Former Nickelodeon star Drake Bell has alleged he was sexually abused at the age of 15 by a Nickelodeon dialogue coach. Appearing on the forthcoming ‘Investigation Discovery’ series Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV, Bell says that he was a victim of abuse at the hands of actor Brian Peck, who worked as a dialogue coach on Nickelodeon’s ‘All That’ and ‘The Amanda Show’. Bell starred in The Amanda Show from 1999 to 2002 before going on to take the lead role in his own Nickelodeon series in 2004, Drake & Josh.
Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV is a four-part docuseries investigating the toxic work conditions at children’s shows in the 1990s and early 2000s, airing on March 17-18. The docuseries will reportedly include interviews with several other former child stars and crew members. A trailer teasing Bell’s appearance in Quiet on Set was released, along with a press release from ‘Investigation Discovery’ stating: “The clip reveals that former Nickelodeon star Drake Bell will be sharing publicly, for the first time, the story of the abuse he suffered at the hands of Brian Peck, his former dialogue coach who was convicted in 2004 for his crimes against Drake and ordered to register as a sex offender.”
In 2003, Peck was arrested and pleaded no contest to performing a lewd act against a 14- or 15-year-old and oral copulation with a minor under the age 16. Peck was ultimately convicted, sentenced to 16 months in prison, and ordered to register as a sex offender in 2004. Bell has had a tumultuous last few years — in 2021, a judge ordered him to serve two years of probation and 200 hours of community service after pleading guilty to charges of attempted child endangerment and sending inappropriate messages to a 15-year-old girl. He had at that point recently completed a two-year probation sentence, after he pled guilty to child endangerment in June 2021. He was also briefly reported missing by Florida Police in 2023, with the Daytona Beach Police Department posting an alert on their Facebook saying Bell was “considered missing and endangered”. After he was found safely, Bell announced shortly thereafter that his wife, Janet Von Schmeling, had filed for divorce.
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