Collin Gosselin alleges his mom, Kate Gosselin, brutally locked him in a “small holding cell” for two years, where he was completely isolated from his siblings.
In his new memoir, “In the Shadow of Eight: Surviving the Reality of My Childhood,” Collin, now 22, describes his alleged horrific living conditions before being sent to a behavioral facility when he was a pre-teen.
He alleges that Kate one day informed him he was “moving out” and had a contractor build a wall in the corner of their unfinished basement to create “a small holding cell.”
He claims he was only given an air mattress and a pillow, and that the room was off-limits to everyone, including the camera crew filming “Kate Plus Eight” at the time.
Collin says he felt “trapped” in the room, which contained only books and that surveillance cameras monitored his every move.
“The cameras were connected to a device about the size of a baby monitor, it hung from a lanyard so it could be worn around someone’s wrist,” he writes. “My mom carried it, then passed it off to a nanny or assistant when she left the house. It moved from person to person, a small screen that meant eyes were always on me.”
He describes the room as only having a tiny window near the ceiling and always being cold, with dusty, stale air. He alleges he was only brought up to eat after all his siblings had finished, though he could smell their food through the basement vents.
“After the table was cleared and dishes stacked, eating alone at the long table, I felt like a ghost who had missed his own life,” he writes. “After I’d eaten and done chores I would be locked back into the room downstairs.”
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He adds, “The bolts on the door always sounded louder than anything else.”
Collin describes hearing his seven siblings — fellow sextuplets Alexis, Hannah, Aaden, Leah and Joel, as well as older twins Madelyn and Cara — having fun on weekends, while he cruelly had to wait for Kate to wake up and come get him.
One morning he recalls that he could no longer wait and wet himself, since he couldn’t go to the bathroom because he was locked in the room.
“I stood in front of the cameras she had set up, calling her, then looking straight into them, begging,” he writes. “I started crying, quietly at first. Then louder. Trying to wake her up.”
Kate, 51, has previously denied Collin’s multiple claims against her over the years, which have included his allegations that she “had to pray to God to stop hitting” him when he was just two years old.
“[He] has received multiple psychiatric diagnoses over the years. … Collin’s distorted perception of reality is one of the many issues that he has always struggled with,” she told People in a statement in 2023.
Her statement continued, “His brothers and sisters and I have not been directly involved in his life due to his history of unpredictable behavior and violent tendencies towards us.”
More recently, Kate claimed in June via TikTok that she isn’t suing Collin for defamation because she’s a “public figure” and the “rules are different unfortunately.”
Kate and her ex-husband, Jon Gosselin, rose to fame on the TLC show “Jon & Kate Plus 8,” which ran from 2007 to 2017.
The exes were married from 1999 to 2009, and after a contentious divorce, Jon was granted sole custody of Collin in 2018.
A source told Page Six last month that Kate was “nervous” about Collin’s memoir coming out.
“Kate doesn’t want anyone in the family to talk about their past,” the source said. “She considers any of the children who talk in the family as traitors.”
Collin also recently spoke to Page Six about his memoir, telling us he was “putting it all out there.”
“I’m an adult now, and there’s enough of my life that my mom took from me and [my] childhood that she robbed from me,” he told us.
He continued, “This book is going to expose a lot. … Children deserve to be protected, and that’s what you can expect from my story.”
If you or someone you know is affected by any of the issues raised in this story, call or text BEGIN the National Child Abuse Hotline at 800-422-4453.
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