Drake Bell Reflects On Allegations He 'Groomed' Teen Girl - What Really Happened?!

[Warning: Potentially Triggering Content]

Drake Bell is opening up about his child endangerment case — and claiming he didn’t do as much wrong as people think.

In Tuesday’s Not Skinny But Not Fat podcast, the Drake & Josh alum got candid about his 2021 court case, during which he was accused of sending inappropriate texts to a 15-year-old girl back in 2017. In the end, he ended up pleading guilty to a felony charge of attempted child endangerment and a misdemeanor charge of disseminating matter harmful to a juvenile.

In her reaction to the sentencing, the victim called the actor “the epitome of evil.” She even brought up new allegations, claiming he began grooming her when she was just 12 before allegedly sexually abusing her three years later. So really icky stuff. And tough to revisit after learning what was done to him as a child star on Nickelodeon. But now Drake wants to set the record straight.

While owning up to his mistakes, the former child star claimed he only ever sent texts and nothing more, explaining:

“I’d responded on some DMs and was incredibly irresponsible, and got myself into conversations that I shouldn’t have had, and 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. 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 a lot of — most of what was being accused of me was not true.”

And yet, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two years on probation and community service. So how and why did that happen? The Amanda Show alum went on to admit he WAS in the wrong — things just didn’t go as far as the victim alleged, according to him. He explained:

“But I did have these conversations and so I took responsibility for that and ended up pleading guilty, because I just financially was just devastated, and I’d just had a son, and I didn’t wanna put my family through all of this anymore. So I ended up going through the process the way that I did, and you know, very regretful.”

Hmmm. Well, at least he knows he messed up. The charges as they ended up certainly support his version of events. After all the investigation, he pleaded to child endangerment and NOT anything more vile. Obviously, sometimes suspects are allowed to plead guilty to lesser charges to ensure a conviction. Hmm.

Obviously we want to believe the Found a Way crooner, who just came forward as a victim of sexual abuse at the hands of his former Nickelodeon dialogue coach Brian Peck. As one might guess, he does blame his past traumas for his actions. Connecting the two events, he said:

“There’s just so much that I’ve had to deal with, and through that, like I said, not having the tools or not knowing how to process things, I made a lot of decisions in my life that I shouldn’t have made and hurt a lot of people.”

Still, he reiterated once again he only sent text messages and stopped as soon as he realized the girl’s age — which he claims only made the teenage victim upset. The 37-year-old continued:

“I finally found out [her age], and I cut communications, and things got, I think she got upset, and she was coming to concerts still, and I was doing everything I could to kind of keep my distance. Then she made all these allegations of things that happened at a concert, but throughout the investigation, I mean, there were witnesses who were there the whole time who refuted it, people who weren’t even connected with me that were friends of hers and her family’s that were there the whole time, and so, no. 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.”

Whoa. Drake also slammed The New York Times for publishing erroneous details about his sentencing, which reinforced the narrative that he’d done something more deeply disturbing. He laid it out:

“The New York Times just did a retraction because they had actually printed that I had to register as [a sex offender] and that I had pled guilty to [sexual assault] and things like that, which is not true. None of that was true, and it took two years, but they finally just printed a retraction.”

It’s definitely tough to have inaccurate reports like that out there, especially with something like grooming allegations. But at least he’s taking responsibility for his actions and not shying away from the things he did do wrong. Right? Thoughts? Do YOU trust his side of this story? Let us know (below).

If you or someone you know has experienced sexual violence and would like to learn more about resources, consider checking out https://www.rainn.org/resources.

[Image via Brian To/WENN]