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Drake Bell denies ex-girlfriend Melissa Lingafelt’s abuse claims
Drake Bell is denying his former live-in girlfriend Melissa Lingafelt’s physical and verbal abuse claims.
The Drake & Josh star, 34, said in a statement to People magazine that he "never abused my ex-girlfriend or did so many of the other things Melissa falsely claimed on her TikTok video."
It was in that social media video, posted Wednesday, that Lingafelt — who dated Bell in 2006 for about two years — made the allegations.
She started by saying she doesn’t really care if people believe her, “as this is my story and my life and something that I went through.”
While showing photos of them together, Lingafelt, 30, continued, “It wasn’t until recently that I actually realized that abuse isn’t something that all women have to go through. When I started dating Drake, I was 16. I was home-schooled. I moved in with him. I was singing.”
She said it wasn’t until a year into their relationship “that the verbal abuse started. And when I say verbal abuse, imagine the worst type of verbal abuse you could ever imagine and that’s what I got. It then turned into physical — hitting, throwing, everything.”
Lingafelt said “at the pinnacle of it, he dragged me down the stairs of our house in Los Feliz. My face hit every step on the way down. I have photos of this.”
She added, “I don’t even want to get into the underage girls thing,” not elaborating. “I mean — I will, but I’m scared.” The video ended there.
Lingafelt went on to share screenshots from several text exchanges with people who wrote they remember her talking about the abuse at the time. Others exchanges claimed Bell slept with identified underage girls — during that time period.
Bell rose to fame as a Nickelodeon star, first on Amanda Bynes’ The Amanda Show, then he and Josh Peck got their own show, Drake & Josh, which ran from 2004 to 2007. He’s a musician in addition to being an actor.
Bell has run into other personal issues navigating fame, as he went from child to adult star, from filing for bankruptcy in 2014 to his house, one in Los Feliz, Calif., being foreclosed on. In 2015, he was arrested for DUI and served one day in jail.
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