Pranking YouTube family ‘DaddyOFive’ accused of child abuse

YouTube channel DaddyOFive has deleted all its videos after accusations of child abuse.

The channel, headed by dad Mike Martin, consisted of videos in which the parents “pranked” their five children — often pushing them to the point of mental breakdown. It accrued 765 800 subscribers.

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In the most talked-about video, Martin and his wife spilled invisible ink and accused Cody, their son, of doing it. Cody grew visibly upset as his parents screamed and cursed at him, until his face was bright red and he screamed at them to stop. Only once he’d calmed down did Martin let him know it was a prank — to which Cody did not respond.

In another video, Cody sobs, asking if he had to go through all of that for a “stupid prank.”

DaddyOFive has deleted all its videos following accusations of child abuse

Accusations of emotional and physical abuse kept being thrown at the family, and eventually Martin responded with a video called “BLOCKING ALL THE HATERS!”

In it, Martin addressed the accusations in front of the kids, calling those who criticise their channel “haters.” One of his sons quipped, “at least you’re not beating us like most parents.”

But things hit a boiling point when YouTuber Philip DeFranco made a video presenting evidence of the alleged abuse.

“Ultimately, I’m disgusted by this. I don’t know what the next step is,” DeFranco says. “Now is this child abuse? I would leave that up to Child Protective Services.”

Martin then defended himself on Twitter, claiming that the criticism had put his family in danger.

All of DaddyoFive’s videos were subsequently removed, leaving up one final video “Family Destroyed Over False Aquisations.”

“The videos are fake,” Martin says. “They’re fake.”

He reiterates that his family is in “real danger.”

‘My kids have been upset all day due to Constant death threats fearing their mom and dad are going to be killed’

“Right now we are under severe attack by all kinds of media, by this DeFranco guy and all that,” he says. “Somebody tried to run my wife off the road with my kids in the car. We’ve got death threats coming to us.”

But after a leaked video that YouTube had removed revealed Martin encouraging one of his sons to slap his sister, even supporters thought it had been taken too far.

“I believe that a lot of their videos are fake,” DramaAlert’s Keem says, “but that slap was not fake.”

“I don’t believe any of these videos should be on YouTube.”

Others on Twitter agreed.

Martin has said they will consider changing their content going forward.

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