Despite his troubled relationship with his family, Collin Gosselin is still open to making amends with his estranged mother, Kate Gosselin.
“So, first and foremost, my relationship with my brothers and sisters is of top priority to me,” Collin, 20, shared in an interview with The U.S. Sun published on Tuesday, October 8. “And I think the only way that my mother and I would be able to reconnect and fix our relationship in the future is, if she would just come forward with the truth and all the things that she has kept under wraps.”
He added: “And you know the many times that she’s tried to soil my name and my father’s name. I just would want her to come forward with the truth. [But] yes, that door would be open, 100 percent.”
Collin is one of Kate, 49, and her ex-husband Jon Gosselin’s eight children, including twins Mady and Cara, 24, and sextuplets Alexis, Aaden, Hannah, Leah and Joel, 20. The family’s lives were documented on the TLC series Jon & Kate Plus 8 (later rebranded Kate Plus 8 after their 2009 divorce), which ran from 2007 to 2017.
Jon, 47, was granted custody of Collin in 2018 after he wrote to Jon for help from a mental health facility. Collin accused Kate of institutionalizing him to cover up the abuse he suffered from her, as revealed in a bombshell July 2023 interview on Vice’s Dark Side of the 2000s series.
“I was starting to tell people what was going on at home, and she caught wind of that and had to put me somewhere where I wouldn’t be able to get the secrets out,” he claimed at the time. In August, Collin claimed that his time spent in mental health facilities was the reason he was discharged from the United States Marine Corps.
Last month, Collin told The U.S. Sun that Kate was physically and verbally abusive toward him and forced him to live in their home’s basement. “My mother had a room built in our unfinished section of the storage basement. She had a room put up with cameras in it, a tiny window in the corner and it was bolt-locked from the outside,” he told the outlet in an interview published on September 9. “It was like a containment room, literally, and it had a mattress on the floor and that’s how I lived.”
He went on to note that Kate allegedly “zip-tied my hands and feet together and bolt locked the door, turned the lights off and had cameras there just watching me.”
Kate, for her part, has previously denied Collin’s abuse allegations, telling People in July 2023 that chose to institutionalize Collin in 2016 after he “received multiple psychiatric diagnoses” and would have “many attacks/outbursts.”
She continued: “All measures that were taken in our home were at the explicit recommendation of his pediatric psychiatrist and/or his team of specialists and were put into place to safeguard every member of our family, our friends as well as our family pets. … Collin remains a very troubled young man who continues to need a lot of help.”
In another interview with The U.S. Sun published on Monday, October 7, Collin revealed the last time he saw his mother was on TV — when she competed on season 1 of Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test last year. (Kate self-eliminated after the first episode due to a neck injury.)
“It seems like she had a very difficult time on Special Forces,” Collin told the outlet. “You know, even so, with everything going on right now, I still deeply feel sorry for her, and how she had to struggle through those challenges.”
He added: “Despite my mother, and her constant effort to protect her reputation at the cost of mine, and the things that she has said about me and the things that she has done to me, I still feel in my heart. I feel sorry for her.”
If you or someone you know is experiencing child abuse, call or text the Child Help Hotline at 1-800-422-4453.