Collin Gosselin Alleges Mom Kate Made Him Sleep Alone in Locked Basement Monitored by Cameras for 2 Years

Kate last commented on the subject in a 2023 Instagram and said, “All measures that were taken in our home were at the explicit recommendation of his pediatric psychiatrist and/or his team of specialists and were put into place to safeguard every member of our family, our friends as well as our family pets”

Collin Gosselin; Kate Gosselin. Credit :Michael Simon/Getty; Amanda Edwards/Getty

Collin Gosselin spent most of his early life on camera on his family TV show Jon & Kate Plus 8 — and now, he’s revealing explosive allegations regarding what he says went on behind the scenes.

In his new memoir, In the Shadow of Eight: Surviving the Reality of My Childhood, Gosselin, 22, claims that during his childhood, his mom, Kate Gosselin, was “particularly hard on me and on how I acted or how I presented myself” compared to his seven siblings.

After Kate split from husband Jon Gosselin in 2009, the show continued on as Kate Plus 8, and Collin alleged Kate, 51, would yank his ear and slap him across the face when he didn’t perform for the cameras in a way she wanted.

“People from that time would probably say I was a ‘difficult kid,’ I won’t argue with them,” he said. “I probably was. At this point, my rebellion had evolved to become more than just a quiet resistance. I didn’t always know how to express what I was feeling, so it came out sideways. I started to talk back, throw tantrums, melt down the way kids do.”

Kate Gosselin with her eight children in 2013. Collin is second from left.Donna Svennevik/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty

When he was 9, Collin said Kate stopped letting him go to Jon’s house and told him, “Your dad doesn’t want to see you anymore.” He said his other siblings were still able to see Jon. (Collin said he later learned from Jon, 49, that he never said he didn’t want to see him anymore.)

Around the same time, Collin claimed Kate also moved him out of the finished part of the basement where he’d slept with his brothers, Aaden and Joel, and into the unfinished part of the basement. He said she forced him to sleep on an air mattress next to their cleaning supplies and spare fridges.

“Suddenly I was separated and moved out of sight,” he said. “For me, it was a message: My place in the house wasn’t fixed, and it could always get worse.”

One day, Collin said his teacher noticed his ear was in pain. He eventually told her Kate “yanked on my ear,” and a Children and Youth Services investigation was allegedly triggered. The day CYS workers came to Kate’s house, Collin said he told them everything was fine out of fear of “consequences.”

After the CYS visit, Collin said Kate told him she was pulling him out of school temporarily “for my own good.” She also stopped letting him play with his Legos and had a wall built around his mattress in the basement to form what he called “a small holding cell.”

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Collin said Kate installed two cameras connected to a device the size of a baby monitor to watch him. Since the door to the room locked from outside, he said he would have to “call out for my mom through the cameras so she could let me out if I needed to use a bathroom upstairs.”

He said that he was forced to urinate without a toilet on one occasion because no one came to get him from the basement.

“I started crying, quietly at first,” he said. “Then louder. Trying to wake her up. Trying to make myself heard through camera lens and walls and locks. Nothing happened. And then I just couldn’t hold it any longer. I remember the shame more than anything.”

Collin said he was not allowed to eat with his siblings upstairs and was only brought up to eat after they all were finished.

“After the table was cleared and dishes stacked, eating alone at the long table, I felt like a ghost who had missed his own life,” he said.

Collin Gosselin’s memoir, In the Shadow of Eight.Grand Central Publishing/Amazon

When he was done, he said he would be locked back in his room in the basement. At times when he wasn’t in the basement, he said Kate “was giving orders, making me clean, dragging me around the house like I was her servant.”

“Sometimes she’d slap me across the cheek, pull my ear, or smack me upside the head,” he said. “Other times, it was just the constant drip of words meant to cut.”

Collin claimed that this routine of being locked in the basement went on for two years.

“Most days, I spent about 70 percent of my time locked in that room,” he said. “The rest was split between meeting with my teacher, eating alone without my siblings, cleaning up after everyone, or pretending to be happy when the cameras came around.”

Collin said he attempted to run away, but when he realized he had nowhere to go, he returned home to a furious Kate, who he claimed restrained him with zip ties.

“They made a snappy sound as she pulled them tighter,” he said. “She then moved to my ankles and did the same, zip tying them tight enough that there wasn’t room for any movement. I remember the pressure more than the pain. The burning, the way circulation cut off so fast it felt like my hands and feet were disappearing.”

Collin claimed Kate then threw him down on the floor and left him for hours alone. Collin said Kate had called EMS on him and had him hospitalized. He was then transferred to the Fairmount Behavioral Health System, where he claimed to have suffered more abuse.

After two years at Fairmount, Collin was transferred to a residential facility, George Junior Republic, where he started to wean off all the medication he claimed Kate and Fairmount forced him to take. Jon worked for months to get him released so he could come home with him, as Kate had initially been awarded custody of their eight children following their divorce.

Collin’s memoir included a statement from Fairmount that said they do not comment on specific patients and that “at Fairmount Behavioral Health System, every day our staff strives to maintain a total therapeutic environment through individualized treatment for each patient.”

While Kate has not responded to specific claims in Collin’s memoir, she said in a 2023 Instagram statement that “all measures that were taken in our home were at the explicit recommendation of [Collin’s] pediatric psychiatrist and/or his team of specialists and were put into place to safeguard every member of our family, our friends as well as our family pets.”

In 2024, Kate’s attorney, Richard Puleo, told The Sun that he didn’t believe that Kate had done anything to “intentionally harm” her son and that “she did what she did to protect herself and her family” from what he called “troubled behavior.”

PEOPLE has reached out to Puleo and Fairmont for comment.

During a recent interview with PEOPLE about his appearance on season 5 of Special Forces, Collin said he would tell his younger self “that it all worked out.”

“There was a lot of doubt in my mind as a young kid and there was a lot of worry and a lot of anxiety and a lot of fear,” he said. “I just want him to know that I grew up, I’m an adult now and I have this passion to protect him and all others like him.”

In the Shadow of Eight is available now from Grand Central Publishing, wherever books are sold.

If you suspect child abuse, call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child or 1-800-422-4453, or go to www.childhelp.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.