Tragic Details About Kate Gosselin

In the 2000s, pop culture was fascinated by the concept of multiple births. There was, of course, Octomom, a woman named Nadya Suleman, who had eight children at once. Most famous, though, were Jon and Kate Gosselin, TLC stars whose show "Jon & Kate Plus 8" depicted their daily life with eight kids. "Jon and I both knew we always wanted to have kids. We weren't able to get pregnant on our own, so we turned to fertility treatments," Kate explained to Oprah.com. They had twins before going for another round of treatment. She added, "We got a little more than we bargained for — we got six more. We're considered a fertility nightmare."

For a while, Jon and Kate were on top of the world, enjoying the attention that came with their reality television fame. Then, in 2009, everything came crashing down. Kate's life ever since has been marked by a series of tragic incidents, from a highly public, highly toxic divorce to intense tabloid speculation about her every move. There were numerous public court fights, run-ins with police, and even accusations of child abuse. These are the tragic details about Kate Gosselin's life.

Kate Gosselin made her name as the mother of a big brood, having given birth to a pair of twins and a group of sextuplets. That added up to the titular "8" in "Jon & Kate Plus 8," their TLC reality show. However, their family was almost even bigger than that. Unfortunately, the Gosselins experienced a tragedy when Kate miscarried what she would later refer to as "a seventh baby," which would have made for septuplets.

Kate revealed the tragic loss in her book "I Just Want You To Know: Letters To My Kids." In one letter, she wrote, "As you know, our seventh baby now lives in heaven with Jesus and went there when she was very tiny." Entertainment reporters picked up on the detail, and Kate discussed the tragic loss in an interview with Access Hollywood (via Today). She revealed that she had repressed the traumatic event. "I didn't spend time maybe grieving or dealing with the fact that there was a seventh baby," she said. "It makes you wonder like, who would this baby have been?"

In 2009, the difficult but happy marriage chronicled on "Jon & Kate Plus 8" fell apart. That spring, tabloids churned out rumors that Jon Gosselin was cheating on his wife Kate and that he'd been spotted on what seemed to be a date with a "mystery woman." That sent the pop culture world into a tizzy, wondering if the Gosselins were headed for Splitsville.

The "mystery woman" revealed herself to People, insisting that it was all a misunderstanding (via Wayback Machine). She was a 23-year-old named Deanna Hummel, and she swore there was nothing untoward going on between herself and the reality star. "We're just friends. It's absurd that anyone would think otherwise," she insisted. "We just talk and socialize, the normal things you do when you see friends." The trouble was that Jon had already admitted to having behaved inappropriately. After the rumors caused Kate and his family grief, Jon released a statement (via People) defending himself. "What makes me sick is that my careless behavior has put my family in this uncomfortable position," he wrote. "My family is the most important thing in my life and it kills me that these allegations have hurt them."

Sure enough, sources confirmed to Us Weekly that Jon Gosselin and Deanna Hummel were indeed having an affair. Her brother Jason told the outlet, "She's a nice girl, not a homewrecker. He is a bad liar. This isn't healthy for her."

Mere weeks after the news broke that Jon Gosselin was cheating on Kate with a woman named Deanna Hummel, the spiky-blonde reality star found herself at the center of her own scandal. She tried to get ahead of it by giving an exclusive interview to People, denying in advance that she was having an affair with her bodyguard. While she admitted to being close friends with Steve Neild, she denied that anything inappropriate happened between them. "Already the allegations they're making about me are disgusting, unthinkable, unfathomable, and I am horrified."

Furthermore, Kate went into detail about the effect of all the public scrutiny on their friends and loved ones. Confessing that she was struggling to maintain her friendships, Kate expressed regret for the way her own fame was affecting those around her. "We willingly made a conscious decision to put this out there. Our friends and family did not," she said.
"I had no idea we would potentially take down the people that we love around us ... It leaves us, essentially, alone and friendless. It's terrible."

In 2016, amid an ongoing custody battle, Neild was made to testify in closed court about his relationship with Kate. Sources told InTouch that she was afraid of what might be revealed, insisting, "She's done everything in her power over the years to hide that she's in love with Steve" (via PressReader). As the court proceedings weren't public, it's unclear what he ultimately said.

After both Jon and Kate Gosselin were accused of having affairs in May 2009, pop culture observers naturally assumed their marriage might not be long for this world. It seems that Kate assumed the same thing, telling People that she was having doubts that they'd be able to stick it out. "I don't know that we're in the same place anymore, that we want the same thing. I've been struggling with the question of 'Who is this person?' for a while," she said. "It's one of those things where you can try to make it go away, but there's blaring, red flashing lights" (via Wayback Machine).

Doing interviews about each other in the press is probably a bad sign, and sure enough, a month later, Jon and Kate announced that they were going their separate ways. "Jon's activities have left me no choice but to file legal procedures in order to protect myself and our children," Kate said (via People). Jon released his own statement, claiming that he too had their children's best interests at heart. "We are no different than other couples and parents who are facing a crossroads in their marriage," he said. "I am of course deeply saddened that we are divorcing."

The divorce was an acrimonious one, and both Gosselins continued to speak out against one another publicly. In an appearance on "The Ellen Show" (via Today), Kate slammed her husband's willingness to talk to the media. "I just know that on TV or off TV," she said, "I've been very much targeted and torn apart."

As the fallout from Jon and Kate Gosselin's divorce subsided and the retooled "Kate Plus 8" went off the air, the pop culture world mostly moved on. Still, Kate was such an object of public fascination that several years later, in 2011, she made headlines when she was pulled over for speeding, causing even more embarrassment in a public life already full of it.

The Washington Post (via The Hollywood Reporter) noted that Kate paid her $174 fine by mail, pleading guilty to having been wildly over the speed limit. In fact, she'd been caught going 88 mph in a 65 mph zone, flying down the road at 1:30 a.m. According to the outlet, Kate insisted that she was headed home to see her kids at that time.

After Kate's traffic mishap, My Fox Philly dug into public records and revealed that the speeding incident was actually her fourth such ticket since 2009, the year her marriage fell apart (via Wayback Machine). 

In 2012, several years after Jon and Kate Gosselin's divorce, writer Robert Hoffman published a tell-all book about Kate. The massive, 500-plus-page tome was titled "Kate Gosselin: How She Fooled the World," and it painted an unflattering picture of the reality star as a manipulative mother who abused her children for fame. "Warning," the book's preface read. "For those of you who love Kate Gosselin and support her unconditionally, and think that every bad thing ever said or written about her is a lie, then this book probably isn't for you."

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the book spent a grand total of two days on shelves before being pulled. Kate sued her ex-husband over the book's publication, alleging that he illegally accessed confidential information in her email account to pass along to the book's author. "Jon violated a federal anti-hacking statute in order to publish salacious, scandalous and defamatory information about Kate. It's damaged her reputation," Kate's lawyer, A. Jordan Rushie, said.

Ultimately, it seems, Kate decided to drop the charges for unclear reasons. Jon slammed his ex-wife a few months later in an interview with Philadelphia Magazine (via Wayback Machine), insisting that text messages seeming to show him plotting to steal her computer were fake. "What would I get out of it? Everyone knows she's an a**hole, you know what I mean?" he said. "I don't have to ... she's proven that!"

In 2023, after years away from the spotlight, Kate Gosselin competed on a Fox reality show called "Special Forces." As part of a cast that included "stars" like former Trump staffer Anthony Scaramucci and Britney Spears' estranged sister Jamie Lynn, Gosselin was made to perform in a series of challenges meant to resemble military training exercises. Unfortunately, she didn't even make it to the end of the first episode, suffering a tragic injury that cut her experience short.

In the show's premiere, the cast were made to jump out of a helicopter into a body of water, a prospect that frightened the TLC star. "Water and height are two of my absolute fears," she confessed to People. Still, she forced herself to participate anyway. "I remember thinking, 'I'm sorry, you don't have a choice here,'" she recalled. "I know you're scared to death, you're doing it. Do it and get it over with."

Gosselin jumped, and it all went horribly wrong. "I landed right on my neck and I screamed when I landed because it was absolute ridiculous pain," she said. Though she initially resisted the idea that she would have to be medically checked out by the show's production, Gosselin eventually relented. She was forced to withdraw from the competition, and she told People that she continues to live with the injury. "My neck still bothers me sometimes," she said. "It is muscle."

Though it's now been a decade and a half since Jon and Kate Gosselin's divorce, the two remain locked in various legal battles that seem neverending. In 2022, Kate took Jon to court, seeking over $132,000 in child support payments which she says he failed to pay over the years. RadarOnline examined court documents related to the case, reporting that Kate claimed the two had made an agreement for him to pay. "[Kate did] not provide any proof of the language of that agreement," his lawyers argued in response. Ultimately, a judge denied the case, deciding that Jon didn't, in fact, have to pay the money. 

As if that wasn't bad enough, Jon spoke with The U.S. Sun about the situation, alleging that in fact, Kate was the one who owed money to their eight children. After Kate confessed that she "borrowed" $100,000 from a trust fund set up for their TV-famous offspring, Jon hit out against his ex-wife's character. "It's disgusting and it's morally wrong," he said. "Parents are not supposed to withdraw any money from these accounts without permission and without drawing up paperwork that they will pay it back — but she has produced no paperwork and no payments have been made. You can't just live off your kids' money."

In 2016, Kate Gosselin spoke with People about her son Collin. Insisting that "Collin has special needs," Kate revealed that she'd decided to send him to a mental health institution to care for him. "He needs to learn certain strategies to help him deal with things," she said. "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."

Many years later, Collin — now an adult — insisted that he was institutionalized as revenge for having accused his mother of abuse. On a show called "The Dark Side of the 2000s" (via Page Six), Collin revealed, "I was starting to tell people what was going on at home and, you know, she caught wind of that and had to put me somewhere where I wouldn't be able to get the secrets out."

Collin went into more detail about that abuse in a 2024 interview with The U.S. Sun. He alleged that he was raised in a room away from his siblings, given only a mattress on the floor. "My mother would put me in that room multiple times, she had zip-tied my hands and feet together and bolt locked the door, turned the lights off and had cameras there just watching me," he said. Richard Puelo, Kate's lawyer, told People in response, "I don't believe she intentionally harmed any of her children in any way, shape or form."