I’m going to preface this post with a content warning. This post is about child abuse. The video I’m going to link includes actually video footage of child abuse. It is one of the most upsetting videos I have ever watched. My post includes in depth descriptions of child abuse. 

This morning I watched a Youtube video discussing and highlighting what is happening on another Youtube channel. If you have the stomach for it, I’d suggest watching the video because Phillip DeFranco does a much better job of summarizing the situation than I can. 

For those of you who can’t watch, I’ll give you a very brief rundown. 

The Youtube channel DaddyOfFive is a combination family vlog and prank channel. In a recent video, the parents pull a prank where they pour invisible ink on one of the kid’s floors and then make him think that they believe he poured ink all over the floor. They scream and swear at this little boy, shouting things like “What the fuck did you do?” while the boy cries and cowers, looking genuinely terrified. Even the best child actors could not pull off looking as genuinely devastated as this child does. 

As DeFranco highlights in his video, although all the children are pranked, it seems that this one child (Cody) takes the brunt of the cruelty. In many videos he is seen being hit, kicked, pushed, and pinned down by his older siblings. In one video his father pushes him face first into a book case. In one video Cody begs his family to stop, saying that he’s tired of this. In another video his parents scream at him and tell him he’s the only one in the family who can’t “take a joke”. 

In response to some of the flak they have been getting, the parents uploaded a video about “Blocking All The Haters”. They goad the children into saying on camera that they aren’t being abused. Now keep in mind, the kids have been told that all the “Cool stuff” they have been getting is because of the Youtube channel. They know that if the pranks stop, the cool stuff goes away. Most of the children chime in that they are not being abused. Cody hardly says anything. The oldest boy says, “At least you aren’t beating us”. 

What is happening to Cody is child abuse. It is emotional, psychological and physical abuse. It is torture. And the worst part of it all is that it is monetized. The parents are being paid by advertisers to abuse this child under the guise of “It’s just a prank, bro”. 

So what can we do?

First of all, we can report the videos on DaddyOfFive’s channel for containing depictions of child abuse. If you decide to help by doing this, please be sure to flag the specific instances of abuse such as Cody being pushed or the parents screaming vulgarities at the children. 

Second of all, we can let the companies advertising on this channel know that we won’t be buying anything from a company that sponsors videos of child abuse. 

Finally, if anyone knows this family in person, they can make a report to CPS. Now the family is claiming that they’ve already been investigated and “cleared” by CPS, but that’s not how this works. Repeated reports mean repeated investigations. You do not give up and look the other way when a child is being abused just because CPS failed to act the first time. When my neighbors were abusing their children, I had to call CPS every week for over a month before something was done. Don’t give up.