360 I idolized and looked up to him, and he took that and broke it in the most sickening way

01:30:05.160 possible. 0.99

01:30:06.300 He is the epitome of evil. 0.59

01:30:08.340 I deserve better than to be used for his sick desires and for my suffering to be used for 0.97

01:30:12.740 his amusement. 0.99

01:30:13.980 Jared Drake Bell is a pedophile, and that is his legacy. 0.97

01:30:17.460 Thank you, Your Honor. 0.88

01:30:20.820 Kat, thank you so much for sitting with us today, for walking us through this.

01:30:25.860 You are so unbelievably well-informed, but also just have the best insights in this whole

01:30:31.880 area, which is, I mean, why I love talking to you about it on and off the show.

01:30:35.600 where can people find you support your work see more of you so you can find my work at nbcnews.com

01:30:43.480 if you search my name my author profile will come up and you can read my articles there

01:30:47.640 you can also find me on twitter instagram tiktok blue sky all of the above at kat ten barge

01:30:54.460 thank you so much for joining us today you know this wasn't a particularly fun one but i i do

01:31:02.920 think when something is so in the zeitgeist as this documentary is and when a piece of media

01:31:09.440 like this is being read in a way that has potential to perpetuate so much of the harm

01:31:15.780 it's trying to curtail we have a responsibility to provide alternate perspectives and perhaps

01:31:22.900 more well-rounded perspectives that just tell the fuller story if you want more of the show

01:31:28.260 we are on patreon the link for that will be in the episode description or the youtube description

01:31:33.880 depending on how you've watched this and i'm just so grateful that you stuck around till the end if

01:31:39.580 you're here that means you stuck around really grateful love you so much and until next time

01:31:44.880 stay fruity

A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - April 09, 2024

Drake Bell and the Cycle of Abuse

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