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Former Nickelodeon star Drake Bell has criticized The boy knows the world Actors Rider Strong and Will Friedle for not apologizing for their support of convicted sex offender Brian Peck.
Earlier this month, Bell spoke for the first time about the alleged sexual abuse she says she suffered when she was 15 years old.
In the Investigation Discovery series Silence on the set: The dark side of children’s television, Bell alleged that she was a victim of abuse at the hands of Peck, who worked as a speech coach at Nickelodeon. Everything that and Amanda’s show.
Bell starred in the latter show from 1999 to 2002 before taking on the lead role in her own Nickelodeon series in 2004. Drake and Josh. The show’s creator and Nickelodeon executive producer Dan Schenider has since spoken out about the claims made in the documentary.
The documentary uncovered court documents from Peck’s trial that showed that several child actors had written letters of support to Peck, including Strong and Friedle.
Prior to the series’ release, Strong and Friedle said in their The capsule meets the world podcast that they had felt “embarrassed” for having been “deceived” by the dialogue coach.
Said Peck had convinced them that he was the victim in the case. Friedle said the older man had put it this way: “Yes, he committed this act, but he committed it after he had been manipulated himself, after he had been taken advantage of. Whatever, in the end, he was the saint.”
Drake Bell photographed in Hollywood in 2020
(Getty)
Friedle continued: “My initial instinct was: Well, he’s my friend, it can’t be, it has to be the other person’s fault. The story makes a lot of sense, the way he told it. “Now I remember it and it makes me want to cry for having been so naive.”
Strong added that he had been given a similar version of events, saying: “He didn’t say nothing had happened. When we found out about the case and learned something about it, it was always in the context of: ‘I did this, I am guilty, I am going to receive the punishment that the government determines, but I am a victim of prison bait.'”
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Friedle explained: “He then asked us to support him and go to court with him, which many of us did. So we’re sitting in that courtroom, on the wrong side of everything, clueless, of course. It was full of child actors, to the point where the victim’s mother turned around and said, ‘Look at all the celebrities you brought with you and that doesn’t change what you did to my son.’
“There were a lot of us there who were very recognizable. (Peck) had Rider and I write letters of support to the judge, and these were the things we did. And, again, we did it because we were lied to. They didn’t tell us the whole story. But that doesn’t change the fact that we did it.
“I was 24, 25 years old when it happened. The idea that I didn’t know, that I couldn’t detect it, was my own failure, in my mind. I don’t even know how to put into words half of what I feel… In my head, there are no excuses: how did you not see this?!
Friedle, who was 27 when Peck was arrested, continued: “There is a real victim here, and he turned us against the victim to where we are now on his team. And that’s what, for me, I remember as my ever-loving shame… When there’s a real victim involved and now I’m on the abuser’s side? That’s what I can’t get over and haven’t been able to get over.”
On Instagram this week, another former Nickelodeon star, Alexis Nikolas, criticized Strong and Friedle for not directly apologizing to Bell.
“YOU cared more about Hollywood, Pizzagate and The boy knows the world Than a child who was sexually abused by someone YOU defended and never apologized to! Nicolas wrote.
After some fans defended the couple in the comments of Nikolas’ post, arguing that they were underage at the time, Peck weighed in to further criticize Strong and Friedle.
“Will was 27 years old and Brian told him what he did. A lot of people turned around and said no, I’m not writing a letter, but they did. Will was not manipulated. “Brian admitted it to him and he wrote the letter anyway,” Bell wrote.
He continued: “He then worked with me on many Spider-Man episodes years later and never said a word to me about it. This is because they were told that his letters would be made public. Everyone thought that the letters would be sealed forever and that no one would ever see them. “This is their publicist telling them how to get ahead of the story.”
In another comment, Bell added: “No, it wasn’t. RIDER WAS 24 years old when she wrote the letter and Brian told her what she did. “He wrote the letter anyway.”
The independent has approached Strong and Friedle for comment.
In August 2003, Peck was arrested on more than a dozen charges related to sexual abuse allegations involving an unidentified minor.
In May 2004, Peck pleaded no contest to charges of performing a lewd act on a 14- or 15-year-old and oral copulation with a minor under 16. Peck was sentenced to 16 months in prison and ordered to register as a sex offender in October. 2004.
Silence on the set: The dark side of children’s televisiona four-part documentary series investigating toxic working conditions in children’s shows in the 1990s and early 2000s, aired March 17-18.