Jon Gosselin Claims Ex-Wife Kate Caused Son Collin to Have PTSD From Abuse

Jon Gosselin accused ex-wife Kate Gosselin of abusing their 16-year-old son Collin Gosselin, claiming their son now suffers from PTSD. Gosselin contended in his first interview after the County of Berks, Pennsylvania Child & Youth Services visited him because Collin accused his father of abuse in a now-deleted Instagram post. Gosselin has claimed this was all a misunderstanding, stemming from an incident on Sept. 2.

On that day, Gosselin took Hannah and Collin to the dentist. Gosselin said the teens got into an argument on the way home, and Collin “got very upset and started acting out,” he told The Daily Mail Friday. Gosselin said his son threw things at his car and threatened to run away. Gosselin restrained Collin and later left their home to let Collin calm down. Hannah, also 16, called Gosselin to tell him Collin called police to report his father punched and kicked him. An officer did arrive on the scene and saw there were no bruises on Collin, Gosselin claimed. However, as a formality, CYS still visited the house the next day and said they spoke with Kate. Police did not take action in the case, and Gosselin punished Collin by taking away his Xbox. On Sept. 5, Collin published the shocking Instagram post, in which he called his father a “liar” and said Gosselin “beat me up and thought nothing of it.”

Before Gosselin commented on the situation, Kate spoke with PEOPLE on Thursday. She said she was “sick to my stomach” after learning Gosselin would not be charged. “I do not want this buried, swept under the rug or minimized. As a mother, I am not going to sit quietly and idly by while my child, any of my children, is assaulted by anyone, let alone their own father,” Kate said. “I am spotlighting this, and I will keep shouting about it, in the hopes that the authorities and the courts will finally do the right thing. Do not return my child to an abuser’s home. Jon needs to be charged with a crime.”

In Gosselin’s interview with the Daily Mail, he hit back, alleging that Kate is the reason why Collin has a mental illness. “She hasn’t seen Collin in five years and now she’s going to try to come out as the caring mother when in fact the reason Collin is struggling with mental illness is because she abused him,” Gosselin said. “He has PTSD because of her. So I’m not going to sit back and not defend myself or my family.”

Gosselin also argued that the PEOPLE article was wrong because the CYS investigation is already over. “It said there was an ongoing investigation which there isn’t and they only took Collin’s words from the police report. Kate was fueling it, sticking the boot in,” Gosselin said. He accused Kate of keeping Collin “caged” in a mental institution and refusing to tell Gosselin where he was.

“Dealing with a child with mental health issues is taxing, I’m taxed,” he told the Mail. “But I love my son. I will not give up. I go to therapy, we all go to family therapy, to deal with having a son that has been traumatized and abused by his mother.”