Kate Gosselin Responds to Son Collin Gosselin’s Abuse Allegations in New Memoir

Kate Gosselin finally addressed the fallout from her estranged son’s new book in a string of TikTok comments. The 51-year-old reality star responded after Collin Gosselin, now 22, released In the Shadow of Eight: Surviving the Reality of My Childhood on October 13. In the memoir he describes years of childhood trauma and levels several abuse allegations against his mother.

The comments piled up under a video Kate posted on October 10 about her dog’s training progress. One supporter wrote that Kate already has the backing of so many people, including her “seven precious children,” and that their feed was flooded with “terrible lies.”

The commenter added that it should be illegal to defame someone that way and praised Kate for keeping her head up through it all. “We love you!” Kate replied, “Thank you so much. I know rational logical ppl or anyone who has dealt with mental illness understands what’s going on here :)”

She also liked a separate comment that claimed Collin would regret all of this someday and that he had been encouraged and enabled by other dysfunctional and mentally ill people. The user called the situation gross and said they were sorry Kate has to relive it over and over. Kate jumped in with, “Exactly! I had nothing to do with it, except for consent because it was medically necessary.”

In the book Collin alleges that Kate restrained him with zip ties, hit him when he refused to perform for the cameras the way she wanted, and monitored him with cameras while isolating him in the family basement as a child. He has previously said the process of writing the memoir forced him to revisit some of the hardest moments of his life. On the On Purpose podcast with Jay Shetty that dropped October 12, he went further and called his mother “physically and verbally abusive.”

Collin first rose to fame as one of the sextuplets on the family’s reality show Jon & Kate Plus 8, which ran from 2007 to 2009 before it was rebranded as Kate Plus 8 and continued until 2017. Kate and her ex-husband Jon are also parents to twin girls Mady and Cara, both 26, and the rest of the sextuplets Alexis, Hannah, Aaden, Leah, and Joel, all 22. Collin and Kate have been estranged for years. After the couple divorced in 2009 he was institutionalized as a pre-teen and later moved in with Jon, who was awarded custody of him. He has long said he is closer to his father.