14 DAY TRIAL // Almost one month ago, TLC pulled the plug on their hit reality show Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, which was supposed to air its fifth season in January. Production on the season was still underway, and the cancelation was immediate: the network wanted nothing to do with a woman who had reconnected with the convicted pedophile who had just been released from prison after serving 10 years for molesting her daughter.
That’s right, Mama June, the matriarch of the family, is now dating (or dated for a while, until she got caught and exposed in the media) Mark McDaniel, a registered child offender who was sent away after he forced himself on Mama June’s then-8-year-old daughter Chickadee (Anna Cardwell).
If that’s not enough to make your blood boil, there’s more: Mama June initially denied she had been in contact with the man and even tried to argue that photographic evidence proving she’s a liar had been Photoshopped. Today, she’s just as clueless.
Mama June isn’t exactly a fan of the truth
So, initially, Mama June tried to get the world to disbelieve their eyes and trust her when she said she would never ever date the man who had raped her daughter when she was just a kid. She and her other daughters, Pumpkin in particular, tried to claim that photos showing her with McDaniel had been retouched to make her into a monster.
When she realized the backlash would be huge, and even worse, that she ran the risk of losing her kids, Mama June reconsidered her stance: she got her ex-partner and former reality show co-star Sugar Bear (Honey Boo Boo’s father) to move back in and act as if they were still together, and eventually admitted that she did see McDaniel, but not for the reasons people said she did.
As reports claimed she wanted to “help him out” because she “felt sorry” for him (so she bought him a car, cash down, and went house hunting with him), sources close to her leaked rumors to the press about how she’d only seen him once, to confront him about what he’d done to Chickadee.
Again, this, despite evidence suggesting that they had met several times and even spent the night together – once with Honey Boo Boo in the same room, in the same bed.
Mama June speaks out, is even more infuriating
However, so far, she’s yet to speak about all this directly. This is the first time that she’s addressing the controversy in an interview, so you’d better brace yourselves: Mama June sat down with Entertainment Tonight for a series of chats that will air starting tonight. A preview is included below.
As you can see, the ET reporter asks her all the obvious and hard-hitting questions: how could she go back to a registered pedophile when she has minors in her care, including the aforementioned Pumpkin and Honey Boo Boo? Does she believe Chickadee’s version of events, that McDaniel raped her? Does she understand why people are outraged? Does she know what she did wrong?
Does she not understand that dating her daughter’s rapist makes her the worst mother possible? That question is never asked, but it’s hanging in the air throughout the entire video.
Mama June admits she didn’t read the court documents stating what McDaniel did to her daughter, but she says she believes “something” might have happened between the two. However, she adds, she had told Chickadee “not to bring up the past.”
“I understand that… and honestly it's not like I'm seeing him everyday, I promise,” Mama June continues, oblivious to the fact that seeing him just once is just as bad, both for Chickadee and for her daughters at home, whose future she endangers by having a pedophile lurking around.
The interviews will start airing on ET tonight, so more details will emerge then. The other day, Chickadee told the media that she was convinced McDaniel was her sister Pumpkin’s father, so we’ll probably see what Mama June has to say about that too.
