Drake Bell has forgiven Rider Strong for his support of Brian Peck, the man who allegedly assaulted a then-underage Bell.
“I just had the most amazing conversation with @RiderStrong,” Bell, 37, wrote via X on Friday, April 5. “We are all healing together. I have nothing but love and forgiveness for him.”
Bell claimed in Investigation Discovery’s Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV docuseries that he had been sexually assaulted by Peck, now 63, when he was a minor.
Peck, a dialogue coach for Nickelodeon, was arrested in August 2003 for sexually abusing a then-unnamed child. He pleaded no contest to performing a lewd act with a victim around 14 or 15 years old and to oral copulation with a child under 16 years old, which resulted in a 16-month prison sentence. (Brian has no relation to Bell’s Drake and Josh costar Josh Peck.)
Bell’s appearance in Quiet on Set, which premiered in March, was the first time he publicly addressed the allegations. The docuseries also revealed details from Brian’s trial and sentencing, noting that Strong, 44, and several of his Boy Meets World costars had written letters of support advocating for Brian’s release.
“He didn’t say that nothing had happened. So by the time we heard about this case and knew anything about it, it was always in the context of, ‘I did this thing, I am guilty. I am going to take whatever punishment the government determines, but I’m a victim of jailbait. There was this hot guy! I just did this thing and he’s underage,’” Strong previously recalled on a February episode of his “Pod Meets World” podcast. “And we bought that story line.”
He added, “I never heard about the other things because, back then, you couldn’t Google to find out what people were being charged with. So in retrospect, he was making a plea deal and admitting one thing — which is all he admitted to us — but it looks like he was being charged with a series of crimes, which we did not know.”
Bell, however, further claimed that Strong had been aware of the situation despite his podcast comments.
“RIDER WAS 24 years old when he wrote the letter and was told by Brian what he did,” Bell claimed via social media last month. “He wrote the letter anyway.”
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).
