Drake Bell sentenced to 2 years of probation for attempted child endangerment
Bell will also have to complete 200 hours of community service but will not have to register as a sex offender
TV News Drake Bell
Back in June, former Nickelodeon sitcom star Drake Bell—of The Amanda Show and Drake & Josh—took a plea deal in an Ohio court related to charges of attempted child endangerment after he sent explicit text messages to a teenage girl and met up with her at a Cleveland nightclub. Bell had initially entered a plea of not guilty to harsher charges, but his guilty plea covers one count of attempted child endangerment (a fourth-degree felony) and one count of disseminating matter harmful to juveniles (a first-degree misdemeanor). Bell was sentenced today, receiving two years of probation and 200 hours of community service. He is also barred from having any contact with the victim but does not have to register as a sex offender in Ohio, which may be part Bell’s plea deal, as his lawyer put out a statement saying “this plea was never about sexual misconduct or sexual relations with any person, let alone a minor.”
The lawyer’s statement [which came via NBC News] was also very much a response to a statement from the victim, which she made before the sentencing. In it, she referred to Bell as “a pedophile” who had been “grooming” her since she was 12. “My life hasn’t been the same since I was 15. I think about these crimes every single day. I feel like I’m in a constant dark place,” she said, “Sometimes I wish I could disappear so I can forget about what happened.” Bell also made a very carefully worded statement in which he admitted that his conduct “was wrong,” and added that he’s “sorry that the victim was harmed in any way” because that was “obviously” not his “intention.”
Last year, Bell faced allegations from a former girlfriend who said that he verbally and physically abused her and that their relationship began when she was underage. He denied those allegations at the time.
11 Comments
The system works!!And that system is, of course, the one that keeps rich famous white men from suffering any consequences for their actions. Up to and including grooming girls in order to have inappropriate underage relationships with them. Fuck this guy, I hope his dick rots off
You don’t even have to be rich and famous, just a white man. My basketball HS coach, who raped two players and was grooming two others at the time of his arrest, pleaded down. He went from being charged with two counts of rape (20 year minimum sentence on both) to child endangerment and gross sexual imposition. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison and was out on supervised release in less than 9 months. Like it never even happened. Got hired by the family business, so had no trouble resuming a pretty normal life despite being a fucking rapist. ETA: In recounting this, I did a quick google of his name and it turns out he died about five years ago. Good. I hope it gives his victims some measure of peace.
My grammar school band director and HS percussion instructor(same guy) is luckily still in prison last time in checked. He got 20 years for doing some nasty shit with underage girls that even with a plead deal he was put away for a long time. But there was to hell to pay with that case because it appears the school district initial tried to cover up the abuse allegations.
My school successfully hushed it up the first time. That first student was a troubled girl with a horrible home life and largely absent parents. Nobody was fighting her corner. The second rape victim had a very pissed off (and affluent) father who took it “outside the circle” of the school to the police. But even then, there were only a few short local news items about the case. As far as I can tell, no record of it exists in the online archives of the local newspapers or TV stations. All in all, the school (which, no nobody’s surprise, was Catholic) successfully managed to evade any and all responsibility for allowing a sexual predator to continue working, unsupervised, with young girls. And they wonder why I never respond to their fundraising drives…
In my high school, two of the football players raped a girl in my class and the solution was to send her to another school district to live with her dad. One of those guys used to sell my parents firewood until they installed their pellet stove.
Not being a white man, but being rich and famous appears to have worked for the equally scummy Bill Cosby….
I don’t think “rich” and “famous” are two words not associated with Drake Bell.
Starring this post because he’s dead.
We don’t really prosecute anyone for rape in this country.
he needs to be put in prison he’s a pedo
How in the hell, even with that plea, does he not have to register as a sex offender? Maybe Ohio laws differ, but that’s generally the least even a rich white guy could plead those charges down to. He started sending her sexual material when she was 12 and he was in his late 20s. Way to protect admitted sexual predators, system.