The Weird Reason Kate Gosselin Won’t Sue Son Collin Over His Memoir
Kate Gosselin hasn’t been considered a public figure for years. She’s been living as a private resident and working as a nurse after her reality TV stardom ended way back in 2019. Still, she claims she can’t possibly take her son, Collin Gosselin, to court over allegations he will make about her in his tell-all memoir, In the Shadow of Eight, all because of her past position. While Kate insists she did not abuse her son, she argues that a defamation lawsuit isn’t a possibility because she was a public figure once upon a time.
Collin Gosselin is speaking out against his mother
Kate Gosselin has crept back into the spotlight, but not for a reason she wants. Her son, Collin, is set to release a memoir in October that covers his childhood and the way his mother treated him before shipping him off to an in-patient facility. This will not be the first time Collin has spoken on the subject. He opened up about his lived experience in The Dark Side of the 2000s and in subsequent interviews, describing mistreatment and abuse at the hands of his mother.
At the time, Kate and her older daughter, Mady, came forward to claim Collin was violent and prone to hateful outbursts. Jon Gosselin, along with his then-girlfriend, Colleen Conrad, defended Collin against those comments, as he was in military training at the time. Conrad insisted that Kate and Mady’s characterization of Collin was nothing like the young man she helped raise alongside her biological children and his sister, Hannah Gosselin. Jon noted that Mady, who is just four years older than her brother, had not seen or spoken to him in over a decade.
Kate Gosselin says she can’t file a defamation lawsuit because she’s a public figure
Kate Gosselin is now fielding questions via TikTok about her son, Collin, and the book he penned about her. One comment in particular struck followers as odd. Kate claims that she couldn’t possibly sue her son for defamation, insisting that courts don’t recognize such lawsuits from public figures. She alleges she had contacted a “high-powered lawyer” in the past about “false” claims and was told there was nothing she could do, and that the “rules” for public figures differ from those for private citizens.
Kate Gosselin is wrong. Being a public figure does not bar someone from suing. It raises the bar for winning, but such lawsuits can be, and often are, filed. Kim Kardashian and Kris Jenner, for example, are currently pursuing a defamation lawsuit against Ray J, and both would certainly qualify as “public figures.” It’s possible Kate was advised against filing in the past because proving malice is more difficult, but she was almost certainly not told it was impossible to file such a suit as a public figure.
The lawsuit question wasn’t the only thing Kate batted away. She has swatted down the challenge of a polygraph test, too. When Collin publicly challenged her to take a lie-detector test alongside him, Kate responded simply, “Ha!”
Despite her apparent unwillingness to disprove Collin’s claims, Kate has denied wrongdoing through representatives. Her attorney previously said he did not believe she had done anything to intentionally harm Collin, and that she acted to protect herself and her family. Collin left the in-patient therapeutic facility in 2018, when his father was awarded custody. He moved in with Jon, his sister Hannah, and Colleen Conrad in rural Pennsylvania. Jon and Colleen have since split, and Jon has remarried, though Colleen remains close to Collin.
