Drake Bell and the Cycle of Abuse

Hello, hello, and welcome back to A Bit Fruity, the show where it increasingly feels like the conclusion that I reach by the end of every episode is that there aren't good people and bad people, but just people who have the capacity to be complicated and conflicting.

And when you realize that, it becomes a lot easier to take in new information about them without fighting against it for the sake of upholding some cartoonishly two-dimensional version of personhood that we often wish was reality.

That was the longest intro, the longest sentence I've ever recited.

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

Such an honor.

Well, thank you for having me back.

I love to be here.

I'm a tech and culture reporter at NBC News.

I think my dream for this podcast is to ultimately, in the long run, do what I've begun doing, which is just like, there's like four guests, and every couple of months, you can know that you're going to hear from one of them.

And on issues like this, there's no one but cat.

Quick trigger warning for today's episode, we are going to be talking about sexual abuse.

We're going to be talking about child sexual abuse.

If that's something that's hard for you to take in stories about, then I completely understand.

And we'll see you at the next one.

And I love you and take care of yourself.

Today, we are talking about Drake Bell, who was recently featured prominently in the explosively popular docuseries Quiet on Set, which chronicles the lives of late 90s and early 2000s Nickelodeon child stars and the abuse that they suffered behind the scenes of the popular shows they were working on, like All That, Zoe 101, The Amanda Show, and Drake and Josh.

From March 18th to March 25th, Quiet on Set was the most streamed television series in the United States, bringing in 16 million viewers.

And a key storyline in the docuseries was about Drake Bell, who famously played Drake on Drake and Josh, and the truly horrific abuse that he suffered as a child at the hands of his acting coach, Brian Peck.

No relation, by the way, and I had to Google this, to his Drake and Josh co-star, Josh Peck.

To me, the documentary was as notable for what it included as what it didn't, which is a big part of what we're going to talk about today.

We're going to be talking about the cycle of abuse, the way that we consume stories about abuse, and how sometimes media can sort of shoot itself in the foot as far as perpetuating the very thing that it attempts to raise awareness against.

Kat, do you think that's a good synopsis?

Yeah, I do.

I think that it says a lot that the show is as popular as it is.

And I think that there is a real appetite for this type of content, which is why it's important that this content be done well.

And if it's not, why people kind of correct the record.

So, the way that we're going to start the show is we're going to be talking about some parts of Drake Bell's early life, which, if you watch the documentary, you might remember some of this stuff.

And then we're basically going to pick up where the documentary timeline essentially leaves off and, you know, continue the story in ways that complicates it, but that is ultimately, you know, part of the story, whether we like it or not.

And so let's start with Drake's early childhood.

Where does Drake Bell begin?

So Drake Bell was a child actor from a really young age, and he really grew up in the environment of child acting.

In the docuseries, one of the people who's interviewed alongside Drake about his story the most is actually Drake Bell's dad.

And the way that they tell the story is Drake was born in California, and his dad is the one who really oversaw Drake's sort of entry into the entertainment industry and who was sort of there for Drake while he was auditioning in the early days and as he began to get cast in movie roles, aiming eventually for some kind of consistent job, which right off the bat, I think, says a lot about the type of environment that Drake dealt with at a very young age.

Because while he's talked about enjoying his acting career, as a lot of young children do, it's also very stressful to have the expectation of needing consistent work when you're a very young child.

And that's something that all of the children, the former child actors in the documentary, talked about was sort of the pressure of having this kind of expectation placed on them at a young age.

And that pressure is significant and consistent throughout Drake's entire life.

Early on, he gets a number of small roles.

roles in movies as a young child.

And then sort of his big break comes along when he starts getting cast in Nickelodeon shows.

He became a recurring cast member on The Amanda show, where he played a bunch of different caricatures, similar to like a Saturday Night Live cast member, I feel like.

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

I feel like part of Drake's story that they really hone in on.

in the documentary in ways that I find sort of uncomfortable is the fact that his parents are divorced and that like his parents have different approaches to his career as a child actor.

By the way, we're going to get into, we're going to get into analyzing the documentary a little bit later in the episode, but it does seem like the fact that his parents are divorced and that his parents take these different approaches is important.

Yes, something that this really reminded me of while I was watching the docuseries is stories that have come out that I've read in recent years about child influencers.

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.

And the child 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.

And this this allows the manager to have more access to the child.

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

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

And just like with Drake, it's easy to exploit.

Right.

And so it seemed like, based on the docuseries, that Drake's dad was the more involved one.

Yes.

And that, and at least, you know, again, as far as it was portrayed, like, it seemed like his mom was kind of the hands-off.

Yes.

And they portrayed her as like an absent figure.

Yeah, negligent to some degree.

Right.

Okay.

So he's getting his start on The Amanda Show, and he's sort of like rising into like child stardom at Nickelodeon.

And he starts working with Brian Peck.

Yes.

Who is Brian Peck?

Brian Peck is a dialogue coach on the set of The Amanda Show and he works for Nickelodeon in this capacity.

He also is someone who at this point in his life has like a long career in Hollywood.

And this is something that actually came through, we'll get to this later, but in statements that Brian Peck's friends would later write during his case involving Drake Bell, it comes through in these statements that Brian Peck was someone who knew everybody and got along with everyone really well.

And he was like one of those people in Hollywood that was the glue who held people together.

So like he knew a lot of producers, he knew a lot of directors, he he also worked closely with a lot of actors, including rising child stars like Leonardo DiCaprio.

He had worked on a bunch of really well-known TV shows and movies.

So he was an extremely powerful figure at the time when Drake Bell entered his life as a very vulnerable child.

There's such a similarity in a lot of these stories, right?

Like, because similar things were said about Harvey Weinstein and about Larry Nasser and the USA gymnastics scandal.

It's like these are beloved people

who everyone has worked with, who everyone trusts, who's the kind of center of the party.

So he starts working with Brian Peck.

And what's like the nature of their relationship early on?

So in the beginning, Drake and Brian worked really closely because Brian worked as Drake's dialogue coach.

So he was seeing him on a super regular, even daily basis.

And they were working in a lot of times one-on-one sessions.

But in the early days, Drake's father talked about how he would always be in the room with Drake.

So he would never let Drake be alone with other adults.

Right.

His dad seems, as far as the way he spoke in the documentary, it seems like he was always very suspicious of how close Brian wanted to be with Drake.

Yes.

Like Brian took a liking to Drake really early on.

And some of the things that Drake's dad described that made him uncomfortable were like Brian would physically get really close to Drake.

He would stroke his arm or be kind of like leaning over from behind him.

And it just, it just struck Drake's dad as an uncomfortable thing.

And he didn't want to leave Drake alone with this guy.

Right.

But then there are also those, I mean, something that I think was interesting that they included in the documentary was the tensions that parents feel about not wanting to overstep and intervene when they're uncomfortable with something that's happening to their children because they don't want to be the reason that their kid is ousted.

They don't want to be the trouble parent.

Yes.

And I feel like the environment, whether it's the mainstream TV industry with children or the influencer industry now, which has basically replaced like the TV studio systems, the environment contains power dynamics that are inherently exploitative and inherently dangerous.

And so you even hear about it.

in terms of the calculations that these parents are making while they're on these sets.

And like you just said, they interview one mother of one of the former Nickelodeon child stars who talked about about how she felt like she was seen as the problem parent because she would ask questions.

I know that stories from sets legally parents are always supposed to be able to be with their children, but in some cases parents are encouraged to put distance between themselves and their children.

You even see that on shows like Dance Moms, where they put the parents in a separate room.

So Abby is like screaming at the girls while their moms are like behind a glass panel.

Like you kind of see how parents are physically encouraged to stay away so that the adults in power have more direct access and influence over the children.

So then, as described in the documentary, Brian starts to like drive a wedge between Drake Bell and his father, who, correct me if I'm wrong at that point, is his manager.

It seems like, I mean, what we understand now is like pretty standard grooming.

Yes.

But at the time, I imagine there was like a lot less dialogue for this and like language being used around it.

Yes, I think so.

And like you just said, it was textbook manipulation and predatory behavior.

And you see this in most abusive dynamics.

This is a hallmark of how abuse functions because in order to make the victim more vulnerable, you have to separate them from people who would otherwise intervene.

So you see this in all types of abusive dynamics.

In abusive relationships, a lot of times friends will be pushed out of the picture.

Like the abusive partner will say, I don't want you to hang out with these people anymore.

Or they'll do other things to sort of restrict the partner who's being abused from being able to connect with their support system.

And in this case, with the child adult dynamic and the child parent dynamic, it's even more insidious because Drake is extremely vulnerable as a young boy and his father is there to protect him.

So Brian insidiously attacks the nature of this relationship and he attacks the foundation of trust between Drake and his dad.

And he over time begins to increase the amount of responsibility and the amount of roles he has in Drake's life.

Like at some point he hosts Drake's birthday party at his own house.

He takes Drake to Disneyland.

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.

I think your dad is like stealing money from you,

leveraging the way that he's able to like get in Drake's ear and be like, you shouldn't trust your dad.

And it works.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's so, the whole thing is so calculated.

Yeah.

So here's where we're going to talk a little bit to an extent graphically about what happened between Drake Bell and Brian Peck.

But so Drake describes waking up one morning after fostering this kind of like, it sounds like years long professional, but like blurry professional and social relationship with this man who I think at the time he's like around 40 and Drake was 15.

Yes.

Yes.

And he wakes up one morning to what they describe in the docuseries as Brian Peck sexually assaulting him.

Yes.

So at this stage, Drake's dad, he's out of the picture.

He's no longer Drake's manager.

And Brian has actually stepped into that role.

So like Drake's dad had said in the documentary, I told Drake's mom, like, don't ever let Drake be alone in a room with Brian.

But presumably, Drake's mom kind of ignores this.

And Brian uses that opportunity to cement all types of control and presence in Drake's life to the point where Drake is used to spending the night at Brian's house and he's also used to drinking alcohol with Brian.

So Brian is giving Drake as, you know, a young tween teen boy, he's giving him like pina coladas and then being like, you're drunk, Drake, just sleep it off on my couch.

And after getting used to this,

That is when finally Drake testifies to waking up and sexual assault occurring already.

Something the documentary, I know I'm like jumping the gun a little bit.

We're not going to quite talk about the documentary yet, but like

something the documentary did that I really didn't love was like portray Drake's mother as kind of the ultimate villain in this.

And it's like, I don't know, I was seeing like tweets.

Yes.

People being like, I just watched quiet on set and I want to kill Drake's mother.

Yeah.

What happened to Drake is so horrible.

And I think it's very easy to look back on something horrible that happened with all of the facts that everyone has now as they're presented to the public and think, if I was the parent in charge, I would have done better.

Yeah.

And I don't know, we don't know much about Drake's mother.

Right.

We just don't, we just, she's not interviewed for the documentary.

Right.

And we just don't know about much about her.

And so for all I know, she could be, she could be a shitty mother.

Right.

But I don't really think that the evidence presented in the documentary points to her being the person that a lot of people who watch the documentary are assuming that she is.

Yeah.

And I just think that laying all of the blame on a parent who didn't sufficiently stop it feels misguided.

Yes, it's totally misdirected.

And I think that two things can be done at once.

You can hold a perpetrator accountable while also being like, who enabled this and who else is like partially not responsible for like the act, but who is like in the enabling group.

You can do that.

But the problem is there is a cultural trope and a cultural script around always finding a woman to blame, regardless of whether she's the one who like committed the acts.

And you most frequently see it play out exactly like this, where it's like, well, what was his mother doing?

Like, why didn't she stop this?

And I think that that can both be like a valid question while also being something that has become way bigger of a focus.

than it needs to be.

And like you said, people aren't just saying like, where was Drake Bell's mother?

People are are literally saying like, I want to kill Drake Bell's mother.

And I just think that that is really misdirected anger because who's actually deserving of the most blame in this situation?

The abuser.

The abuser.

And I think that it ultimately this logic trickles back into a very pernicious form of victim blaming where you're finding all kinds of circumstances where you're basically like this person

this happened to them because their parents weren't responsible enough.

And ultimately, predators are going to look for people who are vulnerable for a variety of reasons, including if they have parents who are kind of absent or negligent or just inattentive.

We don't know what was, like you said, we don't know what was going on in Drake Bell's mom's life at this time.

We don't really know anything about her.

And she doesn't have a voice in this documentary.

So all we know for sure is that whatever Brian Peck took advantage of, he was the one seeking out this vulnerability and taking advantage of it.

Yeah, I mean, one of my goals on this podcast generally is to like show compassion to people who I don't feel are receiving compassion.

And that doesn't mean everybody, but you know, I just see these like shots being fired really aggressively at Drake Bell's mother for not having stopped it.

And one of the only concrete details we do know about her, which does come through in the documentary, is that she's the one who calls the cops.

Yeah.

And, you know, I think at the end of the day, regardless of what you think about her capacity to have stopped it, this is still a mother whose child was the victim of egregious child sexual abuse.

Yes.

And someone for whom I don't know why she wasn't interviewed for the documentary, but I can only imagine there's an enormous amount of trauma for her too in all of this.

I think whenever stories like incredibly devastating stories like this enter the public imagination, we all like to think that like, if we had been there, then it would would have happened differently, and we would have prevented the bad thing from happening.

And also, like, turning everyone who actually was there into fictional characters

who are only, again, I'm jumping the gun a little bit thematically on this because we're going to talk more about this, but everyone is only capable of doing something good or something bad.

And in the documentary, Drake's mother was cast as having done something bad by not stopping it earlier.

One thing that I thought was really interesting about this characterization of Drake's parents is Drake's dad, by the time he is forced out of the situation through Brian Peck's manipulation, he's seemingly pretty aware that this guy poses some sort of threat to his child.

And I don't blame Drake's dad for not getting Drake out of that situation.

But if you're going to blame Drake's mom for not protecting her kid from Brian Peck, I think that that also then raises the question, why did they keep him in this industry?

And why did they keep him at this company if they had any doubt whatsoever that this guy could pose a danger to him?

I think that a lot of the characterization of both of these people comes from the fact that, like, one of them had the chance to be interviewed for the documentary and the other one didn't.

Yes.

And they feel the need to like make a hero out of Drake's dad.

And the audience overwhelmingly feels the need to make him into a hero.

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

We all like make decisions along the way that are like good and bad.

And I'm sure that Drake's dad, as he expresses later on, regrets not pulling his child out of that environment when he had the chance.

And I'm sure his mom regrets that too.

Exactly, which is why at the end of the day, the one who really deserves the judgment is the abuser.

And yet people become very preoccupied with coming up with other people to blame.

Yeah, because if you had been there, it wouldn't have happened.

Right.

If I had been there, it wouldn't have happened because we're all perfect people.

We all have amazing judgment and foresight at all times.

Everyone does.

So the abuse continues, I think, for a number of months.

Drake explains sort of vaguely, but then it's basically revealed in the charges against Brian Peck that are later brought against him that include like sodomy, penetration with a foreign object, oral copulation with a minor.

Oral copulation with a minor, pretty, like really, really sickening stuff.

And so Drake ends up breaking down after a period of time, telling his mother about the abuse.

She reports it to the police.

Brian is arrested.

And

I want to fast forward just a little bit to the trial.

Yes.

And I also think, you know, notably, we're going to lay out like some of the similarities and differences between the trial of Brian Peck and then 20 years later, the trial of Drake Bell.

But One thing that I think is important is the way that Brian Peck was actually caught, because, in a lot of cases involving sex crimes, even against children, perpetrators are not convicted or held accountable by the legal system.

It actually is statistically unlikely for predators to truly face justice within our legal system.

And so, how they went about catching him, and this is something that This is actually a successful tactic that I've seen repeated in multiple cases involving sex crimes.

The way that they were able to convict him is the police had Drake call Brian Peck while the police are listening into the call and recording the call.

Brian Peck has no knowledge of this.

And Drake sets up this phone call at the police's instruction where he tells Brian how much he's struggling.

And then Brian launches into what essentially is a full confession of all the various things he's done.

And so they were able to convict him based on his confession that they were only able to get because he didn't know that he was being recorded or being listened to by the police.

That's significant because it's rare, but it's really actually effective at catching predators.

And I can only imagine.

So they put 15 year old Drake Bell in a room at the police station with a phone and they said, call Brian Peck and do your best to get him to confess.

Yeah.

I mean, that is a wild amount of pressure to imagine for me as an adult, but a 15-year-old

who is like actively still enduring abuse.

I mean, that's fucking wild.

The process of bringing someone to justice is traumatic for everyone.

It's re-traumatizing entirely because even if the police treat you really nicely and hold your hand, which there's no guarantee that they did that, you still have to re-traumatize yourself through the process of explaining in meticulous detail.

everything that happened to you.

And you still have to engage with your abuser if you go through the legal system.

So we get to the trial and we get to the sentencing specifically.

Right.

And Drake describes walking into a courtroom with Brian Peck and Brian Peck's supporters on one side.

And he says that that side of the courtroom is entirely full, partly with celebrities.

Yes.

Hollywood.

Yeah.

Who Brian has worked with and has strong relationships with.

And then Drake describes his side as being like him, his mother, and I think his sibling.

He says in the documentary that he spoke directly to the crowd of people sitting on Brian Peck's side, saying, you'll have to live with the fact that you sat on this side of the courtroom for the rest of your lives.

Yes.

A lot of these celebrities wrote letters of support to the judge, letters of support for Brian Peck asking for the most lenient sentence.

I think that these letters are really revealing and contain strong parallels to a lot of what's happening now in the wake of this docuseries.

These letters were sealed up until this year.

Business Insider and I think TMZ also petitioned the court to unseal these letters.

And so the first good thing TMZ has ever done.

Right, right, right.

So, you know, this is actually really interesting and not what this podcast is about, but over the past couple of years, we've seen a lot of incidents.

a lot of court cases where these letters of support from celebrities are unsealed and it becomes like a big problem for the celebrities who wrote letters of support for abusers.

Yes, that just happened with the Danny Masterson trial where Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher wrote these letters in support of Danny Masterson after he committed some heinous sexual crimes.

Yes.

That was obviously at odds with the fact that Ashton Kutcher, oh, we could do a separate show about that.

Ashton Kutcher founded this supposedly anti-sex trafficking organization called Thorn.

And then when his best friend co-star turned out to be a rapist, it was like out the window.

And he wrote that letter of support and then they were unsealed.

And of course, Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher put out their apology video where they filmed in front of what looked like a very humble-looking wooden paneled wall, and the wood was undyed.

But unfortunately, as someone who read the architectural digest write-up of their home, I knew when I saw that video where they were apologizing for writing these letters, I knew exactly where they were sitting.

And it was in front of like one of their like three barns in this estate that they have that is like gorgeously manicured and made to look rustic.

Yep.

And so I just remember watching that and being, and I, and I was like,

you guys can like do the humble aesthetic YouTube apology thing, but I know exactly.

Yes.

I know exactly which luxury modern farmhouse you're sitting in front of.

Absolutely.

It happened with the Danny Masterson case.

It happened with Tori Lanes and Iggy Azalea

wrote a letter of support for him.

And she even said, I had no idea that this could become public.

We kind of are in a new era where people are realizing that they can unseal these types of documents and we're getting a lot of history because of that.

Yeah.

So when Brian Peck was convicted, Drake says this in the series, but the people in this courtroom who wrote these letters and who were defending Brian Peck knew who Drake was.

They knew what the situation was.

They talk about it explicitly in their letters.

And some of the people who wrote letters in support of Brian Peck included James Marsden, who is probably like the most famous one and I think the most shocking one to a lot of people.

So he wrote about how Brian was this amazing amazing person and an amazing friend and really talked about how like morally correct Brian was.

You know, toward the end of his letter, he said, I don't intend to victimize Brian, nor would he ever wish that, but I do feel compelled to shed light on the fact that he has learned his lesson.

Were like the actors and producers and screenwriters and all these people writing these letters, did they know the extent of Brian Peck's crimes?

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

Other young child actors who had worked with Brian wrote letters of support for him, like Taryn Killam.

He wrote a letter of support.

He wrote, Brian is fully aware of his misjudgment and takes full responsibility.

But Brian Richard Peck, my coworker, my friend, is not someone who belongs in jail.

I know Brian will do anything and everything in his power to prove the court that he is an upstanding citizen.

He has already taken actions of his own accord, such as counseling and an effort to rehabilitate himself.

Alan Thick.

Alan Thick's letter really stood out to me.

And Alan Thick died in 2016, but he literally, as he says in his letter of support, he said, I am honored to be regularly included in lists of America's favorite TV dads, an identity that I proudly carry throughout the country in writing about and lecturing to families on issues of parental concern.

I am regarded as a published authority in this genre, and because I take that image and its responsibility very seriously, I would obviously be very careful about a character reference relating to children.

Crazy.

So he's saying that because he like is a good actor at playing dads on TV, that he knows if this guy is a danger to children while he's being charged with sodomizing a child.

Yeah.

Jesus.

And he's appealing to his authority to be like, you can trust me.

You can trust me.

I play dads.

It's also like, it reminds me of with Bill Cosby being like America's dad.

You just like, it's that kind of terminology that gets brought up again and again.

So in some of these letters of support, they actually talk about Drake and they victim blame Drake by name.

A 15 year old.

A 15 year old.

Women do it, which I think is notable.

This woman wrote, her name is Joanna Kearns.

She was a star of growing pains.

And she wrote, I have never known Brian to engage in the type of illegal activity with which he is charged and can only believe that there had to have been some extreme situation or temptation exerted upon him to influence his actions.

So they're literally saying that Drake as a 15-year-old tempted Brian as a like a temptress.

Yes.

Yes.

Like a seductress of a 15 year old.

Yes.

Jesus Christ.

A seductive child.

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

And he's like, yeah, that's because it didn't happen to you.

Exactly.

There's such a misunderstanding that predators are people who can easily be spotted because they have an aura of untrustworthiness or maliciousness about them.

But that's the opposite of the case.

Predators are skilled at camouflaging who they truly are because they're hunting prey.

They don't want the prey to know.

And I think that people have a really detached perspective on how this type of stuff works because they don't want to think about it beyond the easy dichotomy of good versus evil.

They don't want to think about who in their own lives could be capable of these types of things.

So, getting into other ones that talk about Drake specifically, his name was redacted at the time because he was anonymous until Quiet on Set.

But in this letter, which is from Thomas DeSanto, he says he met Drake.

He met Drake's father, and that he saw Drake perform with his band in Orange County.

And he wrote, Drake always came across as very mature yet complex.

It was my observation that Drake was dealing with a lot of personal issues, and Brian was someone he could talk to.

Drake seemed to be acting one way in front of his family and another around his friends, co-workers, and classmates.

This included having lunch with Brian, Drake, and someone Drake referred to as his boyfriend, yet he was unable to introduce his boyfriend to his family.

Drake also seemed to be very fearful of his father and unable to communicate with him, whatever sexual issues he was going through at the time.

Wait, so they're saying that Drake is gay?

Yes.

What is even the argument that like

he's gay and he couldn't talk about it with anyone but Brian Peck?

And so the fact that like Brian Peck sexually abused him was just kind of like par for the course and something that Drake want like.

Yeah, it plays into two homophobic tropes at once.

One that like that gay children are sexual

and are like promiscuous.

And then it also plays into the homophobic trope that gay adults are predatory.

It's really two birds with one stone.

It's awful.

One thing that they did include in the documentary that I really, as an editorial decision, didn't understand was at one point, Drake's dad is being interviewed.

And in his confessional, he says, I was worried about how close Brian Peck was getting with my child.

And when I raised that issue with someone on the set of The Amanda Show or something, the person on the sets told me, oh, well, we don't know if you knew this, but Brian is a gay man.

And so the fact that you're bringing this up is just homophobic.

I don't doubt that that happened and that someone said that.

But

as an editorial decision for the people who made this documentary, I really questioned it because then I was going online and I was reading what people were writing about this documentary and I saw a lot of far-right people saying, look, they were even saying it 20 years ago.

You can't call out the groomers without being labeled a homophobe.

And I just think that anyone with a little bit of foresight making making a documentary like this could have seen that including that line, which again, I'm not saying it didn't happen and like stories like this are messy, including that detail seemed unnecessary for me and like it would feed very homophobic, like violently homophobic people's online agendas.

Yeah.

It's sensationalist and it really lacks a lot of context.

And I think that this is an overarching problem I had with it, which is that they don't bring in anybody to contextualize any of the issues that are being talked about.

There is not one person quoted in the documentary who you could say is like an expert in abuse or an expert in the social climate of these TV shows in this time period.

You have none of that.

So the audience is left to make its own assumptions about what's going on.

And with issues that are extremely sensitive and extremely misunderstood, that's how you perpetuate stigma.

I know we're like trying to not talk about the documentary until we get to like, we're analyzing the documentary part, but it's so hard because there were so many times while I was watching it where I was like, man, this is fucking heartbreaking.

And also, the way that they're telling the story feels a little irresponsible.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It was giving really big YouTube channel vibes, but we'll get into that later.

So, no, not YouTube channel vibes.

No, because people are watching this on YouTube.

That a little self-awareness.

That I want to review the last couple of letters.

And there were like, there were a lot of letters that were sent in, like potentially dozens or like over a hundred letters.

I can't remember the exact amount, but the ones that have been published so far are just an excerpt.

And it's just people that we would recognize.

So there are also tons of other people in Hollywood defending this guy.

This character statement from Kimmy Robertson, it's handwritten and she wrote it in this really like feminine, almost like girly font.

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

It's like the aesthetic of how the letter looks.

Yes, it's creepy.

This is the letter that shocked me the most just because this letter takes the most aggressive anti-Drake stance.

And I think that that's really interesting in comparing to what we see on the internet today.

But so she says, I had the misfortune of working on Drake's TV show.

I'll make this short.

I noticed this young man kept asking me about Brian and generally being sleuth-like.

I also noticed no gay male in makeup or hair or PA would be alone in a room with him.

I knew that Brian was helping Drake with his new resume and talked to Brian about this guy.

Brian said he would never be alone with him or anyone under 21 ever again, that he had made amends and not to worry.

I believe with all my heart that Brian was pressured and pushed beyond belief before he caved in with Drake.

An outrageous, overtly gay, oversexed person with no idea what he is doing to Brian, Brian's family, and Brian's friends.

He totally took advantage of Brian's willingness to help anyone who needs it.

Jesus fucking Christ.

Yeah.

I mean, what's crazy about that letter is you could read the entire thing and then at the end reveal that she was talking about Brian Peck.

Yes.

And that would make a lot of sense.

Yeah.

A lot of sense.

She's talking about a fucking child.

Yeah.

And she's like, actually, Brian Peck is the victim of sex-crazed homosexual

Drake Bell, who just like happens to also be 15, but like, whatever.

What?

Yeah.

It's so wild to me.

I mean, that is really sick.

And like, I don't know, I guess

when I talk about this podcast and people I want to lend compassion to and people I don't, maybe Kimmy Robertson is not getting, is not getting compassion from me this episode.

The last two letters are from this couple, Beth and Rich Corell.

And this is significant because they are two of the people who either produced or are very heavily involved with the Sweet Life of Zach and Cody.

And after Brian Peck was convicted and served a jail sentence, after he got out, he would later go on to continue working in children's television and he worked on the sweet life of Zach and Cody.

So these people have said within the past month, you know, in requests for comment, they said that they had nothing to do with casting him or hiring him to work on Sweet Life, but they were heavily involved with the show and they did write these letters of support.

So in Beth's letter, she wrote that she met Drake in 1999.

He would be quite young at the time.

She said, I've worked with Drake until April 2004 on virtually every project he has ever done for Nickelodeon.

During this time, I witnessed a boy with some talent turn into a young man with incredible stage presence.

And due in large part to Brian Peck's efforts, a star quality emerged.

Drake turned into a personable, self-confident performer, thanks to Brian Peck.

I must admit that I was surprised at Drake's behavior after hearing of this case and the charges being brought against Brian.

Nothing seemed to change in him at all.

On set, he continued to be playful with other cast members and crew.

He was always talking about his band and music and appeared to be excited about his future, the show, and his musical career.

He even moved into his own apartment.

On more than one occasion, while watching her son perform on the set of Blocked Out, Drake's mother would say to me, Look at him.

I'm so proud of how mature and responsible he is.

So she's just saying that he was acting great on set, and so he couldn't have been abused as badly as he's claiming to have been abused.

Exactly.

Who the fuck?

Like,

super wacky.

What are we doing?

Super wacky.

May 2004, Brian Peck pleads no contest and is sentenced to, I believe, 16 months.

That's like kind of where the timeline of the documentary ends as far as like Drake Bell's history with abuse kind of being on either sides of the abuse equation.

The docuseries of Quiet on Set is this like multi-part, multi-hour long thing.

And with six minutes left in the last segment of it, they spend two minutes doing kind of like a passing mention of Drake's pretty complicated history of alleged abuse.

Yes.

Right?

It's like it's mentioned in an interview with Drake and it's only discussed in in the context of Drake being like, I had a pretty complicated healing process from the abuse that I suffered.

And I thought, I don't know, to just make this whole documentary about people who were victims of horrific abuse,

but then mention that like he may or may not have done something to someone

later on in his adult life.

The people who Drake allegedly abused in some form, they're not interviewed.

They're not named.

They're not really spoken about in any detail whatsoever.

It's just a passing mention.

And then the docu series ends.

Yes.

And then he's like, but you know, and I had a hard time and I dealt with, you know, some drug and alcohol abuse.

And like, I had a little bit of a run-in with the law regarding some abuse allegations of my own, but it was a crazy time.

And I, I...

paid my dues and now I'm back and I'm releasing music.

And it felt like the last few minutes of the documentary were just like,

it was like, whoa, like, there's a lot of information here.

And, but, but, and then it was over.

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Now back to the show.

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

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 Lingefeld.

And at the time, Drake is 20 and Melissa is 16.

And she is a young, aspiring musician.

Drake is a touring and performing musician.

She has been homeschooled up until this point.

And she connects with Drake, I believe, either online or through music.

And Drake is kind of hitting like the peak of his fame at this point.

Yes.

While still Brian Peck has only been in jail for a year, and he went to jail pretty shortly after the actual abuse took place.

So Drake has had effectively no time to process his own abuse, you know, because Brian Peck goes to jail while Drake and Josh, I think, is in its second season.

And so Drake Bell is ascending to levels of fame that he's never known.

And they date for about three years.

They start dating in 2006 and they break up in 2009.

And we don't hear anything about this relationship until 2020.

So 11 years later, Melissa comes forward on TikTok.

This is 2020, so it's during COVID-19 lockdowns, quarantines, et cetera.

Melissa comes forward on TikTok and begins to describe and make abuse allegations about her relationship with Drake Bell.

She accused Drake of emotional abuse during their relationship, but she also accused him of physical abuse.

And she would expand on this later.

In an interview with the Daily Beast in 2021, she said that Drake would drag her down the stairs in their home and her head hit every step on the way down.

Jesus.

She said that Drake tried to hold her down in the bathtub while burning her with hot water from the tap.

So she makes these really horrific allegations against Drake.

And in 2020, when this all comes out, this is before there's any sort of knowledge of Drake as either a victim or as an abuser.

This is the first time that anything comes out.

But, you know, previously, Drake had experienced publicly other issues.

Like, I believe he had a DUI.

He declared bankruptcy.

Yeah, he, he, in 2013, his house was foreclosed on.

Yes.

Yeah, he declared bankruptcy.

He had, he had two DOIs.

Yes.

I think.

I know we're kind of bouncing around the timeline a little bit, but he's in the relationship.

We don't really hear much about the relationship at the time.

Drake and Josh ends some years later.

He goes through this difficult time financially, emotionally.

And so then in 2020, Melissa Lingafeldt comes forward on TikTok with this pretty, pretty awful abuse allegations.

Yes.

And so this is stuff that took place allegedly between the years of 2006 and 2009.

So very shortly, like like immediately after the conviction of Brian Peck.

And after Melissa posted her story on TikTok, she received a lot of outreach from other women who had dated Drake, as well as fans of Drake who had allegations of their own.

So in 2020, kind of all hell breaks loose in regards to the allegations against Drake Bell.

But because there's so much going on at the time,

it didn't really peak in the mainstream in a big way.

Right.

I was going to say, I mean, did anyone ever go to trial?

Was there, you know, what ends up happening with kind of Melissa and her story?

Yes.

So one of the things that Melissa talked about with the Daily Beast, and I believe she talked about it in her TikToks as well, is she described the physical violence in the relationship as something that did result in the police being called.

But she said that when that would happen, her mindset was to protect Drake and that he had drilled into her that it was her responsibility to protect him from his own actions.

So she described running away when the police were called.

And so she had not participated in anything that went anywhere beyond those calls to the police.

Yeah, and I'd imagine probably people end up calling her a liar for that.

Yes.

Saying that, well, why did you never take legal action when it was happening?

But it's also like, I don't know, for the most, for the majority of their relationship, she was a child and he was famous.

And I'm sure sure she was coerced, but even, I don't know, I can understand feeling as a child like, no, I don't want to ruin this star's reputation.

Absolutely.

No, I don't want to be the person who fucks everything up for him.

The vast majority of victims of domestic abuse do not report the crimes against them.

They don't go to the hospital.

They don't seek attention for their crimes.

They don't seek to publicize the crimes that are against them.

And part of the reason is because it's so difficult to do that.

But another reason is that typically victims of domestic abuse seek to protect their abuser.

They don't want to be the reason that their abuser is exposed.

There's numerous reasons why that can be.

So she publishes this stuff in 2020 and like what comes of it?

She would eventually delete her TikToks.

I don't know if that's because she was getting a lot of harassment.

I don't know if Drake threatened her legally or really what happened, but she does do an interview interview later about the allegations where she shares the same stories.

She does this interview because of another thing that begins happening.

And it's the thing that Quiet Onset does reference in the docuseries, which is the 2021 Ohio case, Ohio, the state of Ohio versus Drake Bell.

Kat has no, if you're, you know, just listening to the audio version of this, Kat has no notes in front of her about any of this.

Like, Kat is a scholar on all of these cases.

And I just want to

quick interlude to commend you on the fact that you know every detail of all of this stuff.

I remember talking with you about Amber Heard,

I know that you've covered Angelina Jolie's case pretty extensively, and your ability to recall all of the specifics of all of these events is pretty remarkable.

Thank you so much.

So, tell me about this 2021 Ohio case.

The 2021 Ohio case, here's how it happened.

There was this anonymous girl at the time who lived in Canada who

around 2020 reports to her local police that when she was younger, she had been sexually assaulted and groomed by Drake Bell.

She reports this to her local Canadian police department.

And in the process, she's describing where the assaults, the alleged assaults took place.

The way that she tells it is she was a big fan of Drake.

She had been communicating with him for years and she met up with him at various concerts, one of which was in Ohio and one of which was in Illinois.

She also said that she had a connection to Drake through her aunt because her aunt knew like a third party, like a mutual friend who connected this girl to Drake at a young age.

So she was a huge fan of him, but she also had this relationship with him.

And when she reports this to the Canadian police, the jurisdiction of the alleged assault is both Ohio and Illinois.

Is that because that's where he was performing and that's where she went to meet him at like meet and greets and stuff?

Yes.

And she was how old when this happened?

So it started when she was either 12 or 13

and then she alleged the assaults happened when she was around 15.

And he was how old?

In his 30s.

In his late 20s or early 30s.

The Illinois Police Department says that they are only going to investigate if Ohio declines.

And that might sound weird to people because I think most people understandably have the expectation that if someone reports that they were assaulted as a child, that like that's a really big crime, there's going to be a lot of movement.

What people don't know is that frustratingly, in a lot of these cases, there isn't action.

And that can happen for a variety of reasons, but like cross-jurisdictional issues, it makes a lot of sense.

So the jurisdiction that's ultimately decided for the case is Ohio, because that's where one of the concerts took place, where she alleged that Drake had her perform oral sex on him.

Like after the show or like backstage or something?

Backstage, yes.

As a 15-year-old?

Yes, around that age.

In the process of this case, Ohio prosecutors are representing the anonymous girl.

By the time Drake gets sentenced, she's 19, so she's a woman at that point, but all of the events took place when she was still a minor.

Ohio prosecutors are investigating.

Drake has defense counsel.

And what happens in a lot of court cases is both parties present their case before you go to trial.

There are pretrial hearings and pretrial motions.

And the process is like very long and arduous and involves a lot of steps that aren't public, especially when you're dealing with a sex crime involving an anonymous minor.

Most of what happened during these pretrial hearings was sealed.

Is that to protect the minor?

Yes.

Right.

And that makes sense.

Yes.

So a lot of what happened in those early discussions is sealed.

But eventually what happens is Drake Bell pleads guilty to two things.

He pleads guilty to attempted endangerment of a minor,

and he pleads guilty to disseminating material that is harmful to juveniles.

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

And then the other one is a misdemeanor.

But he doesn't have to do any jail time.

It's just a probation offense.

So he pleads guilty to two charges that are not related to anything physical that happened.

Correct.

But that are about text messages.

Yes.

This is not uncommon.

A lot of times when you bring a case to court, there will be a range of allegations that are made.

And the responsibility of like the prosecution is to provide evidence for these various allegations.

But a lot of times there isn't strong enough evidence to prove the full extent of what's being alleged.

In this case, they seem to have reached an agreement, the prosecution and the defense, that they had strong enough evidence for Drake to plead guilty on these two charges.

And then he wouldn't have to go to trial.

He would just have to serve probation and they would essentially drop the rest of it.

And that is like not an uncommon way for a case like this to proceed at all.

Drake pleads guilty to these two charges.

And the last sort of hearing in the case is the sentencing.

So this is in 2021.

And by this point, it had been made public in the media.

Like the media had started reporting on this case.

And the sentencing hearing was actually recorded and later posted on YouTube.

So as of today, this has like 1.4 million views on YouTube.

Which is at odds with the woman's desire to remain anonymous, right?

Correct.

Like, is she in this video?

Yes.

So her name is not shared, but you see her face and you hear her voice, and she speaks and gives a statement during the sentencing hearing.

And this was published on the Law and Crime Network.

Yes.

YouTube channel.

Another quick interlude.

Fuck the Law and Crime Network.

The Law and Crime Network is a YouTube channel that publishes like a lot of true crime content with like kind of sensational legal commentary along the way.

they're so instrumental in like the smear campaign against Amber Heard.

Why are you publishing this video of this woman who wanted to remain anonymous about being abused when she was a minor?

Like, fuck the Long Crime Network, Kat, continue.

There are like arguments to be made that it's important to have a public record of what happens in the courtroom.

However, what we end up seeing happen with sexual abuse cases is that having this material online makes it easy for people who were not involved, who do not have conflict or interest in this case, to just weigh in with their judgments and rip whoever the victim is apart.

Right.

One could argue that making a YouTube video out of this person's victim statement at the sentencing of the man who allegedly abused her as a child is not so much about keeping public record as it is for entertainment.

It is a YouTube video.

And yes, I can only imagine that what followed was the same thing that follows any video

of anyone doing this, which is like body gesture analysis, analysis, right?

So, a couple things happen at the sentencing that's really important for what's going on now.

You know, during the sentencing hearing, the victim in the case reads a statement.

And in her statement, which is pretty lengthy, she describes the full entirety of her allegations against Drake Bell.

She also calls him a pedophile.

Wow.

She talks about her allegations that he sexually assaulted her.

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

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

She talks about just at length the effect that all this has had on her, but the things that she talks about, she goes way past what Drake pled guilty to.

When she does this, her statement is picked up on in the media.

And it's important to note that after the sentencing, you know, it still wasn't nearly as discussed online as it is right now, but there was a lot of media attention to this case.

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.

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

Right.

And it's tricky because they shouldn't have done that.

They did mess up.

Right.

They did fuck up.

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.

Like, I don't know.

Andrew Tate did the media is out to get me.

Yeah.

Russell Brand did the media is out to get me.

Like, 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 famous man saying the media is out to get me, I'm like.

The thing about the like refrain of the media was out to get me or the media got it wrong or the media is not paying attention to this.

The thing about it is the media is not a monolith.

So like you have to be specific and explaining that the New York Times incorrectly labeled and then later retracted Drake Bell as a sex offender is a lot different than the claim that the entire media was out to get him.

Right.

It distills it down to what it actually was, which is a mistake that someone at the New York Times made.

The media is not a monolith.

The media is comprised of like a million different media companies and 14 trillion different journalists.

Yes.

And like,

I mean, I think about Donald Trump.

Anyone who's claiming the media is out to get me, it's like you're just, you're, you're creating a boogeyman.

And if people across a variety of reputable media channels are reporting about one thing that you did, it's not the media out to get you.

It's journalists reporting on journalists.

Like it is just.

And like Quiet on Set really feeds into this idea by letting Drake have a platform to just say all this stuff and then not responding to it in any way.

Yeah, Drake did, in Quiet on Set, he made at least one remark about, like, I did some bad stuff, but the media was really reporting on so much misinformation.

And it absolutely destroyed me.

He's actually not taking responsibility because he's positioning himself as the ultimate victim of what happened.

This is the thing, right?

This is why I wanted to make this today, which is that he is a victim.

He's just not a victim in this situation.

Yes.

And this, I'm jumping the gun, but this idea that people can only ever be a a victim.

That's not real life.

No.

That's not real life.

And like, Drake Bell was a victim and Drake Bell was allegedly an abuser.

So in preparation for this episode, I like went on TikTok,

which was my first mistake.

It always is.

So I searched Drake Bell on TikTok and like a lot of the most popular videos are just basically calling his survivor a liar.

Yes.

Which I guess, I don't know, if you've ever spent any time looking at any media online about sexual abuse, viral content calling women liars is basically par for the course and something that you can always expect.

Yeah.

But I'm curious, because you've spent a lot of time in this sort of like ecosystem too in the Drake Bell case, what specific things do people tend to point at when they're trying to discredit his survivor?

When you watch the sentencing video, what ends up happening is the first half is the woman reading her impact statement.

The second half is Drake's defense attorney responding to that and being like, literally, he's like, I need to call her credibility into question.

And then it's like 15 minutes of him just throwing out like every victim blaming example in the book.

And he also, as lawyers do, as is their job, he uses legalese and he uses the way that the legal system works against the victim and in the favor of his client.

And this is what lawyers do.

And this is what's so dangerous about what TikTok is doing, which is they're just discounting everything the victim said.

And she is the victim.

They have to refer to her legally in the case as the victim because Drake pleaded guilty.

And so people are just completely discounting everything the victim says.

And then they're taking everything that Drake's defense attorney says at face value.

And they're even taking it one step further and being like, they're labeling the victim with all of these allegations that we don't know to be true.

You know, as a member of the elder portion of Gen Z, there is so much discussion about like boomers on Facebook, boomers on Facebook being susceptible to partial or total misinformation.

And like something that I stand by so hard is that like, I just think that every generation, broadly speaking, is equally susceptible to misinformation.

And I just think it's like aestheticized in different ways.

And, like, yes, some of the memes that traverse Facebook and that fool our parents into believing like really stupid shit are things that most people in their 20s and teens wouldn't fall for.

But also, like, misinformation tailored to the aesthetic and age of TikTok is something that these people do fall for.

And we saw it with Amber Heard.

I think we see it with this.

And basically, I mean, anytime anyone comes forward against a celebrity.

Yes.

And I think that, like, it's so eerie eerie to me because what happened to Drake Bell in the Brian Peck case is now happening in the exact same way to the Jane Doe in the Drake Bell case.

Say more about that.

The rhetoric is exactly the same.

You mean like the way that people wrote about Brian Peck in their letters, like we know him and we know his heart.

And like people say that every time that they defend someone who's been accused of abuse, right?

Like he would never do this.

Additionally, I think the part that parallels the most is in those letters written by those celebrities, many of which were written by women, 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.

And with Drake, they were like, oh, Drake was mature for his age.

And we think that he tempted Brian into doing something that Brian regrets immensely.

Yeah.

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

They're saying that this young girl lied about her age.

Nobody ever claimed that.

It is a fiction of TikTok.

People took it upon themselves to just make up the claim that this young girl lied about her age.

I saw those.

There's a lot of videos and comments saying that she lied about her age.

And when Drake found out about that she was actually a minor, he cut off all communication.

Yeah.

Which that raises a couple of ethical questions because first of all, I mean, this is not the first time we've heard that sort of scenario call into question.

I mean, James Charles comes to mind, right?

Because that's the thing that people scrutinize him for, where, you know, he was allegedly talking to minors and then, you know, he found out their age and ran the other way.

It does call into question like, what is the responsibility of a rich and powerful celebrity

to, regardless of like how old someone says they are, say they say they're 18.

If you're talking to someone who looks very young and you are rich in power, like it's very easy to make sure that they are an adult.

And so I think that even if what people are saying, the Drake Bell situation, which is that, oh, well, she said that she was an adult and then he found out that she lied.

I think even if that's true, it doesn't really put anyone off the hook, especially considering he's in his 30s.

Yeah.

And also.

But also, it's not true.

Exactly.

It's like it's a fiction.

And And if you actually watch what she says is that she was 12 and her aunt introduced her to Drake Bell.

And they don't deny that.

Drake's defense attorney never denies that.

And in fact, Drake's defense attorney establishes the facts as Drake knew this girl for years between the years of 12 and 15.

Drake was messaging with this girl for years.

And Drake asked her how old she was.

She told him the truth.

And then Drake responded, hurry up.

So nobody alleges that the girl ever lied about her age.

People just made that up.

And in fact, she was 12 years old.

So in what world do you mistake a 12-year-old for an adult?

Yeah.

No world.

That's, I mean, that's the thing that comes top of mind for me is like, we can, we can investigate the details and like, did, did he think that she was an adult?

Didn't she?

But like bigger picture.

Bigger picture.

What 12-year-old looks like an adult.

Exactly.

Another thing that I saw people on TikTok saying a lot

was that this woman, well, at the time, girl, was stalking Drake.

And it's another one of these kind of like the adultification of child sex abuse survivors.

Yes.

Of like, what, you know, and the same thing that they did to Drake when he was a child.

And when I started reading comments like that, that this girl was stalking Drake.

The first thing that comes to mind to me is like, okay, yes, so I had read some of this stuff and I knew that she was a fan and that she went to multiple of his shows and multiple of his meet and greets yep by that definition of stalking i don't know like most swifties are stalking taylor swift but also it's just like again big picture can a 12 13 14 year old girl meaningfully stalk an adult celebrity no

and yet again they're just inventing things because Drake's attorney, the things that he says during the sentencing are, in my opinion, crazily unprofessional and just like classic victim blaming that should not be allowed in court.

He reveals the anonymous woman's real initials and then he asks like, are we going anonymous in this?

After he says what the first and last initial of her name is.

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

So he goes out of his way to reveal her identity.

Then he starts trying to undermine her credibility.

And the defense attorney engages in the exact same rhetoric that was used against Drake Bowell.

He positions this young girl as being jealous of Drake's wife and like basically fabricating allegations against Drake because of her jealousy.

It really is crazy.

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

And the way that victims are discredited every single time by defense lawyers, but also like by the public who becomes, you know, a de facto defense lawyer.

Yes.

It's just the same thing every time.

It's the same thing every time.

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.

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.

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?

Like they were close professional colleagues.

They, sometimes from the time of childhood, they felt maybe in their, their careers were indebted to him.

There was like a close personal relationship with Drake.

All of these people defending him against allegations that to an extent he pled guilty to.

Yes.

All these people online, they don't know him.

But the parasocial element of celebrity is in its own way, a relationship.

And the way that people like go kind of like balls to the wall to defend him online and that they also do for Brad Pitt and for Johnny Depp, they're doing the same things that again, those people who wrote those letters for Brian Peck, they're saying, Well, we know him and we know his heart, and he could never have done this.

People express confusion and basically act bewildered at how someone like Brian Peck could succeed and remain in the children's television industry despite having these horrible allegations and then a conviction.

The exact same people are responsible for cultivating an environment where this is happening right now.

It's happening right now and people are complicit in it.

And instead of recognizing that, they jump to conspiracy.

And this is something that Quiet On Set actually, I think, kind of encourages.

We're scrolling through our outline.

We are officially allowed to analyze the documentary.

Get into it.

Okay.

People look at the situation at Nickelodeon and they see that this entertainment company that specialized in children's entertainment by and for children had all of these convicted child sex offenders working for them.

And a lot of them became convicted in the process.

Like they didn't hire them as convicted sex offenders, but they hired them.

They abused kids who worked for Nickelodeon.

And then they were later convicted for those crimes.

And people look at this and they're like, how could this possibly happen?

It has to be that Nickelodeon is like founded on principles of abusing children.

And Hollywood is like a pedophile cabal.

Yeah, QAnon alert.

QAnon alert.

QAnon alert, which is the other thing, is I was watching this documentary and I was thinking, oh, to be clear, my first thought was with all of the victims, but then I sort of had like an outer layer of like, QAnon's going to run with this one, which is not to say that these stories should not be told in the exact way that they happened, but they should also be presented with some context, right?

What we find out in this docuseries is that these people were hired not with the knowledge that they were going to abuse children, but rather they were hired and then used the position to abuse children.

So there's a difference.

Then after people were convicted, in some cases, like Brian Peck's case, they continued to have their image rehabilitated inside the industry.

And people look at this and they're like, this could never happen anywhere else.

But that's not true.

It happens everywhere.

I mean, it sounds a lot like the church.

It happens in the church.

All of them, like all the different churches.

It happens in every industry.

Sexual offenders are rehabilitated and allowed to remain in every industry.

This is like what the Me Too movement was actually about.

But the problem is the fixation on Hollywood and celebrity itself drives people to believe that celebrities are uniquely capable of these things or that people in Hollywood are uniquely capable of these things.

But it's just that they get the most attention because they're celebrities.

And like Drake Bell, something he brought up in the documentary, was that Brian Peck, his conviction, didn't get nearly as much attention or media coverage.

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

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

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

Like basically insinuating that the media is out to get him.

Right.

My interpretation of this is that the people at Nickelodeon who were convicted of sexual offenses against children, they weren't famous.

And at the time, you did not have a prevailing cultural narrative or conspiracy that, like, Hollywood was full of pedophiles.

Right.

That's a newer invention.

It's slightly newer.

I think it's recycled, but like, At the time, the climate was different.

And also, social media didn't really exist yet in its current form.

So you didn't have forums of people online like digging for this stuff.

Today, you literally do.

But also, Drake Bell is more famous than Brian Peck, than all the other people who were convicted, who had worked in children's television.

Exactly.

I mean, like, nobody knew who Brian Peck was.

And so, like, sexual abuse unfortunately happens all the time.

And it's just not breaking news all the time because, for the most part, they're random people who we don't know when it's someone like Drake Bell, who's like everybody's favorite child star.

It's going to be more widely reported on, not because the media is out to get him, but because he's a famous person.

And at the end of the day, these media companies are in charge of producing articles that people will click on.

The exact same factors that led to Drake Bell's Ohio case being really covered in the media are the exact same factors that lead to his allegations against Brian Peck being the focal point of this documentary.

And the focal point of the cultural reaction to the documentary has centered around Drake's allegations.

Because out of all the horrible things that were shared on that show, Drake is the most famous one to have experienced any of it.

And I do think that the severity of the allegations that Brian Peck was convicted of, I do think it was more serious than some of the other stuff that was in the show.

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.

And that was the thing that jumped out to me right at the end.

I watched it.

Look, I thought it was a very engaging documentary.

I thought it was entertaining, which as a piece of media on HBO, its ultimate goal is to grip you.

And I don't mean entertaining in a, in a positive way, but it was like, I wanted to keep watching.

But then when it ended with a passing mention of like, Drake may have done something, but it was ultimately in pursuit of his own like healing journey.

And then the documentary ended, I just thought, well, wait a minute, but who who did Drake allegedly hurt?

Why are we not hearing from them at all?

Is that part of this story?

And if the editorial directors of this documentary are choosing to not make it part of this story, then it's like, is this a documentary about survivors of abuse or is it a documentary about a certain set of celebrities who we all have this kind of nostalgic parasocial relationship to?

And I don't necessarily think it has to be one or the other.

When it ended so abruptly, I just thought, maybe this could have used a fifth installment where we talk about the cycle of abuse and how Drake Bell is not exempt from that cycle.

But then I was like, you know, this is a big budget streaming documentary, and maybe something as complex as the cycle of abuse is at odds with what it's trying to provide, which is a few hours of entertainment, but also, and I really do think this was part of what this specific documentary was trying to provide, a sense of righteous moral clarity that the viewer can have about who was right and who was wrong and who was a victim and who was a a predator.

And media that ultimately pushes that very simple narrative about abuse feels good to consume because it just reminds you that had you been in that situation, you would have been on the side of good.

And even watching it and reflecting on it, you are in support of the good side.

But that's also just like an oversimplification of abuse and not how it actually works, which just makes me really skeptical when I'm watching things like this.

I don't know.

Is the goal to raise awareness about abuse and how to stop it?

Or is it about feeling good?

My fear with the documentary ultimately is that it is perpetuating some of the exact sentiment that it initially sought.

to explain, which is that literally Drake Bell is in a position where his image is being rehabilitated because of this docuseries.

And it has provided him a bigger platform than he would have had otherwise, and also a bigger platform than he's had since Drake and Josh itself

to like appeal to the public.

And we can see that working.

We can see people in the public positioning Drake as the ultimate victim, positioning Drake as a hero, and giving him cover to further re-traumatize victims.

I think that two really important takeaways that the docuseries didn't explore and that are kind of foundational to understanding the cycle of abuse.

One, most people who are victimized do not go on to victimize others.

However, people who victimize others are more likely than not to have been victimized themselves.

Right.

And that is the cycle of abuse.

Who is to say, right, that Brian Peck wasn't abused as a child?

And this isn't me trying to launder the image of Brian Peck.

Certainly, I have no interest in that.

And this isn't also me like trying to make Drake Bell the ultimate predator.

It's just like all of these people are complicated human beings.

And the complexity of any of this is just left out of the documentary.

Yes.

I think when we misunderstand the cycle of abuse, right?

Like perhaps Brian was a victim as a child.

Perhaps Drake did go on to abuse other.

young women and girls.

Like, I think ultimately the story that was shown in Quiet on Set about the abuse that Drake Bell suffered, you're taking this quite lengthy and complex timeline, using a snippet of it, you know, and presenting that snippet of the timeline as like the start and end date of the full story.

And then saying, like, this is what happened.

And this is the story of the abuse.

And it's really just not the full story.

It's not the full story.

And I think when you frame it as such,

and you don't address that abuse can, and in this case, is a cycle, you're doing a disservice to preventing further abuse.

I think that when you examine the motivation at the heart of the series and the heart of any sort of production that involves themes of abuse, it's like, what are you actually setting out to do here?

Are you hoping that by exposing these things, you're going to combat abuse and challenge misperceptions in society?

Or are you going to tell people what you already know they want to hear?

Because if it's the latter, you're not actually going to make things better.

You're only going to make things worse.

And I think that that is the ultimate fatal flaw of the docuseries: is that we're not seeing what actually happened here.

Like you said, we're only seeing part of it.

The docuseries feeds into the sentiment that people watching are able to correctly identify abuse based on sensational aspects of what they're seeing on TV.

But when we actually look at what the Quiet Onset audience is now doing, they are subjecting Drake Bell's victim and the other alleged victims of Drake Bell to the exact same kind of environment that Drake Bell had to go through as a child himself.

The documentary in itself is part of this continuing cycle of abuse.

And that's the hard pill to swallow because I liked watching it.

You know, until the very end where I was like, what the fuck?

I enjoyed watching it throughout.

I thought it was really informative.

And obviously, a lot of other people did too, because it became the most streamed piece of television for a week in the United States.

And I don't think our goal here is to like shame you for having watched it and felt something.

I think you absolutely should feel something when you watch stuff like this.

But I think when you're talking about something as delicate and complicated as this, to not even include an expert on like how abuse functions was a choice.

What I would challenge people to do is not only acknowledge victimhood when someone tells you to.

Because what this documentary was a vehicle for was explaining to its audience that Drake Bell was a victim of abuse.

But people need to be able to look at situations without having a narrator tell them what to think and come to that conclusion on their own.

And what we're seeing with like the online reaction on TikTok and on social media to the 2021 case and what Drake Bell is doing now, we're seeing that people don't possess that ability.

They're easily falling for the same pitfalls that are what allows abuse to be enabled in the first place.

The last kind of point I want to make here about the cycle of abuse is that I actually think this is something that most people know about.

I think people tend to know that abuse is cyclical.

I think most people listening to this podcast are probably at least vaguely aware of that, and that a lot of abusers were abuse victims themselves.

And it's so strange to witness people just refusing to acknowledge that this situation could also be that, right?

It's, I go online and I see like all of these people shaming people who have spoken up as survivors of Drake Bell.

And it's just like, we, we all know how this works,

but in this situation, it couldn't be because my parasocial relationship with Drake Bell when I was 10 years old, which hey, I had one too, but prevents me from seeing him as anything other than the ultimate victim.

The day that the documentary came out, Drake Bell launched and dropped this music video.

And it's part of like a new music era that he's doing.

And at the end of the music video, he embedded a YouTube video into it that is a conspiracy video from a really small channel that is attempting to discredit and undermine Drake's 2021 victim, her personal statement that she made during the sentencing hearing.

Yeah, I noticed that.

So Drake Bell essentially lined up a music video release with the release of this documentary.

Because like you said, I mean, this is the most culturally relevant it feels like he's been since Drake and Josh.

Yeah, I noticed that was really weird.

When you're watching the music video, at the very end of the music video, this pop-up shows up for another video, and it's called Drake Bell Accuser Story Falls Apart.

And it's from like a conspiracy drama channel.

Yes.

I thought that was a really, I don't even know what to make of that.

I think it basically shows, and there are other ways that we've seen this happen online, but Drake Bell really actively aware and participating in the online discourse around his 2021 case and his current image rehabilitation since the documentary dropped, but also before.

And also, even going back to the 2021 case, the victim discusses how Drake was online encouraging the mockery of her during the case itself.

And that has just perpetuated to this current day.

He embedded the conspiracy YouTube video.

He is in TikTok comments.

Like you'll be on a TikTok defending Drake and like deep in the comments, he's replying to people.

Being like, yeah, I never abused my ex-girlfriend.

It was all lies.

Like he is,

he is extremely online.

He also will DM people who post negative things about him and try to like pressure them or intimidate them into taking them down.

I don't know.

When I saw that he embedded the conspiracy theory YouTube video about, you know, like disproving Drake Bell's accuser into his music video.

It just came across as at odds with the story that he sold to the documentary because he, when he pled guilty to the lesser charges, I don't think I mentioned this, he ultimately got, I think, two years probation and 200 hours of community service.

And so he alluded in the documentary to like, I kind of did my time, I did my piece.

I took responsibility.

I took responsibility, which is very much at odds with embedding this conspiracy YouTube video at the end of the music video that you launched with the release of the documentary.

It seems like, I don't know, the healed individual that he portrayed himself as in the documentary might not be the full picture.

And to be clear, of course, I want Drake Bell to be healed because he's a traumatized survivor in his own right, but that healing really shouldn't include the like ongoing participation in the harassment of someone who accused you and who you pled guilty to abusing.

Yes.

And Drake talks about how significant of an impact it had on him to have people in the entertainment industry defend his abuser.

Imagine how much of an impact all of this is having on the victim in the 2021 case.

Because it's not just Hollywood who is on her abuser's side.

It's the entire internet.

And every time that Drake re-ups this, he's putting her through that again and again and again and again.

And she is never getting her documentary.

No.

Because she is not famous.

Exactly.

Where does this leave us?

If you could say something to just people who have watched this documentary, because everyone I know has, and if you're listening to this, there's a great chance that you have too.

What would you leave people with?

I would say that if people feel moved by the subject of child sexual abuse and want to do anything within their hearts and minds or externally to combat this issue, it's always happening, and there is always an opportunity to continuously support victims.

There are new victims every single day, every single hour.

And just defending or supporting somebody who's like a famous victim is not enough.

People have to take the energy of defending and supporting victims and actually do it.

They have to do it with people involved in cultural issues, cultural discourse.

But in addition, you also have to do it for people in your own life.

And I think that it's really comforting to be able to watch a documentary and be like, I'm on the right side of this.

I'm on the right side of this.

Like this horrible thing, like I'm doing the right thing by watching this documentary and supporting Drake Bow.

But at the end of the day, that's not enough.

And as we just discussed, that is the attitude that perpetuates this whole cycle and continuously leaves victims unsupported.

Yeah, the energy that you're bringing to the Instagram comments of everyone who is mentioned in the documentary for having supported Brian Peck, like take that energy and also like use it to support victims who aren't famous.

So the last thing that I want to share is some of what the victim in the 2021 case shared in her victim impact statement.

And I think that Drake Bell, because of this documentary, has been given so much space to speak about the effects of trauma that it's only right that the victim in this case be given space as well to talk about how this has impacted her.

In this statement, which is pretty lengthy, and you can look it up and read it online, she talks about how the sleepless nights that she experienced as a result of this impacted her ability to perform academically in high school because she was falling asleep in class.

Jesus.

She talked about the thousands of dollars that her family spent on therapy to try to correct the trauma or cope with the trauma that she was left with because of this.

She talked about how her relationship with her aunt and her aunt's relationship with her family will never be the same because of the responsibility her aunt takes in introducing her to Jake Bell.

And then this is the part that I think is really important and what we can end on.

She said, the defendant's crimes against me are the worst things that he could have ever done to me.

He was such a huge part of my childhood and in return he ruined my life.

Back when I confronted him, he told me that he didn't want me to hate him.

I don't hate him.

I loathe him.

Now I would like to ask you something important.

Whether a person has a lot of influence, some or none at all, These are crimes that are unforgivable and inexcusable.

They can never be taken back.

He was calculating.

He preyed on me and sexually abused me.

He is a monster and a danger to children.

I am kindly asking you to send a powerful message that these crimes are never okay, no matter who a person is.

I also want to bring up the letter that I wrote to you.

In my letter, I explained why the defendant is not remorseful for his crimes.

I described how he has publicly found humor in them and how he has used tactics to gain sympathy from the public.

He could have easily ignored the people online who were making a mockery of this case.

Instead, he went out of his way to let them know that he thinks it's funny.

And he can give me that look all he wants.

He knows exactly what I'm talking about.

The crimes that he committed against me are some kind of sick joke to him.

My suffering is not for him to laugh at or his leverage to brag about becoming a good man now that he is a father.

So today, if the defendant tries to tell you that he is remorseful, I am asking you to appreciate that actions speak louder than words.

Since his arraignment and plea hearing, his his actions have been loud and clear, and they have shown that he simply does not care and does not have an ounce of remorse.

I won't be surprised if he tries to manipulate everybody into believing that he's changed, but he can't fool me.

If he is truly sorry for anything, he is sorry that he has finally been caught.

I can assure you of that.

He committed these crimes against me with pride.

A defendant who clearly feels no remorse for his crimes deserves to be given the maximum sentence possible.

I will never forget what he did to me.

I idolized and looked up to him, and he took that and broke it in the most sickening way possible.

He is the epitome of evil.

I deserve better than to be used for his sick desires and for my suffering to be used for his amusement.

Jared Drake Bell is a pedophile, and that is his legacy.

Thank you, Your Honor.

Kat, thank you so much for sitting with us today, for walking us through this.

You are so unbelievably well-informed, but also just have the best insights in this whole area, which is, I mean, why I love talking to you about it on and off the show.

Where can people find you, support your work, see more of you?

So you can find my work at nbcnews.com.

If you search my name, my author profile will come up and you can read my articles there.

You can also find me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Blue Sky, all of the above at Kat Tembarge.

Thank you so much for joining us today.

You know, this wasn't a particularly fun one, but I do think when something is so in the zeitgeist as this documentary is, and when a piece of media like this is being read in a way that has potential to perpetuate so much of the harm it's trying to curtail, we have a responsibility to provide alternate perspectives and perhaps more well-rounded perspectives that just tell the fuller story.

If you want more of the show, we are on Patreon.

The link for that will be in the episode description or the YouTube description, depending on how you've watched this.

And I'm just so grateful that you stuck around till the end.

If you're here, that means you stuck around.

Really grateful.

Love you so much.

And until next time, stay fruity.