I want everyone to watch this video.
Philip DeFranco is talking about a YouTube channel called DaddyOFive, ran by a man blogging about his family’s everyday life and regularly uploading “prank” videos.
This man and his wife prank each other and their children, who are also made to prank each other for more material they put into monetized videos.
As you will see in this video, the way they treat their children (especially Cody, who I assume to be 7-9 years old) is outright horrid and abusive, though.
Cody seems to be the only one of the children who gets visibly upset over his parents’ “pranks” fairly frequently, begging them to leave him alone and quit messing with him and yelling at them to stop.
In the first clip that’s shown in DeFranco’s video, the parents pour invisible ink all over the floor and blame Cody for it, filming his reaction.
He is shown yelling and crying, nearly panicking and insisting that he has nothing to do with it, but they don’t stop.
Instead, they keep yelling and cursing at him at the top of their lungs, only to tell him and his brother that it’s “just a prank” once they stopped crying.
Another clip shows the mother filming Cody and yelling at him for not being able to “take a joke”, manipulating him and putting all the blame on him instead of apologizing.
They constantly follow him around with their camera, not giving him any personal space and filming as many of his reactions as possible to humiliate him in front of thousands of viewers.
But it gets worse than that.
A different clip shows the father pushing Cody face first into a bookshelf. He is then shown crying on his bed, with a bleeding nose, next to a blood-stained pillow.
His father then claimed that it was “red ink” and that he simply had a scrape underneath his nose.
On top of that, the man who runs this channel uploaded a video titled “BLOCKING ALL THE HATERS”, ranting about the people complaining about their videos and pointing out how horribly they treat their kids in front of his children, even making sure they listen to every word he says.
In DeFranco’s video, it becomes obvious that they constantly manipulate, emotionally abuse and physically abuse their children, egging them on and keeping them under control by making them say things like: “At least you don’t hit us like most parents!”
I encourage everyone to watch this video to get a better idea of the situation. If you can, that is.
Social services have been called on this family before, but no consequences have followed
I legit feel ill watching the short clips of the kids, but I still believe it should be broadcasted what pieces of garbage these parents are.
Fuck them. Fuck them and their greedy fucking souls.
Please please PLEASE do not watch the video if you are triggerd by any of the warnings. I personally am not, but even I found it incredibly hard and distrubing to watch.
I felt the same way. I will never understand how parents can treat and manipulate their children this way and never feel remorse.
Here’s an addition that shows just how much they terrorize them.
They pretend to destroy their children’s possessions and laugh at their reactions. That alone is enough to leave deep scars on anyone’s mental health, especially a child’s.
DeFranco mentioned that these people tend to terrorize Cody the most, but looking through their list of videos, I couldn’t believe just how many videos are about Cody.
They obviously enjoy humiliating their kids, but to me, it seems like they’re intentionally abusing Cody the most for not playing along as much as they wish he did.
I also feel like this is just another tactic to keep their children under control and have them play along.
An indirect way of saying “Don’t be as whiny and difficult as Cody, or else we’ll treat you the same way.”
When Cody yelled at them and said “You made me go through all this just for a stupid prank?!”, it broke my heart. These people don’t have a single shred of love or empathy for their children.
Another addition:
Apparently, they uploaded a video in which they made Cody think he was going to be put up for adoption, filming his reaction.
As you can imagine, Cody was horrified, begging them to let him stay.
Supporters of his parents have used his reaction to try and prove that their kids are happy, claiming that Cody wouldn’t have fought so hard to stay if he was unhappy with his family.
Of course, Mike Martin (the father) reblogged the tweets defending him.
These people publicly abuse and humiliate their children in exchange for money. That’s not an assumption, it’s a proven fact. It doesn’t matter whether the children are aware of the abuse or not, or how they feel about their parents’ “pranks”.
Of course the thought of being taken away from your home and the family you’ve known for your whole life would terrify a child as young as Cody.
Their parents have manipulated them into thinking that they’re lucky to live with them and pressured them to play along with their “pranks” for several years. They’ve made their children think that this kind of life is normal and that they have nothing to complain about. They don’t know any better.
A child’s horrified reaction to the thought of being placed into a completely unfamiliar home consisting of strangers they think they’ll be forced to live with for the rest of their life is not proof that a child is not being abused.
In fact, most children who live in abusive homes love their parents dearly and can’t imagine living without them because they are so emotionally dependent on them.
Ignoring that is incredibly dangerous.
Please share this. A lot of social media attention has helped before so why not help these children?
Yeah no these aren’t pranks that’s just assholes wanting money
I couldn’t watch past the first clip, this is just disgusting.
How the fuck can people be this cruel!? Those poor kids!
in their “screw the haters!” video they got cody to say that he’s fine. im gonna guess that he’s so used to being treated like shit that it’s normal to him. which is fucked up. honestly fuck these guys.
holy shit
This is such a horrible situation.
But I really admire Phil, for saying something and bringing light to it.
sarahseeandersen