Mommy Can I Send Feet Pics to Nickelodeon?
Written By: Fancy Macelli
When my daughter came to me many moons ago asking me, “Mommy can I take a picture of my feet and send it to Nickeloden” I told her emphaticaly no. I knew in that moment something was weird, something was off. Why is a network for kids asking for feet pictures? But, I had pretty much always though Nick was wildly inappropriate so I just let it go. The programming on Nick was never something I felt good about my kids watching.
Since a recent documentary has been released Nickelodeon fans have dug out a rather disturbing tweet shared from Sam and Cat’s official X, formally Twitter, account in 2013. The original tweet read:
“SAM & CAT TOMORROW! Write on the bottom of ur foot, take a pic and use #SAMandCATSaturday we’ll RT and follow until our fingers get sore!”
Due to the popularity of the show, thousands of children followed the directions and sent in pictures of their feet. According to the former post shown all over the internet recently, this one post had 2,758 reposts, 7,782 quotes, 5,478 likes. This was a way that Nick used social media to groom our children and collect kiddie fetish porn in one foul swoop our children became victims to social media predators through follows, likes, shares, reposts from the network and stars. Something seemingly so innocent has now been questioned as Nickelodeon stars have spoke out and claimed Schneider had a “foot fetish”. As I’ve gone back and reviewed episodes the obsession with feet is highly concerning and distrubing.
My daughter remembers several times she’d be watching iCarly or Drake & Josh that I’d feel some level of inappropriateness in the episode and tell her to turn it off. At the time she didn’t understand but today as a 21 year old adult who struggles with her own demons she is blatantly aware that I was right to be concerned.
It’s now 2024 and my question is why is it just NOW coming to light. The Corey’s (Corey Haim & Corey Feldman) were abused all the way back into the 80’s. It took the loss of one of them and the downfall of the other for Corey Feldman to finally speak out in 2011 and yet everyone labeled him as a nutjob. A druggie who couldn’t be trusted.
We all know Drew Barrymore admits to doing coke with adults on sets and at Studio 54 with her own mother, at the age of 8. A self proclaimed “party girl” at 8 folks, 8. Let me give that to you one more time. At 8 years old the Hollywood starlet from ET was trapsing around town all hours of the night with her mother and being encouraged to “dance” with older men, drink, and do drugs. By 13 she’d already been to rehab and was helping out with Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No,” Campaign. Noboy batted an eyelash.
The list went on and on long before we heard about the current stars. Why were we not listening as we watched these seemingly innocent children grow up and all fall into criminal activity, and addiction? We all knew it was happeneing, it was playing out across the tabloids.
Why would anyone be concerned it had been the norm since the dawn of child actors on the silver screen. Have you ever read what things took place during the golden age of Shirley Temple, Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland? It’s truly disturbing.
And yet, year after year we’ve watched as the “child stars” all lose their shit publicly. If you have any question what this industry has systemically done to our children just go have a gander at Brittany Spears’ instagram. These teens all becoming adults and trying to navigate a cruel mistress of an industry and instead of the public realizing there has ALWAYS been a problem we blame the children. The damage these professionals have caused, all complicit in grooming an entire generation of children, is unsurmountable. It isn’t just Brittney, Amanda, Drew, Drake and the rest that were affected; our children that we tuck in safely every night were just as affected.
I never quite understood how crass and gross the Nick shows got away with being. Surely Disney was better right? No, not better for the kids just better at hiding the sinsterness of what was going on. It’s easy to hide with glitter and pretty sets and cute kids. Tonight, I had to come face to face with my own misconception of the industry. An industry I’ve been involved in since I was 6 years old myself. An industry that I loved and bled, sweat, and teared for and one I am still part of today. Though I left the glitz and lights of Hollywood behind many, many moons ago.
When I came back to the industry after taking a break for over 20 years to raise my children I knew that the Hollywood I had so often tried to pursue was not the path for me. When I sat down out of frustration to write something I wanted to put my name on it wasn’t the simple quick project most first time writer/prouducers make. I wanted to talk about mental health in a very real, raw, and personal way. This was what led to us utimately launching The Good Wives’ Network where I hope to create a safe space in the industry for everyone.
We all sat idely by as Jenette McCurdy was called a liar and ostracized by her co-stars like Josh Peck, making fun of her publicly on a podcast. It’s distrubing. Years before Drake Bell, Josh’s co-star was the unkown John Doe child that enured putting away his abuser alone at 15 years old. An abuser his father had warned his mother about, an abuser Drake tried desperately to escape and from. In his telling, his mother seemed simply too lazy to be bothered to escort her son to auditions or work and instead handed him over to a child predator.
Brian Peck, AKA Pickle Boy, appeared on All That with the motto “likes to hurt and tease pickles.” Man there is so much to say and yet I feel like he’s a scapegoat for a much larger problem. Drake had to painfully describe every assault, every detail to strangers and then the one man he truly feels he can trust, Dan Scheinder is in all reality the bigger predator, trying to sweep it all under the rug. “Think of the worst stuff that someone could do to somebody as a sexual assault, it became worse and worse, and worse… and worse, I was just trapped,” Bell said in the latest documentary series Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV.
Peck was arrested in August 2003 for sodomy, forcible penetration, penetration of a foreign object, employment of a minor for pornography, and more. More shocking to me where the names of huge stars in the industry writting letters in his defense. Alan Thick, Joanne Kerns, Will Friedle, & Rider Strong to name a few. Rider mentions that he first met Peck on the set of ‘Boy Meets World” and I began to shake. I was a series regular background actor on that show for 2 years, as an adult. I was often in close contact with the children as I was in a role of 18 to look younger. I was close with the cast on set. Now looking back I wonder did I come in contact with this guy? Did I know him? Did I watch things happen to kids and not know it?
It occured to me that I had met him. It took me going back and pausing him on screen and thinking OMG, that was the obnoxious guy I thought was strange and I didn’t feel he was appropriate. But at the time I just had a weird feeling about him but I thought at least these kids parents are involved and protecting them. I knew them personally, and I felt a deep sense of protection over them. But would I have ever thought something like this was happening? Absolutely not.
The letters from Rider and Will hit me like a ton of bricks. I wonder were they groomed to believe his actions were acceptable and normal? They were kids at the time this man was in their lives but grew to be adults in the same industry that not only protected him, but fascillitated the abuse of more children after his incarceration for a mere 16 months. These adult celebrities to the count of 41 all were speaking on Peck’s behalf. Asking the judge to be lienient.
In a letter dated June 2004, Will Friedel states, “Brian has always shown himself to be a man of integrity and honor. He has always held himself the highest standards and in recent years visits with him I have never seen him more ashamed of himself or the charges against him. I can only stress and honestly state that Brian must have felt an overwhelming sense of pressure and temporary loss of reason. It would be a case of a very good person slipping. There could be no malice in his heart. No attempt at corruption just a lapse in judgement, the ramifications of his actions.”
Bell has called out Friedel, & Strong specifically in interviews, alleging that they were not coerced innto writing their letters of support to the court. Both actors have since claimed that they didn’t unerstand how serious the allegations were but if you listen to the Feb. 19, 2024 episode of Pod Meets World Strong & Friedel talk about grooming and these types of men that hung around them often and seemed so cool because they acted like teens themselves. I’m hoping more will unfold as we learn more about these letters and why so many stars were so quick to believe Peck’s story over a court case.
“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.’ And we bought that storyline.” Rider said.
But who can blame them when less than a year after being released from his 16 month sentence Peck is hired onto the Suite Life of Zack & Cody where the Sprouse boys were 10 years old. Surely if the allegations were so bad he’d not be hired on a chlidren’s show again. The way this was all done so covertly to give him access to child after child with every adult knowing exaclty what was happening is mind boggling.
According to TMZ Peck still resides in LA and as of 2019 he was still garnering work in the industry.
Peck however was not the first sexual preator off these Nick sets of Schneider’s that was arrested. Before Peck there was another sexual predator on set with this group of inapproproate men influencing young stars. In my next post I’ll go further into details of this wildly tragic saga. Also tune into Rise & Crime Wed at 11:30 am for a live discussion on YouTube where we will be disecting this more.
