The couple behind the YouTube channel DaddyOFive has been charged with two counts of child neglect.
Michael and Heather Martin (of Ijamsville, Maryland) were charged with mistreating two of their five children between November 2016 and April 2017, court records show. The charges were filed on July 27.
The Martins run a YouTube channel DaddyOFive that had been dedicated to prank videos and had amassed over 700,000 subscribers.
Yet many of the pranks involved the children and viewers have pointed out that in several instances the parents’ behavior may have crossed the line of abuse.
In one video, the children play a penalty game and the penalty is that one child has to slap the other.
In April, Youtuber Philip DeFranco (over 5.6 million subscribers) published a series of videos criticizing the Martins. Others in the YouTube community followed suit.
Within days, all the prank videos were unpublished from the channel.
On April 22, a video was posted on the channel where the couple apologized for their behavior.
“We put things on the internet that should not be there. We did things that we should not do,” Michael Martin said.
“What started out as family fun and entertainment took on a life of its own. Before we knew it, we were caught up in our families popularity, which led to some poor decisions,” stated the description of the video. “Upon reflection, we realize there were mistakes made that caused our family some pain; we offer our most humble and sincere apology to those we negatively impacted and offended, particularly our wonderful children.”
Heather Martin explained the popularity of their videos and the associated advertising revenue allowed them to provide more for their children. The children were excited about the popularity too. That served them as a justification for pursuing more video views through extreme behavior.
“We just kept going more and more for the shock factor,” she said.
“We just wanted our kids to be happy and we went about it the wrong way,” she said.
She said the family now attends counseling.
The child neglect charges involve their children Cody and Emma, according to The Frederick News-Post. The couple lost custody of the two children in April to their biological mother, Rose Hall.
The Martins are scheduled for a plea hearing on Sept. 11. The maximum penalty for the crime is 5 years imprisonment ana $5,000 fine.
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