Jon Gosselin has announced that he plans on pursuing primary custody of the eight children he shares with his ex wife, Kate Gosselin.
Kate currently has primary custody of their eight children, 13-year-old twin girls, Mady and Cara and 9-year-old sextuplets, Aaden, Alexis, Collin, Hannah, Joel and Leah, while Jon has visitation rights.
“I want temporary primary custody until Kate goes on a psychiatric evaluation,” Jon said in an interview with E! News.
Jon and Kate Gosselin have been in the news recently due to an incredibly awkward interview on the Today show in which Mady and Cara went completely silent and refused to answer any questions, leaving Kate to speak for them.
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Following the disastrous interview, Kate and the twins went on The View, where the twins spoke about how their parents divorce affected them.
“Honestly, it wasn’t hard for us. I think it was harder for [our mom], definitely. It didn’t really affect me and we still saw both parents. We were little, we were like 8 or 9, so we knew what was going on, but we didn’t see the stuff [in the media],” Mady said on the show.
During their appearance on The View, the twins refused to talk about their father, despite Kate encouraging them to speak. In the Jan. 20 cover story for People magazine, however, Mady and Cara both spoke more openly about their relationship with their father. The girls specifically pointed to their father’s messy, and public, love life following the separation.
“The stuff I remember now is stuff that I didn’t really see anything wrong with at the time. Now that I look back, I can see, ‘Oh, that wasn’t a really good thing,’” Mady told People, referencing her father’s various girlfriends.
In the interview, the twins and their mother succeeded in presenting a united front, but Jon dismisses the interview, saying that he suspects the girls are being forced to say positive things about Kate and negative things about him in the press by their mother.
“That article is total f—king bulls—t. I really think that was edited using Mady and Cara as the source,” Jon tells E! News.
He also touched on the interview in an interview with Wendy Williams, saying that he believes Mady and Cara were being “goaded” and given ultimatums by their mother to say what Kate wanted them to.
In the Feb. 3 issue of In Touch, Jon is quoted as saying that Kate “treats her kids like garbage.”
“When they [Cary and Mady] break the rules, they tell me she still spanks them – and does it in front of the others to scare them into behaving. When I punish them, I usually take something away, like an iPod. I don’t spank them because it doesn’t work! I also hold them and talk to them,” Jon tells the magazine.
Jon’s goal is to receive temporary primary custody of all of his children, but he reportedly fears that Cara and Mady are too old to be included in part of his battle for custody:
“First, I’m going to file for an emergency petition for contempt…The next step is to fight for custody…It’s the only way I can protect the younger six.”
Jon claims that Kate has violated their custody agreement by consistently leaving their children with babysitters without first seeing if Jon is available to look after the kids.
“It is his [Jon’s] belief that [Kate] has violated the custodial agreement and is actually in contempt of the court order…She has clearly breached those very extensive provisions to the extent he has been deprived very serious parental rights. It is his position that such conduct, and I agree, is not only contemptuous but there have also been attempts by her to alienate him the affections of his children,” Mark Heller, Jon’s attorney, told E! News.
Jon has not yet taken any official legal action in his pursuit of custody. Meanwhile, Kate appears to be enjoying the snowy weather with her children. She recently posted a photo of her kids home on a snow day.
– Olivia Truffaut-Wong
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