Dad Calls Out Daughter’s Bullies on Viral YouTube Video

Rachel Bertsche
·Writer
Updated

Dad Calls Out Daughter’s Bullies on Viral YouTube Video

Knowing your child is being bullied is heartbreaking for any parent, but when Brad Knudsen, a father of five, saw firsthand the nasty videos that a pair of twins sent his youngest daughter, he felt helpless. Until he decided to make a video of his own.

In a nearly six-minute YouTube video (below) posted Monday evening, a clearly upset Knudsen, who is white, explains that two kids sent his 14-year-old daughter Dee Dee, who is African-American, Snapchat videos using terms like the n-word and calling her a slut. In the video, the Minnesota dad shows the Snapchat and plays a voicemail he got from the twins’ father, which also uses offensive language. The video has since been viewed nearly 300,000 times.

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“We have a very beautiful African-American daughter that we were very fortunate enough to adopt 11 years ago,” Knudsen explains. “We’ve dealt with a little bit of racism, you know, stares, things like that when she calls us mom or dad, but she didn’t notice so we just blew it off because it was directed towards us.”

But on New Years Eve, Dee Dee was with a friend when she started receiving Snapchat videos from the friends of a classmate. Each of the videos included racist language and other bullying remarks. After the third video, Dee Dee’s friend told Knudsen and his wife what was happening. Since Snapchats disappear after they’re viewed, Knudsen told Dee Dee to bring him the next video before she watched it. When a fourth one came in, Knudsen recorded it on his phone – and he plays it for viewers in his video.

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“You’re a slut, such a slut, n—-r, you is a fat-ass bitch, yes you are,” the kids say.

Knudsen says he felt he had to take action, especially since the 13-year-old son of his friends recently committed suicide after being the victim of bullying. “It just dawned on me, I can’t have this hanging over us and my daughter thinking the worst and something could happen,” he says.

Knudsen notes he tried to contact the kids’ parents, and even went to their house numerous times, but wasn’t able to connect with them until he called the police, who spoke to the parents and provided Knudsen with the father’s cell phone number.

“He told me that I was crazy, that that’s what he did when he was a kid and him and his family make jokes at the house using this word all the time so what was the big deal?” Knudsen says.

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After eventually hanging up on the father, Knudsen got a voicemail that he plays in the video. “Yeah Brad, tides have turned huh?” the father says. “I guess you’re a n—lover.”

Knudsen says he called back again. “That’s correct, I am an n— lover because I have an African-American daughter who I love more than life itself and would do anything for her,” he says. In a second voice mail message, the father calls Knudsen a loser and uses a homophobic slur.

During the back and forth, Knudsen says he told the father that he planned to post about the exchange on social media. According to Knudsen, the father had no problem with that. But the video is about more than just outing some bullies. “I was afraid that if I don’t get this out, if I don’t get people to understand what’s going on, especially with this individual, that my daughter is not going to say anything to me and I’m going to find her someday hanging in the bedroom,” Brad told local CBS news WCCO. “I just refuse to let her go through stuff like that, there’s no way. I won’t do it.”

Dee Dee told the local news that the Snapchats stung, no matter how hard she tried to ignore them. “On the outside I acted like it didn’t affect me, and I just brushed it off and, you know, pretended life was different at the moment,” Dee Dee said. “But on the inside I was kind of crying.”

In the video, Knudsen names the father, and their hometown of Prior Lake, Minnesota. Less than 48 hours after the video went live, the father was fired from his job, though Knudsen told WCCO that wasn’t his intention. Instead, he said he wants to raise awareness and that he and his wife have decided to start a twice-weekly forum to discuss race issues.

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