Geoff Weiss

On Monday, April 17, a story broke by Los Angeles-based YouTuber Philip DeFranco concerning another YouTube channel called DaddyOFive. DaddyOFive is a Montgomery County-based YouTube channel run by two parents who record and post videos of themselves playing pranks on their children. These “pranks” have many questioning whether or not the channel is recording abuse of their kids. Pranks have included a boy throwing his stepbrother down to the ground, the parents yelling at their kids for something they didn’t do, which included profanities, making their kids cry and punching and/or slapping their kids.

DeFranco, 33, who runs a channel called “The Philip DeFranco Show,” makes daily videos about news around YouTube and the globe, and stumbled upon this channel when a fan sent it to him, concerned about what they saw. DeFranco, a father himself, was horrified at these videos, and as the video DeFranco’s response went viral, more from DaddyOFive began to spread.

DaddyOFive’s video from Tuesday, April 18 was about their child Cody, 8, who doesn’t like these videos and could potentially have some psychological problems. Cody has been the butt of the channel’s jokes as everyone in the audience thinks he just doesn’t want to be pranked. In the video, Cody’s mom says “[Cody] threw [feces] everywhere,” and the parents say that he can’t go to Disneyland with the rest of the family. When he is sent to stay with his grandparents rather than travel with his brothers and sisters, he smiles and immediately frowns, as if he had been told to do so.

After the three videos DeFranco published last week, the parents of DaddyOFive, Hannah and Mike Martin, have privatized all of their videos.

“You two brought this upon yourselves,” DeFranco said in his April 19 video.

Many DeFranco fans downloaded all of DaddyOFive’s videos before they were privatized.

“The videos are fake. They’re fake. They’re over exaggerated. Some videos are scripted. They’re played out. The kids’ ideas, we act them out … We just wanted to make videos for you guys,” Mike Martin said.

Even after the apology from Mike Martin, many do not think the videos are fake, based on the family’s behavior. More drama ensued after Cody’s alleged biological mother came out and said that she lost custody of Cody after Martin said she was insane, and said that Mike Martin was “not fit to be a dad,” according to the Philip DeFranco Show.

The family has released a video on April 22 about visiting family counseling. There’s speculation over this claim because the family said they were already visiting counseling after an interview with DramaAlert hosted by Keemstar.

The Pitch will provide updates as this story develops.