YouTube Prank Parents Lose Custody Of Children

DAMASCUS, MD — The Maryland couple whose cruel pranks on their children were posted on YouTube has lost custody of two of their kids after thousands of people on the internet turned against them with demands that law enforcement and child protection services investigate the parents, Mike and Heather Martin, for child abuse. A Frederick County judge gave temporary custody to the biological mother of the two children, a 12-year-old girl and 9-year-old Cody, who was the subject of screaming and cursing in the most infamous of the videos.

Rose Hall, the biological mother, who lives in North Carolina, has gained temporary custody of the two children. They were fathered by Mike Martin in an earlier relationship. After a court awarded her custody, she took them to her home for the weekend before returning to Frederick County, where all three will remain while an investigation by Child Protection Services is ongoing, she said in a video she posted with her attorney, Tim Conlon of Frederick.

The backlash against the Martins began about two weeks ago, when a prank against Cody went viral. Criticism of the parents intensified after YouTuber Philip DeFranco posted a video about couple's pranks, one of a series that were posted on a YouTube channel the Martins had created and named DaddyOFive. The channel had 750,000 followers.

The video at the center of the backlash begins with a smiling Heather holding a bottle of invisible ink in front of the camera, planning to accuse Cody of ruining the carpet. Her husband joins in, both yelling at the boy, cussing at him and blaming him for an ink trail on the floor. The crying boy replies, "I swear to God I didn't do that."

Internet viewers bombarded the post with angry complaints. After the backlash and threats, the clip was taken down. One person wrote, "I hope the parents burn in hell," while another person wrote, "#childabuse."
You can see the controversial YouTube segment on WUSA.

A review of other videos on DaddyOFive showed the children being encouraged to hit each other and the father pushing Cody into a book shelf. The boy's nose was bloodied in that incident.

The couple first claimed the reaction of the crying and screaming children were "faked." They then posted an apology video, which the Washington Post reported was produced with the help of a crisis management firm.

“We realize we have made some terrible parenting decisions, and we just want to make things right,” Heather Martin said in the new video, adding that the entire family was in counseling.

The Martins said that they are not bad people, but they were ashamed of how the world perceives the characters they portrayed and the show that they put on, and they had begun family counseling to resolve their problematic portrayals of life.

In her own video, the biological mother described her reunion with her kids as a little difficult.

“Cody had a difficult time when the officer brought him out to the car,” Hall said. “He said some things that were disturbing, that he hated me, that Mike and Heather told him I threw him away like he was garbage, and I didn’t love him no more. … that’s not true at all.”

Authorities in Frederick and Baltimore counties are investigating where the videos were filmed and if any crimes were committed.

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Conlon argues the children have suffered mental and physical abuse.

“Clear evidence of physical abuse is the video where you can see an arm throwing the boy Cody into a book case and then he comes away with a bloody nose, then they follow him into the bathroom while his nose bleeds. He's tearful and inconsolable,” Conlon told NBC Washington. “The kids are going to be deprogrammed like POWs or cult members. There are 400 videos of this stuff that involve vulgarity, shouting, physical portions of it.”

Hall said in her video that her children are well and "getting back to their playful selves." She thanked YouTube viewers for raising attention about the Martins' channel.

Hall and Conlon thanked the Frederick County Sheriff's Department for ensuring a peaceful change of the children from the Martins to their mother on Friday, which the attorney described as a "rescue" of the youngsters. On the video, Conlon asked Hall for her reaction to the DaddyOFive videos and how their move back to North Carolina went.

"Very heart-breaking and disturbing to see my kids being abused," Hall said.

She said it will take a lot of family counseling to help the children get back on track, but they were happy to see cousins, grandparents and extended family members.

Mike Martin said in the couple's apology video that the couple has stepped back from their characters to see how others have viewed their portrayals, and he agrees they did things they shouldn't have done. Counseling will help the five children see what their parents did that was wrong, and help them go back to school and normalcy, the couple said. Their apology video has more than 1.4 million views.

"We just kept going more and more for the shock factor versus reality to see what could get more views," Heather Martin said.

SEE ALSO: YouTube Prank Parents Apologize As Family Starts Counseling

Their DaddyOFive YouTube channel earned the family of seven some extra money, the parents have said, declining to specify the amount.

The parents talked with Good Morning America, and Mike Martin told the news show that he understands the backlash that their videos generated. He said they have lost friends and family members over their videos, and "I've lost my own self-respect."

"I am completely broken," Mike Martin said on the show. "I did all this for my kids. I thought I was doing the right thing. Because of my poor decisions, now my family's suffering. I was able to do so many things for my family because of this YouTube channel. We were able to give the kids a college fund ... [But] I ended up destroying my family thinking that I was helping my family."

Martin labeled the videos as fake and entertainment when posting to YouTube, but that didn't register with viewers. "I never really came out and say we were fake because I was scared to kill the YouTube channel. My kids love the YouTube channel and we love our fans," the dad said.

His wife apologized for letting fans down and thanked them for support. The couple said they are under attack by the media and have received death threats since the controversy erupted.

"This has gone way too far over FAKE YouTube pranks. We are sorry and we will change our style but you are putting our family in real danger. You are putting the kids that you think you are helping in real danger," the parents wrote in the description of their video message.

After the ink prank went viral, the couple posted a YouTube video with their kids where the family joked about the prank and the outrage it spawned. It was titled BLOCKING ALL THE HATERS!, and one of the sons said the viewers who denounced the prank clip are jealous haters. A day later, the video was made private.

"To all you haters, you are the ones that give our children drama," says Heather. "You're the one that caused us problems, you're the one that tried to embarrass us and embarrass them."

As their parents talked to the camera, their five children piped up with how they have fun, they joked and they tussled over a bowl of candy. Popular music contains worse curse words than the parents used in the F-bomb-laced video of Cody and the stained carpet, the couple says.

»Screenshot of Martin family from YouTube video