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    Jon Gosselin’s Ex Colleen Conrad Says She’ll “Always” Be Collin’s Mom

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    Watch: Kate Gosselin Says Her Kids Know Who She “Truly” Is After Collin Gosselin’s Bombshell Book

    Collin Gosselin has been a plus in ColleenConrad’s life. 

    Less than two weeks after Collin released his memoir Shadow of Eight: Surviving the Reality of My Childhood, Colleen—who dated his father Jon Gosselin from 2014 to 2021—shared a heartwarming message to the Jon & Kate Plus 8alum about being his mother figure. 

    “A #1 New York Times bestselling author!” she wrote in an Oct. 23 Instagram post alongside a montage of the two through the years. “Who would have imagined that all those years ago? I am so incredibly proud of you!”

    Colleen added that when she first entered Collin’s life he “had already been through more than any child should ever have to experience.”

    “I didn’t know what the years ahead would bring, but I knew I loved you and wanted you to feel safe, loved, and supported,” she continued. “We’ve shared so much together. The laughter, the tears, the holidays, the vacations, the challenges, and all those everyday moments I’ll treasure forever.”

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    Collin Gosselin Refutes Sister Hannah Gosselin’s Claim That She Hasn’t Seen Him

    The nurse practitioner—who shared that Collin lived with her until he was 18 after she and Jon split—said that listening to the audiobook of Collin’s memoir was “incredibly emotional” as it brought back “beautiful memories, but also painful ones.”

    And while she knew that Collin needed her in his life, she also needed him, saying they “helped each other through some incredibly difficult times.”

    Instagram/Collin Gosselin

    The 22-year-old’s acknowledgements at the end of the book also proved emotional for Colleen as he thanked her for stepping “into my life as the mother I needed most.”

    And she vowed she would play that role for him forever, writing, “No matter how old you get or where life takes you, I will always be your mom. I will always love you and cheer you on.”

    “Congratulations, Collin. You deserve all the happiness and success life has to offer,” she added. “Love you always.”

    The message was certainly a meaningful one for Collin—who has been candid about his estrangement from mom Kate Gosselin due to her alleged abuse against him—as he commented on Colleen’s post, “I love you. I loved that you say you needed me too. It just shows how meant to be everything was.”

    “If I could’ve gone through all the hard things again I’d gladly do it,” he shared, “because it led me to you.” 

    Michael Simon/Getty Images

    The Special Forces alum thanked Colleen for “listening, showing up, and never giving up on that young, broken, hurting little boy who didn’t believe in himself.”

    “Sometimes all we need is to know our mom believes in us,” Collin said, “and it gives us enough faith in ourselves.”

    In the years since Jon—dad to his and Kate’s 22-year-old sextuplets Collin, Alexis, Leah, Joel, Hannah and Aaden as well as 26-year-old twins Mady Gosselin and Cara Gosselin—and his ex-girlfriend broke up, Collin has been open about his close relationship with Colleen. 

    He posted a sweet birthday tribute to her on Instagram in June, saying, “She is the strongest woman I know, who stepped in at the toughest part of my life and CHOSE to be a mother to me.”

    For a deep dive into the allegations Collin made against mother Kate in his memoir, keep reading. 

    Photo by Donna Svennevik/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images

    Collin Gosselin Says His Mom Separated Him From His SiblingsOn a 2015 episode of Kate Plus 8—the Jon & Kate Plus 8 spinoff Kate Gosselin  led following her 2009 divorce from Jon Gosselin—TLC viewers watched as twins Mady Gosselin and Cara Gosselin moved into their own rooms in Kate’s 7,500-square-foot estate, while their younger sisters Leah Gosselin, Alexis Gosselin and Hannah Gosselin inhabited a shared upstairs room and brothers Collin Gosselin, Joel Gosselin and Aaden Gosselin made over a basement space.  “It was like a slumber party every night,” Collin recounts of that first week in his memoir Shadow of Eight: Surviving the Reality of My Childhood. “Then, one day, I was told by my mom I’d be moving out. An air mattress appeared in the unfinished part of the basement, shoved into the far back corner like an afterthought.” Coming on the heels of him being cut out of weekend visits with his dad (he was told Jon didn’t want to see him; Jon was told the opposite) and frequently isolated (he recalls one night where he was sent to bed while his siblings watched TV with Kate), having to live next to their deep freezers felt particularly cold. “I was part of a plan,” he notes of the punishments, he attributed to his unwillingness to play ball on camera “I just didn’t know what it was.”E! News reached out to reps for Kate and TLC about the accusations in Collin’s book and has not heard back. However, this past June, Kate referred to her son’s accusations as “ridiculous” in the comment section of her TikTok page.

    Amy Sussman/WireImage for Discovery Communications

    Collin Gosselin Claims His Parents Kate Gosselin and Jon Gosselin Were Offered Millions to Stay MarriedAs Jon and Kate’s marriage began to unravel, claims Collin, Dr. Phil host Phil McGraw was teaming with TLC “to negotiate a deal to keep their marriage together for cameras.” So, when the couple shared their plans to divorce in January 2009, writes Collin, “the network responded by offering my parents $2 million to stay in the marriage and pretend the relationship was intact for the sake of the show’s longevity.” Turning down the offer, Jon told the Daily Mail in 2019, “I couldn’t live with myself. I couldn’t live a lie.” E! News reached out to reps for Kate and TLC, but they did not respond. They also declined to comment on Daily Mail‘s previous story. A rep for McGraw called the allegations “false” in a statement to Us Weekly. Noting the talk show host didn’t have “any direct or indirect interest, financial or otherwise,” in the series, the rep added, “Neither Dr. Phil, nor anyone associated with his show ever facilitated, encouraged, participated in or knew anything about any payments to the Gosselins by the other network as alleged by their son Collin, who Dr. Phil has never met.”

    Photo by Donna Svennevik/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images

    Collin Gosselin Says He Spent 70 Percent of His Time Locked in His Basement BedroomAccording to Collin, some 14 complaints were made against his mom to Children and Youth Services, one of them coming after he turned up to his fourth-grade classroom with a noticeably injured ear. Not long after, “my mom pulled me from school,” he wrote. “She told me it was temporary. That it was for my own good. That people were ‘asking questions’ and we needed to keep things calm for a while. I didn’t argue or ask how long. I’d learned that asking questions made things worse.”Collin said he was also banned from playing with the family’s LEGO sets. But perhaps the biggest change, Collin alleged, was the walls Kate had built around his basement air mattress with two security cameras he had to speak through if he needed to be let out to use the bathroom. “Most days, I spent about 70 percent of my time locked in that room,” writes Collin. “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. That was my life.”

    Photo by Donna Svennevik/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images

    Collin Gosselin Claims Mom Kate Gosselin Told His Siblings He Was a Bad KidTo explain why Collin was no longer attending school with them or even joining the rest of the family to eat dinner, Kate would tell his siblings he was troubled, Collin writes. “‘Collin needs more help than you kids,’ she would say right in front of me,” he details in his book. “‘You and your friends at school aren’t bad like your brother.’ They were repeatedly told that I was unpredictable, violent, beyond help. They grew up around me as if I was a cautionary tale. They were children themselves. How could they know to doubt her?”Kate previously told People that Collin received “multiple psychiatric diagnoses” and inpatient psychiatric treatment in response to “unpredictable and violent behavior.” But Jon claimed to the Daily Mail in 2019 that Collin had no known diagnosed medical condition other than common ADHD.

    Michael Simon/Getty Images & Noel Vasquez/Getty Images

    Collin Gosselin Alleges Mom Kate Gosselin Once Bound His Wrists and Ankles With Zip TiesHaving tired of his basement existence by age 11, Collin plotted his escape, using his twin-size air mattress to climb out the tiny basement window. But with nowhere to go—”It had been almost two years since I’d seen my dad”—he returned home. Once there, his mattress was gone, as were the few books he had. Then, Collin detailed, Kate allegedly came in with zip ties for his wrists and ankles.”Once I was bound, she grabbed me by my wrists, pulled me up into a standing position and then threw me down, slamming my tailbone against the hard floor,” Collin alleges, adding she told him he was a burden to the family. “She went on, calling me crazy, dangerous and other names nobody should ever call a child, things that stuck long after the pain faded.”  A rep for Kate didn’t respond to E! News’ request for comment. But her attorney previously told The Sun, “There’s always two sides to every story and when things take place in the past, it’s hard to determine because people have differing recollections and perspectives.” However, his take, he added, was “if Kate did the things that Collin is accusing Kate of, she would have been investigated by the authorities and prosecuted.”

    Amanda Edwards/Getty Images

    Collin Gosselin Recounts Being Physically Restrained and Sedated at a Mental Health ClinicAfter his escape attempt, Collin claims he was transported to Fairmount Behavioral Health System mere days before his 12th birthday. Throughout his 21-month stay in the mental health clinic—where most kids stayed just days or weeks, he claims—he was given daily medication. “My brain had started feeling soft and cloudy, like someone had turned a dimmer switch down,” he details. “I found myself zoning out, feeling like a zombie.”During one incident, 18 months into his stay, Collin alleges he was physically restrained and injected with a medication he dubbed “booty juice” after asking administrators why he was still there. After another, a staffer bent his wrist in such a way that “a violent, searing pain shot up my arm, so intense it made my knees buckle.” (E! News reached out to Fairmount Behavioral Health System, but has not heard back.)Throughout his nearly two-year stay, Collin says his mom visited once. 

    Instagram/Jon Gosselin

    Collin Gosselin Says He Smuggled a Letter to Dad Jon Gosselin to Get Out of the Mental Health ClinicWith his mom and siblings no longer taking his calls from Fairmount, said Collin, he hatched a plan to reconnect with his dad. After hitting it off with one of his roommates, Collin confided in him about his reality star past. Writing a letter to his father in crayon while hiding in a bathroom stall, Collin claimed he asked his roommate to find a way to deliver it. Soon after, he was discharged to a residential facility where he was able to once-again attend school and slowly weaned off his medications.It was there that he connected with his dad for the first time, Jon sharing in that initial phone call that he had plans to bring him home.As Jon later detailed to Collin—who ended up moving in with him, sister Hannah and Jon’s then-girlfriend Colleen Conrad—he had spent years trying to track him down. Then he received Collin’s letter and filed an emergency petition with the court to modify custody. 

    Instagram

    Collin Gosselin Says He Hasn’t Seen Most of His Siblings Since He Was 15Other than Hannah, Collin has only seen his siblings once since leaving Kate’s home at age 11—a court-mandated visit just before his 15th birthday. “It was a way to keep the kids together, despite being split between two households,” Collin reasons, noting the meet-up started out awkwardly before they all teamed up to best the amusement center’s games. But, as Leah, Alexis, Joel and Aaden moved toward the exit, “No one turned back,” Collin recounts. “And I haven’t seen them since.” 

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