Drake Bell Explains His Guilty Plea To Child Endangerment Charges: 'I'm Not Perfect'
Care to explain? Drake Bell took to Instagram to come clean about the real story behind his guilty plea to child endangerment charges.
Back in July, the former Drake and Josh star was sentenced to two years probation after he pleaded guilty to two charges of attempted child endangerment and disseminating matter harmful to juveniles.
The scandal started after a victim claimed that the actor sexually abused her and sent her pornographic photographs when she was only 15 years old.
After a virtual appearance at a Cleveland, Ohio court on Monday, July 12, Bell received 200 hours of community service and was prohibited from contacting the victim.
On Thursday, September 16, the disgraced Nickelodeon star took to Instagram to give his fans an explanation about his shady past, and he started by saying that most of the claims about him are “entirely false and wrong.”
“I know that this has moved very quickly for you, but for me it’s been three years, thorough investigation into every false claim that’s been made,” he said in the IG video. “And it’s not me telling you that the claims are false, but the state of Ohio has proven the claims to be false.”
He continued saying: “If the claims were remotely true, my situation would be very different. I would not be here at home with my wife and my son.”
However, he did point out that he had made some “mistakes” in the past and told his fans, that “I’m not perfect.”
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He then went on to explain what really happened between him and the underaged fan he was accused of sending graphic nude images to.
“I responded to a fan whose age I didn’t know, yet when I became aware of their age, all conversation and communication stopped,” he claimed in the video.
“This individual continued to come to shows and pay for meet and greets, all while I was unaware this was the same person I was communicating with online.”
“And, uh, and that’s what I plead guilty to. You know, it was reckless and irresponsible text messages,” he admitted. Although, he maintained that there was nothing sexual or physical about the nature of the messages.
“I wanna make clear that there were no sexual images, nothing physical between me and this individual. I was not charged with anything physical. I was not charged with disseminating a photograph or images or anything like that. This is strictly over text messages.” he said.
“And then when I was presented with a plea deal, because of the messages, I felt that it was the best way to get this over quickly and for everybody involved to be able to move on and for me to get back to doing what I love and that’s making music for you,” he continued.
He finished off the video by thanking his fans for supporting him, and hinting that he will be back to performing on stage again soon.
