8 months ago
55 ARTICLE AD
Drake Bell is speaking out. The now 37-year-old star of Nickelodeon’s Drake & Josh has spoken out publicly for the first time about being repeatedly molested by dialogue coach Brian Peck when he was a child. The announcement comes as part of ID’s upcoming four-part docuseries Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV. Keep reading to find out more… “Brian and I became really close because we had a lot of the same interests, which looking back, I think that was probably a little calculated,” he says in the series, via People, which premieres across two nights on ID from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. ET/PT on March 17 and March 18. Drake booked a gig on Nickelodeon’s The Amanda Show in 1999, at the age of 13. The next year, on the first day of the show’s second season, he met Brian Peck, a dialogue coach who befriended him and would invite him to his house for acting lessons. His dad Joe Bell expressed concerns with production and said he was uncomfortable with Brian always being around his son. Brian later became Drake‘s manager, coming to acting auditions in Los Angeles, which were at least an hour away from where he lived with his mother, so Drake would frequently spend the night at Brian‘s house, but one night everything changed. “I was sleeping on the couch where I usually sleep and I woke up to him… I opened my eyes and I woke up and he was…he was sexually assaulting me,” Drake said, who was 15 at the time. “And I froze, and was in complete shock and had no idea what to do or how to react.” “You know anytime I had an audition or anytime I needed to work on dialogue or anything, I somehow ended up back at Brian‘s house. And it just got worse, and worse, and worse, and worse, and I was just trapped. I had no way out. The abuse was extensive and it got pretty brutal.” “I often look back at that time and wonder how in the world I survived,” he says. “I remember all of the abusive events, but everything outside of that is very blurry to me, which is a bummer because I experienced a lot of great things in my life and my career during this time. But it was so overshadowed and ruined by what I was dealing with on the inside that it made it really hard for me.” In 2004, in connection with Drake‘s case, Brian pleaded no contest to a charge of oral copulation with a minor under 16 as well as a charge of performing a lewd act with a 14- or 15-year-old. Drake‘s identity as the victim was not made public at the time. Brian spent 16 months in prison and was mandated to register as a sex offender. Drake says he began to drink heavily and use drugs. (In 2021, he pled guilty to two charges stemming from online behavior with an underage fan and was sentenced to two years’ probation and community service.) Nickelodeon provided a statement, via People: “Now that Drake Bell had disclosed his identity as the plaintiff in the 2004 case, we are dismayed and saddened to learn of the trauma he has endured, and we commend and support the strength required to come forward.” Last year, he spoke about his mental health and said Internet trolls were going to “kill him.”
