Drake Bell Explains Why He Pleaded Guilty to Felony Child Endangerment
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Drake Bell, a former teen actor who appeared on Nickelodeon’s The Amanda Show and Drake & Josh, has denied that he groomed a teenage girl three years ago despite pleading guilty to felony attempted child endangerment and other charges at the time.
“I responded on some DMs and was incredibly irresponsible and got myself into conversations that I shouldn’t have had,” he said on the Not Skinny but Not Fat podcast. “I ended up finding out that I was talking to someone that I shouldn’t have been talking to, and it snowballed into these allegations that were not true, and it just turned into this big thing.”
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A girl had accused Bell of meeting her online and further accused him of sexual contact with her when she was 15 at one of his concerts, according to a 2021 Associated Press article. “I was definitely one of his biggest fans,” the accuser, who remained anonymous, said during Bell’s sentencing. During sentencing, she realleged that she felt he’d groomed her and that she felt trapped because “I would have done anything for him.” She called him a “pedophile” and a “coward” during sentencing. People printed her statement in full.
In June 2021, Bell, who is now 37, pleaded guilty to child endangerment and a misdemeanor charge of disseminating matter harmful to juveniles. He was sentenced to two years of probation and 200 hours of community service, according to the AP.
Speaking on Not Skinny but Not Fat, Bell said he took a plea deal to remove a burden from his family. “I was being investigated and that was really difficult on my family, and thankfully through 18 months of subpoenaing my social media and phones and computers and witnesses and everything, it turned out that most of what was being accused of me wasn’t true,” he said. “But I did have these conversations [with the teen], and so I took responsibility for that and ended up pleading guilty because just financially I was just devastated. I had just had a son and I didn’t want to put my family through all of this anymore. So I ended up going through the process the way that I did and [I’m] very regretful.” (Bell’s wife filed for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences, last year.)
Bell said he was unaware of the age of the accuser, who was 19 by the time he pleaded guilty, when he initiated contact with her but that he cut communication with her when he learned her age. “I think she got upset, and she was coming to [my] concerts still,” he said. “And I was doing everything I could to keep my distance. And then she made all these allegations of things that had happened at a concert but throughout the investigation there were witnesses who were there the whole time who refuted it and people who were not even connected with me that were friends of hers and her family’s that were there the whole time. And a lot of the things that she said about sending inappropriate pictures and things like this, it was able to be investigated and show that none of that existed.”
Bell’s plea was widely covered at the time, but news of his guilty conviction has resurfaced since an episode of the docuseries Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV focused on the sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of Brian Peck, a dialogue coach on The Amanda Show. Bell revealed himself as Peck’s victim on the series; Peck was convicted of lewd conduct with a minor and sentenced to a 16-month prison sentence in 2004. Peck is now a registered sex offender.
In September 2021, Bell released a video on Instagram addressing why he pleaded guilty. “It’s not me telling you that the claims are false, but the state of Ohio has proven claims to be false,” he said. “If these claims were remotely true, my situation would be very different. I would not be here at home with my wife and my son.”
During sentencing, Cuyahoga County Judge Timothy McCormick acknowledged he’d heard “a lot of serious and disturbing allegations” during the hearing and said he “can’t lose focus on what was pled to.” And he chastised Bell for leveraging his position in the entertainment industry to speak with a teenager. “The fact of the matter is your position and celebrity status let you nurture this relationship,” the judge said. “You were able to gain access to this child.”
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