Drake Bell claims he experienced sex abuse as Nickelodeon child actor, reports say
LOS ANGELES - Drake Bell claims he was sexually abused by an adult colleague back when the actor was with Nickelodeon as a teenager, according to an upcoming docuseries.
The series, "Quiet On Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV," is set to feature an interview with Bell, who is now 37. Investigation Discovery, the network producing the docuseries, released a trailer on March 5 teasing that the Orange County native will speak out.
While Bell did not say anything in the trailer, the trailer's headline read "Former Nickelodeon star Drake Bell shares his story for the first time." Business Insider, who is associated with the docuseries, published a report on Tuesday saying Bell is accusing his former dialogue coach Brian Peck of abusing the then-teenaged actor.
Bell claims the abuse happened as far back as when he was 15, Business Insider reports. As a teenager, Bell was on "The Amanda Show" from 1999 to 2002 before starting his own show, "Drake and Josh" in the mid 2000s.
Peck had been linked to Nickelodeon's "All That" and "The Amanda Show." According to Business Insider, Peck was arrested in 2003 on 11 charges in connection to sex abuse involving an unnamed child. Less than a year after the arrest, he pled no contest to performing a lewd act with a 14- or 15-year-old and to oral copulation with a minor under 16. The disgraced production staff was sentenced to 16 years behind bars and was ordered to register as a sex offender, Business Insider reports.
The docuseries looks into the "toxic underpinnings" of popular kids shows linked to Dan Schneider in the 1990s and early 2000s, according to Business Insider.