Drake Bell is slamming grooming allegations and says why he chose to plead guilty to attempted child endangerment and disseminating matter harmful to juveniles in 2021. He revealed in a recent interview, the actual reason why he chose to plead guilty to the charges.
He refuted claims that he only plead guilty because he was financially “devastated.” The Drake & Josh alum also clarified that he was not grooming the 15-year-old girl he was speaking to but takes responsibility in doing “talking to someone that I shouldn’t have been talking to.”
“I ended up finding out that I was talking to someone that I shouldn’t have been talking to and it snowballed into these allegations that were not true and it just turned into this big thing,” he said on Dear Media’s “Not Skinny But Not Fat” podcast. “I was being investigated and that was really difficult on my family. Thankfully, through 18 months of subpoenaing my phones and computers and witnesses, it turned out that most of what was being accused of me was not true.”
He added that there was a lot of stress on his family and himself but he is putting his focus on raising his son whom he shares with ex-wife Janet Von Schmeling.
“He’s incredible and we have a great relationship,” Bell said. “He really is the motivation to continue to keep going.”
“There’s just so much that I’ve had to deal with, and through that, like I said, not having the tools or not knowing how to process things, I made a lot of decisions in my life that I shouldn’t have made and hurt a lot of people,” he added. “But now, where I am in my life now, I think that I’m finally at a place where I can process and deal with this through therapy that I’ve been through and actively going through and unearthing all of these things and being able to face them head-on for, really, the first time in my life. It’s an emotional roller coaster.”
Quiet on Set
This comes on the heels of the Quiet on Set documentary, where Bell revealed that he was the young actor who was sexually abused by Brian Peck, a former actor and dialogue coach. Peck was arrested in 2003 for sexually abusing Bell and was sentenced to 16 months in prison. Peck pleaded no contest to a count apiece of lewd act upon a child 14 or 15 by a person 10 years older and oral copulation of a person under 16. He is now required to register as a sex offender.
“I've never talked about this outside of therapy,” Drake Bell said in the series, which can be streamed on Hulu, Discovery +, YouTube (premium subscription), and Amazon Prime.
“The abuse was extensive and it got pretty brutal,” Bell said. A producer offscreen tells Bell to share only what he is comfortable with.
Bell replied: “Why don't you think of the worst stuff someone can do to somebody as a sexual assault, and that'll answer your question. I don't know how else to put it.”
Take a look at the trailer for the series below:
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