Drake Bell decided to speak out about his sexual abuse in the hopes that he will become a "hero" to his son.
Drake Bell explains why he chose to open up about his past trauma on camera
The 37-year-old actor was a teen star on Nickelodeon in the early 2000s and recently opened up about how he had been a victim of dialect coach Brian Peck during his time on 'The Amanda Show' when he appeared in the docuseries 'Quiet On Set: The Dark Side Of Kids TV'.
Now, the former 'Drake and Josh' star - who has two-year-old son Wyatt with his ex-wife Janet Von Schmeling - admitted when asked if fatherhood inspired him to speak out, that was indeed the case.
Speaking on 'The Today Show', he said: "Yeah. As he grows, my hope is that he'll be able to say 'Yeah, my dad did go through that, and the man that I know today, is a hero to me.'"
In 2004, Peck pleaded no contest to a charge of oral copulation with a minor under 16 as well as a charge of performing a lewd act with a 14 or 15-year-old. Bell was the plaintiff but his identity as the victim was not made public at the time.
Peck spent 16 months in prison and was mandated to register as a sex offender.
Drake admitted that things had been "spiralling out of control" in various aspects of his life and he also thought that by putting himself on camera in the documentary he had also hoped to help those who may have been in a similar situation as he admitted he had used the lyrics of his upcoming album 'Non-Stop Flight' to explore his trauma.
He said: "Things were spiralling out of control for me personally and mentally. I thought it would help in the healing process and also help others who have gone through similar situations. It's hard because if I try to go to talk to that little boy with all of that going through my head and my mind, what am I gonna tell him?
"What I've learned is that you're not alone. I was thinking that I was alone in all this and now I get to see all of that in a clear picture. I get to go back and talk to that little boy.
"Now I'm able to go back to him and hold him and tell him that it's gonna be okay, you're gonna find strength. This is something that happened to me. This isn't me."
Drake landed his first job on the network in 1999, when he joined the cast of 'The Amanda Show' alongside Amanda Bynes and later landed the comedy 'Drake and Josh alongside Josh Peck (no relation), but Brian quickly became the teen star's manager, and Drake would often spend the night at his house as he recalled waking up "in shock" one evening to find Brian, now 63, assaulting him.
Recalling the abuse, Bell said: "Brian and I became really close because we had a lot of the same interests, which looking back, I think that was probably a little calculated.
"I was sleeping on the couch where I usually sleep and I woke up to him... I opened my eyes and I woke up and he was…he was sexually assaulting me,
"And I froze, and was in complete shock and had no idea what to do or how to react.
"You know anytime I had an audition or anytime I needed to work on dialogue or anything, I somehow ended up back at Brian's house.
"And it just got worse, and worse, and worse, and worse, and I was just trapped. I had no way out. The abuse was extensive and it got pretty brutal."
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