In a bombshell interview with Dr. Oz, Jon Gosselin revealed some major inside gossip about his relationship with ex-wife Kate, including how she sent away their son Collin without telling Jon. This is the second massive interview from Jon in recent months, after a 10-year gag order following the couple's high-profile divorce was finally lifted.
Jon was very open with Dr. Oz, and these are some of the main takeaways.
The Divorce
After Jon and Kate split, Jon was essentially left to fend for himself. TLC foot the bill for Kate's side of the divorce, but not his.
“I literally hung a sign on my gate saying, ‘If any crew members show up, I’ll have you arrested for trespassing,’” he says. “They sued me for breach of contract and I pretty much bankrupted myself. I’ve spent $1.7 million in lawyers fees from when TLC sued me and the divorce. TLC paid for [Kate’s] attorneys in the lawsuit and for her divorce.”
There was also speculation that Jon was having an affair which lead to the couple's divorce, but he absolutely denied this.
“She was traveling with her bodyguard, she was going on speaking tours,” Jon, 42, said of his former spouse. “I was home with the nanny and watching the kids and doing all of the kids stuff.”
Dr. Oz then asked, “Does she think you were having an affair?”
“Not with the nanny at that point," Jon explained. "We had the same nanny for 3 years. She thought I was having an affair after … during separation in 2009, which I wasn’t. No. Kate wanted a divorce, so she came to me. She didn’t want to be married anymore because I didn’t want to film anymore. I wasn’t part of the business model anymore.”
Kate's desire to film also kept their custody agreement a challenge.
According to Jon, Kate fought for “legal custody to film my kids to sustain her lifestyle and their lifestyle," and says that "her belief system is skewed.”
“I believe her intentions, in the beginning, were good intentions, bringing kids into the world,” he told Dr. Oz. “She fought to have these kids. But I think once fame and money got involved, it twisted her belief system. On my end, I’ve been fighting to get my kids off TV forever.”
Collin's Institutionalization
It was major news when Kate revealed that Collin, one of the sextuplets, had been sent away to an institution for his "behavorial issues." At the time, Kate said there was an actual diagnosis.
"[There's] a fairly fluid diagnosis of what those needs are," Kate said at the time. "But he needs to learn certain strategies to help him deal with things. This has been a struggle we've had for a very long time, and it's one I've dealt with on my own. I've felt very alone in this. By the same token, it's not something that has only impacted me or him, our entire family has been impacted."
At the same time, Jon said he was in the dark about where Collin was.
"I have an idea where he is but I don't really know where he is," Jon told ET. "[Kate] says that Collin is in a special school for special needs kids with behavioral problems." However, Jon says he's been told otherwise by law enforcement officials, but he would not clarify what that meant.
"I mean, I ask but she doesn't tell me," Jon said about Collin's current whereabouts. "She doesn't answer any of my texts."
Now, Jon is saying that Kate made up the diagnosis and had to search out Collin's whereabouts himself.
“She, Kate, institutionalized him without a diagnosis, which created a diagnosis. I pulled him out of the institution. He was wrongfully institutionalized. He did not need to be in an institution. Just because he was a difficult child did not mean he needed to be sent away. Against my will and against my right. And then it took me two and a half years to find him, and then another year to get him out."
So how could Kate send Collin away without telling Jon?
"I had physical custody, and not legal at the time," the father of eight admitted. "And the only way I knew or found out where Collin was is that Colin wrote a letter and his roommate smuggled it out, his roommate called my manager, my manager vetted the roommate—because you never know—and that's how I found out."
The letter is something Jon brought up in an interview earlier this, in which Collin begs for Jon to come and "save" him.
“Dear Dad, I’m not trying to trick you, but I still love you,” Collin, 15, wrote in a June 2017 letter. “I told Mom I want to live with you, she said no. But right? She can’t choose for me. I’m old enough now, I’m YOUR son, not hers. She was abusive to me after I left your house. I’m sorry. Take this to court because … you’re my dad, my savior. Please help me and let me meet Colleen [Conrad, Jon’s girlfriend]. I’m counting on you to get me out of here. Daddy, I love you. save me. Please come FAST. I love you. Help me. BYE."
“I was actually in the airport in Mexico when it was sent to me and I felt like, we have got to figure this out,” Jon recalled.
Jon took the letter to a judge and called the special needs facility himself, who were very open to helping him out.
“They said ‘Mr. Gosselin, we can do anything you want,'" he recalled. "I drove my car — first time I saw him in three years. He was different because he was on Thorazine and all of these medicines, like, all doped up. He [weighed] 75 lbs more than what you see now because he was tranquilized most of the time.”
Jon said that because of Kate's abusive manner, he's had to reparent Collin and Hannah, who he has sole custody of.
“I have to reparent my kids,” Jon, 42, told the show’s host. “A lot of stuff happened, abuse wise, mental, physical — even though they are 15, they might [behave like they’re] 12. The mental abuse, the [parental] alienation, just the put-downs … Isolation is a huge one,” he continued. “I make them join clubs and go to dances and football games. We all go to…therapy."
Their Current Relationship
Jon has been open about wanting to see his kids, but he claims that Kate's controlling manner has but a dent in that.
“We don’t have a relationship right now,” he said. “We don’t talk, nothing. The only time I see my ex-wife is in court, because we’ve exhausted all opportunities to co-parent. It’s just never going to happen, due to personality disorders and everything else. We just have different aspects on how we want to parent. In two more years, we are going to have a lot of adults.”
Asked to elaborate on his mention of “personality disorders,” Jon said he thinks Kate has narcissistic personality disorder and called his own behavior “passive-aggressive.”
“Even before the cameras were coming in, did you perceive an issue?” Dr. Oz asked. “She’s narcissistic, you’re saying. You’re passive-aggressive. Those things don’t tend to go together well. Were you already having issues?”
“I didn’t really notice those personality disorders till after filming,” Jon replied. “She wants to be right, everything she says, she wants to be right. So if she lies, she wants [the kids] to believe her lies.”
Dr. Oz then asks Jon if he thinks that he and Kate would still be together if they had never been on TV.
“It’s hard to live in a hypothetical, but I think eventually, because of personality, it would have fizzled out anyway,” he said. “First of all, I got married at 22 years old, and you just don’t know.”
Jon also blames fame and money for the demise of their marriage, and for Kate's behavior.
“I think fame is worse than money. Fame’s different only because fame … things are given to you. You’re held to a higher standard. You’re put on a pedestal … the attention, it’s almost like a drug,” he said. “Like an addiction. And once you have that, and that lifestyle, you can see certain tendencies in people. It just … it feeds and feeds and feeds.”
The Custody Situation
Right now, Jon has full custody of Hannah and Collin, but he admitted that he rarely sees his other kids and that there isn't an actual agreement in place.
“It’s what the kids want to do,” he said. “If they don’t want to talk to me, that’s fine, as long as they keep up with their sibling connections. Every year I get a new kid, so I am always hopeful. Now, our custody agreement is between the children.”
"It’s supposed to be up to them. If Hannah really wants to go, I just drop her off or Kate comes to pick her up or whatever. There’s no … I can’t control that. And that’s the way it should be.”
Kate's Response
In a statement with People, Kate called Jon "delusional."
“I have consistently made it a rule never to respond to Jon’s delusional ramblings, and I will not break that rule now,” Kate said in an exclusive statement to PEOPLE. “However, at some point soon, I look forward to making sure the absolute truth about our family is known.”
TLC, on the other hand, hasn't said a word.
It's not likely that TLC will release a statement on Jon's allegations, but it sounds like Kate has something in the works to tell her side of the story, like perhaps a book or a new TV special.
