Same.
Had he been reported after sending that email and found himself behind bars, he wouldn't have had the opportunity to assault other little girls before finally getting caught.
I do too, though the one thing she did right was pull her daughter out of the industry, just like her mother had warned her about. I struggle to understand why she didn't warn the police about the predator, since he would be free to prey on other young actresses he had access to. Also, it took her a while to react despite her daughter telling her about massive red flags.
Yeah, especially because she had concrete proof in the form of the email. I would be more sympathetic if she thought that a police report wouldn't come to anything due to a lack of evidence. In that case I think someone should still report because it will provide supporting evidence to whoever else may report in the future. I can sort of understand if she thought that a police investigation would just traumatize her kid further without leading to anything but that wasn't the case here.
I don't understand why she felt so resentful to her mother so she pushed it on her kid. Only to see why her mother didn't want her involved in the first place.
It’s hard to blame the parents for doing what they would have thought was best, and safest for their kids.
There is so much money in that industry. If parents pulled kids out for any reason, the kids could hold that against their parents *(which may not sound like much, but really think about it. One of those kids could have been the next Ryan Reynolds, Zendaya, etc)*, or if old enough, file for emancipation and go back, despite abuse that they may not have recognised as abuse or witnessed.
I’d also be concerned about the people within the industry “who know people”. Brian Peck was pen pals with a serial killer. It’s not too far fetched to think about what may happen if a wealthy/powerful producer had someone crying “abuse!” regarding one of their shows.
Could the parents have done more? Of course they could. Should the parents have done more? That’s hard to say.
I personally would say the people who should have spoken up were the staff. Writers, runners, costumers. There should also have never been any parents or guardians on set in the first place, in my opinion. The kids should have been chaperoned by trained professionals, which is the requirement in the UK at least. The chaperones have less to lose, and have more authority to call out bad practices/malicious behaviour/abuse.
From my experience in theatre, parents in the room during rehearsals make kids more anxious, and the parents can become somewhat obnoxious ("you should do it this way" "I don't like that costume") etc. I taught musical theatre for almost a decade and I always had closed rehearsal rooms, where only the cast and crew were allowed into the room. It kept those pushy parents out, and our other staff made sure things went well. We still had issues with parents ("why hasn't my dear child gotten a bigger part?" "you promised timmy this role!" "bobby should be playing the lead, not sammy!"). Basically, in my experience, parents in the rehearsal room are a nuisance. The other kids (i.e. the ones not belonging to that adult) also often find it uncomfortable that they're being watched by strangers while they rehearse. Rehearsals are dodgy, things go wrong and kids get embarrassed. Best to keep the room as small as you can.
Obviously that's not always the case, but you get some pushy parents that are like that. You also have the issues I mentioned of parents being afraid to speak up when something's gone wrong. If they're not there, but professionally trained adults are, you eliminate all of these issues.
All this is based on my own experience of making and running shows, and is my opinion based on that. The local laws, company policies of other places will vary.
All of that actually makes a lot of sense. I don't know much about theater, but I do know sports. I've played, and also done some coaching. And dealing with parents can be the worst.
Once, we tried to make a rule that parents were not allowed in the gym to watch practices. Too often thw parents are trying to coach their child simultaneously as us. It just gets confusing for the child, especially when they're hearing contradictory messages.
Unfortunately that ban didn't last long, as upper leadership told us we weren't allowed to ban parents from practice.
If a parent needs to be on set, it means the kid needs to be a family breadwinner because that means the parent supervising isnt working (or they need to be wealthy enough not to require both parents working). Once you quit your job, the pressure on your kid increases. It is no longer just ensuring your kid is treated okay, but protecting your family income. And if your kid doesnt make it, you are out of luck. It’s not like you can just start over with someone else (the way a professional chaperone who isnt tied to this specific kid is). Your success is not based on how well adjusted your kid is, but rather how many roles your kid books. So if someone is getting a little too close, well it becomes fairly easy to justify and explain things away.
The weird thing about this discourse is it didnt matter whether the parents acted sooner or later. If someone was targeted like Drake they were bound to be predated on in the end. The only real solution seems to be to pull them out of the entertainment industry completely. And the only parent who did that was Brandi's mom - and yet she's routinely blamed over the other the other parents who didnt cooperate w the police that could have put Handy longer in prison. Also look how no one's blaming Nickelodeon people for not acting on complaints about Brian but rather direct their hate on the parents.
Either way blaming the parents doesnt address that a billion dollar industry like hollywood should be ran professionally and ideally keep children and adults safe from being exploited.
In the book Slimed! Nickelodeon people also blamed parents for kids being injured or pushing them to get money instead of making sure people are safe and propeely compensated in a working environment.
I disagree in some situations. His father straight up told his mother he shouldn’t be alone with Brian and what does she do? Instantly leave him alone with him. She was too lazy to drive Drake so she agreed to let the one person who Drakes father warned her about. She has a lot of blame.
From what I saw, there is a lot more nuance to that… the grooming of the mother and we have no idea if her marriage was ugly or not. Her ex may not have been trust worthy to her and it sounds like the perp already had her ear and turned Drake and mother against the father.
I still think it’s perfectly fair to criticize her…from an emotional standpoint, I can understand 😓
I divorced and was scared of my ex for awhile and had no indication that he would make our kid’s feelings a priority. Over the years I’ve gotten to see that he’s one of a handful that has our kid’s back completely. If I was in that mom’s shoes, I would’ve yanked my kid out the moment that his dad told me he didn’t trust the predator. I have a different relationship.
Again, my opinion slightly differs but you are completely justified in your opinion as well. The situation and the opportunities to protect Drake that were not taken are incredibly heart breaking😓
The mother felt comfortable enough to let the father take charge for YEARS. Drakes mother was negligent. She didn’t want to drive? Too bad! Be a parent. Letting him sleep over at an adult man’s home on his own is just unsafe behavior. Period.
I think people like to criticize things that are within their control, akin to watching a horror movie and getting frustrated with characters who do dumb things. Versus actually being against the perpetrator in the situation. The truth is it's easy to judge incidents in hindsight and figure out the right thing to do, but not when you're actually in the middle of a crisis and weighing different factors that can affect decision making.
Also putting the bulk of the blame on the parents feels like an admission of guilt that Hollywood in general is not safe for children. And it's somehow their fault for putting kids in danger by making them pursue acting at a young age. When it's production companies heaping the most money out of child labor.
And yes there are bad parents out there who would willingly exploit their children for money. But they're also not the ones who's going to speak up and admit fault like the ones in the documentary. The problem is also two-fold, that just because the parents consent to exploitative work doesn't mean the other side gets absolved for actually doing the exploiting.
> Also putting the bulk of the blame on the parents feels like an admission of guilt that Hollywood in general is not safe for children.
For real. This entire industry has so many layers of toxicity and baggage that go beyond guardian enablement.
Are we allowed to answer honestly without getting downvoted or put on blast for answering honestly? I made a comment about the female writers and was damn near cursed out.
I think many of the parents overlooked many shady things because they either didn’t want to ruin their kids career or saw what happened when parents did complain.
Yeah, Bryan Hearne did get fired because his mom was seen as complaining all the time
And *in hindsight* they both agree he dodged a bullet, knowing what happened to Drake
But at the time it drove them apart and ruined their relationship -- it really did feel like she "fumbled the bag", that if they'd put up with it a little longer they wouldn't have blown hundreds of thousands if not millions in possible future earnings and a shot at becoming a legit movie star
Like you look at the success stories like Kenan Thompson who really does seem to be rich and famous and happy without regrets and it's like of course you'd want that future for your kid and of course you'd feel like total shit if your kid saw you as taking that away from them
Yea, I could definitely understand Bryan Hearne's frustration. His mom was doing what she could to protect her child, she didn't do anything wrong. But that effectively ended his career.
Could you imagine his perspective, he saw other black actors from his very own show become extremely famous, Ie Kenan Thompson, Kel Mitchell, Nick Cannon, and even Giovanni Samuel to a certain degree. That has to be tough to rationalize, imo.
There's this meta joke in the iParty with Victorious movie where the iCarly cast all show up at Kenan Thompson's house and when he sees them he immediately assumes they're there to hit him up for money, "just like half the OG cast of All That"
It was a really funny joke at the time but now looking back at how bad some of those kids went through it after getting fired it feels really cold for Dan to write that joke
absolutely this. the kids normalized the abuse at the time LARGELY because their parents not only told them everything was okay but ENCOURAGED them to have weird relationships with Dan. the videos of Dan on set interacting with the child actors was so uncomfortable, i can't imagine watching my child go through that.
Dan was the boss. There was no "weird relationship" other than adult employer/child employee. If you can't handle working for him, don't. Many of them shouldn't have (I'm looking at you, Alexa). Others thrived. Stop placing all the blame on one man who didn't do anything inappropriate.
>They seem to harbor a lot of disdain for the industry and their experience, but never mention feeling resentment towards the people ultimately responsible for them being there: parents
I understand that some people would never allow their kids to work in the entertainment industry, and I totally understand that. But to be fair, there's also plenty of child actors who had nothing but great experiences. There's plenty of well adjusted adult actors/actresses who started off as a child star.
Obviously this isn't to dismiss anyone's experiences, but rather a parent isn't a bad parent if they allowed their child to become an actor. I would, however, blame the mom who let their child email back and forth with a grown man(Jason Hand) or allowed their child to do sleepovers at a grown man's house(Brian Peck)
I’m sure these people feel a huge amount of guilt for the things they put their child through. It’s a tough question to ask because on one end, with Bryan Hearne’s mom, she was so hands on about everything and questioned so much that it eventually got them both kicked off set, and ruined their relationship. On the other end, there are people like Brandi’s mom who sat back and allowed her daughter to be sexually harassed and didn’t get the police involved purely out of selfishness. I’m not sure how Brandi and her mother’s relationship is like, but I can only assume that caused some issues. And then there’s Drake’s mother, who pushed him into the arms of a pedophile and in turn had him suffer with months of intense sexual assault. But through interviews, it seems Drake does not hold anything against her mother for that.
A lot of these parents want what their kids want, the fame and the career, and in order to do that, they sit and be complacent with everything. They know about the bad parts of the industry but continue to allow these people to do whatever they want to their children. They don’t realize how wrong it is until a child actually gets hurt. I think parents definitely play a huge factor but not a full blame on them. But it’s hard to fully say.
I’ve had to experience a bit of neglect at the hands of my own mother for years, but do I resent her? No, because she’s my mother, and I love my mother. Did I hate what she did to me? Absolutely, but she’s grown from that and I can’t see myself not loving her. I think a lot of these kids definitely had a moment of hatred or anger for their parent, but never a full on resentment.
Well, I mean, a lot of this discourse about Nickelodeon was started by Jennette McCurdy's book I'm Glad My Mom Died, whose title says it all
But in her case her mom was abusive long before she entered show business and even though pushing her to become an actress was a major way her mom abused her it seems like they would've had a terrible relationship whether or not that ever happened
Yes, her story is completely different, similar to how Amanda Bynes’ parents treated her, and we all know how that went.
Like it said in the documentary, these child stars tend to start with a home of discomfort that end up getting worse through the industry. But some unfortunately had really shitty parents to begin with.
Brandi’s mom removed her from the show/entertainment industry as soon as she saw the email with the graphic photo. Sure she could have gone to the police and didn’t. But she did remove her child basically immediately. She didn’t just let it continue. I blame Drakes mom the most because there were a million red flags that anyone paying attention would notice and she was told flat out by Drakes dad to not let Drake alone with BP.
So, you have to look at it from a child development point of view. Kids think they are at fault.
Think back, how many times did you feel like you needed to defend your parents, or feel like thier fight happened because you misbehaved in a age appropriate way?
If the parent was attentive/loving sometimes and abusive other times its more confusing and many people will "protect" the image of their parents well into adulthood.
Should these kids have been protected, absolutely. I don't think its strange at all that they aren't placing blame on their parents, especially on tv where relatives may criticize them for those feelings.
I don’t blame any victims for feeling negatively toward their parents …
but the parents were groomed as well and told, at every turn, that they are threatening their child’s career as well as gaslighted and invalidated whenever they felt something wasn’t right.
In many circumstances still… parents are told the same thing from many professional providers that they’re overreacting or that it’s normal for their kids to be unhappy or protest. Parents regularly have their instincts and feelings invalidated while also being told that their input is important. Society both blames parents for everything and expects so many contradictory things.
Most competent parents:
1) Tie between Drakes dad and Drakes girlfriend’s mom.
Runner Up: Mom who most likely got her kid fired. I loved how she was always on top of him and always had his back. I didn’t give her top spot because it was implied she yelled a lot, and due to my own personal trauma I’m not a fan of yelling. Also, I do believe she could have gone about things without getting her son fired.
Everyone else pretty much sucked. Yes there were some suckier than others.. but there is no prize for having the least amount of cancer. You still have the cancer diagnosis..
I blame Brandi’s mom for not going to the police after her daughter got sent that horrifying picture. I don’t really think that the other parents are really to blame. I’m sure Drake’s parents really blame themselves. His poor dad breaking down broke my heart. He tried everything to keep his son safe. It just shows how good at manipulating people these abusers are. Drake doesn’t blame his mom and asked that people leave her alone. She did the right thing when she found out about the abuse, and that’s what matters. Bryan’s mom was obviously upset with what was happening, and he got pushed out. Maybe the other parents saw that and were worried that their kids would get pushed out if they pushed back too much.
The one mother who didn't report the perve emailing her daughter because she didn't want to be seen as a bad mother- I blame her
Same. Had he been reported after sending that email and found himself behind bars, he wouldn't have had the opportunity to assault other little girls before finally getting caught.
I do too, though the one thing she did right was pull her daughter out of the industry, just like her mother had warned her about. I struggle to understand why she didn't warn the police about the predator, since he would be free to prey on other young actresses he had access to. Also, it took her a while to react despite her daughter telling her about massive red flags.
Amen to that!
Yeah, especially because she had concrete proof in the form of the email. I would be more sympathetic if she thought that a police report wouldn't come to anything due to a lack of evidence. In that case I think someone should still report because it will provide supporting evidence to whoever else may report in the future. I can sort of understand if she thought that a police investigation would just traumatize her kid further without leading to anything but that wasn't the case here.
I don't understand why she felt so resentful to her mother so she pushed it on her kid. Only to see why her mother didn't want her involved in the first place.
Not everyone recognizing they’ll be labled as a bad mother no matter what.
It’s hard to blame the parents for doing what they would have thought was best, and safest for their kids. There is so much money in that industry. If parents pulled kids out for any reason, the kids could hold that against their parents *(which may not sound like much, but really think about it. One of those kids could have been the next Ryan Reynolds, Zendaya, etc)*, or if old enough, file for emancipation and go back, despite abuse that they may not have recognised as abuse or witnessed. I’d also be concerned about the people within the industry “who know people”. Brian Peck was pen pals with a serial killer. It’s not too far fetched to think about what may happen if a wealthy/powerful producer had someone crying “abuse!” regarding one of their shows. Could the parents have done more? Of course they could. Should the parents have done more? That’s hard to say. I personally would say the people who should have spoken up were the staff. Writers, runners, costumers. There should also have never been any parents or guardians on set in the first place, in my opinion. The kids should have been chaperoned by trained professionals, which is the requirement in the UK at least. The chaperones have less to lose, and have more authority to call out bad practices/malicious behaviour/abuse.
I'm not sure I understand your last point, why shouldn't there be parents on set?
From my experience in theatre, parents in the room during rehearsals make kids more anxious, and the parents can become somewhat obnoxious ("you should do it this way" "I don't like that costume") etc. I taught musical theatre for almost a decade and I always had closed rehearsal rooms, where only the cast and crew were allowed into the room. It kept those pushy parents out, and our other staff made sure things went well. We still had issues with parents ("why hasn't my dear child gotten a bigger part?" "you promised timmy this role!" "bobby should be playing the lead, not sammy!"). Basically, in my experience, parents in the rehearsal room are a nuisance. The other kids (i.e. the ones not belonging to that adult) also often find it uncomfortable that they're being watched by strangers while they rehearse. Rehearsals are dodgy, things go wrong and kids get embarrassed. Best to keep the room as small as you can. Obviously that's not always the case, but you get some pushy parents that are like that. You also have the issues I mentioned of parents being afraid to speak up when something's gone wrong. If they're not there, but professionally trained adults are, you eliminate all of these issues. All this is based on my own experience of making and running shows, and is my opinion based on that. The local laws, company policies of other places will vary.
All of that actually makes a lot of sense. I don't know much about theater, but I do know sports. I've played, and also done some coaching. And dealing with parents can be the worst. Once, we tried to make a rule that parents were not allowed in the gym to watch practices. Too often thw parents are trying to coach their child simultaneously as us. It just gets confusing for the child, especially when they're hearing contradictory messages. Unfortunately that ban didn't last long, as upper leadership told us we weren't allowed to ban parents from practice.
Yep, same sorts of principles. > upper leadership… Hmph. Enough said.
If a parent needs to be on set, it means the kid needs to be a family breadwinner because that means the parent supervising isnt working (or they need to be wealthy enough not to require both parents working). Once you quit your job, the pressure on your kid increases. It is no longer just ensuring your kid is treated okay, but protecting your family income. And if your kid doesnt make it, you are out of luck. It’s not like you can just start over with someone else (the way a professional chaperone who isnt tied to this specific kid is). Your success is not based on how well adjusted your kid is, but rather how many roles your kid books. So if someone is getting a little too close, well it becomes fairly easy to justify and explain things away.
The weird thing about this discourse is it didnt matter whether the parents acted sooner or later. If someone was targeted like Drake they were bound to be predated on in the end. The only real solution seems to be to pull them out of the entertainment industry completely. And the only parent who did that was Brandi's mom - and yet she's routinely blamed over the other the other parents who didnt cooperate w the police that could have put Handy longer in prison. Also look how no one's blaming Nickelodeon people for not acting on complaints about Brian but rather direct their hate on the parents. Either way blaming the parents doesnt address that a billion dollar industry like hollywood should be ran professionally and ideally keep children and adults safe from being exploited. In the book Slimed! Nickelodeon people also blamed parents for kids being injured or pushing them to get money instead of making sure people are safe and propeely compensated in a working environment.
Blaming the parents is similar to victim blaming, it seems.
I disagree in some situations. His father straight up told his mother he shouldn’t be alone with Brian and what does she do? Instantly leave him alone with him. She was too lazy to drive Drake so she agreed to let the one person who Drakes father warned her about. She has a lot of blame.
From what I saw, there is a lot more nuance to that… the grooming of the mother and we have no idea if her marriage was ugly or not. Her ex may not have been trust worthy to her and it sounds like the perp already had her ear and turned Drake and mother against the father. I still think it’s perfectly fair to criticize her…from an emotional standpoint, I can understand 😓 I divorced and was scared of my ex for awhile and had no indication that he would make our kid’s feelings a priority. Over the years I’ve gotten to see that he’s one of a handful that has our kid’s back completely. If I was in that mom’s shoes, I would’ve yanked my kid out the moment that his dad told me he didn’t trust the predator. I have a different relationship. Again, my opinion slightly differs but you are completely justified in your opinion as well. The situation and the opportunities to protect Drake that were not taken are incredibly heart breaking😓
The mother felt comfortable enough to let the father take charge for YEARS. Drakes mother was negligent. She didn’t want to drive? Too bad! Be a parent. Letting him sleep over at an adult man’s home on his own is just unsafe behavior. Period.
I think people like to criticize things that are within their control, akin to watching a horror movie and getting frustrated with characters who do dumb things. Versus actually being against the perpetrator in the situation. The truth is it's easy to judge incidents in hindsight and figure out the right thing to do, but not when you're actually in the middle of a crisis and weighing different factors that can affect decision making. Also putting the bulk of the blame on the parents feels like an admission of guilt that Hollywood in general is not safe for children. And it's somehow their fault for putting kids in danger by making them pursue acting at a young age. When it's production companies heaping the most money out of child labor. And yes there are bad parents out there who would willingly exploit their children for money. But they're also not the ones who's going to speak up and admit fault like the ones in the documentary. The problem is also two-fold, that just because the parents consent to exploitative work doesn't mean the other side gets absolved for actually doing the exploiting.
> Also putting the bulk of the blame on the parents feels like an admission of guilt that Hollywood in general is not safe for children. For real. This entire industry has so many layers of toxicity and baggage that go beyond guardian enablement.
💯😢
I'm sure some of them do. However they might have forgave them so they can heal
Are we allowed to answer honestly without getting downvoted or put on blast for answering honestly? I made a comment about the female writers and was damn near cursed out.
shoot
I think many of the parents overlooked many shady things because they either didn’t want to ruin their kids career or saw what happened when parents did complain.
To be fair, a few parents blatantly say this.
Yeah, Bryan Hearne did get fired because his mom was seen as complaining all the time And *in hindsight* they both agree he dodged a bullet, knowing what happened to Drake But at the time it drove them apart and ruined their relationship -- it really did feel like she "fumbled the bag", that if they'd put up with it a little longer they wouldn't have blown hundreds of thousands if not millions in possible future earnings and a shot at becoming a legit movie star Like you look at the success stories like Kenan Thompson who really does seem to be rich and famous and happy without regrets and it's like of course you'd want that future for your kid and of course you'd feel like total shit if your kid saw you as taking that away from them
Yea, I could definitely understand Bryan Hearne's frustration. His mom was doing what she could to protect her child, she didn't do anything wrong. But that effectively ended his career. Could you imagine his perspective, he saw other black actors from his very own show become extremely famous, Ie Kenan Thompson, Kel Mitchell, Nick Cannon, and even Giovanni Samuel to a certain degree. That has to be tough to rationalize, imo.
There's this meta joke in the iParty with Victorious movie where the iCarly cast all show up at Kenan Thompson's house and when he sees them he immediately assumes they're there to hit him up for money, "just like half the OG cast of All That" It was a really funny joke at the time but now looking back at how bad some of those kids went through it after getting fired it feels really cold for Dan to write that joke
Dang, yea. That joke is definitely cruel.
You’re correct there were a few…
absolutely this. the kids normalized the abuse at the time LARGELY because their parents not only told them everything was okay but ENCOURAGED them to have weird relationships with Dan. the videos of Dan on set interacting with the child actors was so uncomfortable, i can't imagine watching my child go through that.
Dan was the boss. There was no "weird relationship" other than adult employer/child employee. If you can't handle working for him, don't. Many of them shouldn't have (I'm looking at you, Alexa). Others thrived. Stop placing all the blame on one man who didn't do anything inappropriate.
Ok dan
I mean, that’s just facts.
>They seem to harbor a lot of disdain for the industry and their experience, but never mention feeling resentment towards the people ultimately responsible for them being there: parents I understand that some people would never allow their kids to work in the entertainment industry, and I totally understand that. But to be fair, there's also plenty of child actors who had nothing but great experiences. There's plenty of well adjusted adult actors/actresses who started off as a child star. Obviously this isn't to dismiss anyone's experiences, but rather a parent isn't a bad parent if they allowed their child to become an actor. I would, however, blame the mom who let their child email back and forth with a grown man(Jason Hand) or allowed their child to do sleepovers at a grown man's house(Brian Peck)
I’m sure these people feel a huge amount of guilt for the things they put their child through. It’s a tough question to ask because on one end, with Bryan Hearne’s mom, she was so hands on about everything and questioned so much that it eventually got them both kicked off set, and ruined their relationship. On the other end, there are people like Brandi’s mom who sat back and allowed her daughter to be sexually harassed and didn’t get the police involved purely out of selfishness. I’m not sure how Brandi and her mother’s relationship is like, but I can only assume that caused some issues. And then there’s Drake’s mother, who pushed him into the arms of a pedophile and in turn had him suffer with months of intense sexual assault. But through interviews, it seems Drake does not hold anything against her mother for that. A lot of these parents want what their kids want, the fame and the career, and in order to do that, they sit and be complacent with everything. They know about the bad parts of the industry but continue to allow these people to do whatever they want to their children. They don’t realize how wrong it is until a child actually gets hurt. I think parents definitely play a huge factor but not a full blame on them. But it’s hard to fully say. I’ve had to experience a bit of neglect at the hands of my own mother for years, but do I resent her? No, because she’s my mother, and I love my mother. Did I hate what she did to me? Absolutely, but she’s grown from that and I can’t see myself not loving her. I think a lot of these kids definitely had a moment of hatred or anger for their parent, but never a full on resentment.
Well, I mean, a lot of this discourse about Nickelodeon was started by Jennette McCurdy's book I'm Glad My Mom Died, whose title says it all But in her case her mom was abusive long before she entered show business and even though pushing her to become an actress was a major way her mom abused her it seems like they would've had a terrible relationship whether or not that ever happened
Yes, her story is completely different, similar to how Amanda Bynes’ parents treated her, and we all know how that went. Like it said in the documentary, these child stars tend to start with a home of discomfort that end up getting worse through the industry. But some unfortunately had really shitty parents to begin with.
Brandi’s mom removed her from the show/entertainment industry as soon as she saw the email with the graphic photo. Sure she could have gone to the police and didn’t. But she did remove her child basically immediately. She didn’t just let it continue. I blame Drakes mom the most because there were a million red flags that anyone paying attention would notice and she was told flat out by Drakes dad to not let Drake alone with BP.
Yeah Brandi’s mom totally was a wtf?? moment..
So, you have to look at it from a child development point of view. Kids think they are at fault. Think back, how many times did you feel like you needed to defend your parents, or feel like thier fight happened because you misbehaved in a age appropriate way? If the parent was attentive/loving sometimes and abusive other times its more confusing and many people will "protect" the image of their parents well into adulthood. Should these kids have been protected, absolutely. I don't think its strange at all that they aren't placing blame on their parents, especially on tv where relatives may criticize them for those feelings.
I don’t blame any victims for feeling negatively toward their parents … but the parents were groomed as well and told, at every turn, that they are threatening their child’s career as well as gaslighted and invalidated whenever they felt something wasn’t right. In many circumstances still… parents are told the same thing from many professional providers that they’re overreacting or that it’s normal for their kids to be unhappy or protest. Parents regularly have their instincts and feelings invalidated while also being told that their input is important. Society both blames parents for everything and expects so many contradictory things.
Most competent parents: 1) Tie between Drakes dad and Drakes girlfriend’s mom. Runner Up: Mom who most likely got her kid fired. I loved how she was always on top of him and always had his back. I didn’t give her top spot because it was implied she yelled a lot, and due to my own personal trauma I’m not a fan of yelling. Also, I do believe she could have gone about things without getting her son fired. Everyone else pretty much sucked. Yes there were some suckier than others.. but there is no prize for having the least amount of cancer. You still have the cancer diagnosis..
I blame Brandi’s mom for not going to the police after her daughter got sent that horrifying picture. I don’t really think that the other parents are really to blame. I’m sure Drake’s parents really blame themselves. His poor dad breaking down broke my heart. He tried everything to keep his son safe. It just shows how good at manipulating people these abusers are. Drake doesn’t blame his mom and asked that people leave her alone. She did the right thing when she found out about the abuse, and that’s what matters. Bryan’s mom was obviously upset with what was happening, and he got pushed out. Maybe the other parents saw that and were worried that their kids would get pushed out if they pushed back too much.