Parents Lose Custody Of Kids After YouTube ‘Pranks’

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The parents who host a popular YouTube channel that showed them putting their 5 kids up to a number of questionable “pranks” have reportedly lost custody of 2 of their kids amid a child abuse investigation.

Maryland’s Frederick County Sheriff’s Office and Office of Child Protective Services are conducting an investigation around Mike and Heather Martin, who gained internet fame for their DaddyOFive YouTube channel.

The videos show the Martins screaming profanities at their kids. It also shows them breaking their kids toys as a “prank” and blaming them for things they didn’t do. Some videos also show the kids being pushed, punched and slapped.

“Please keep in mind videos are fake and being acted out our videos are for entertainment purposes only no child was harmed in the making of our videos,” DaddyOFive’s YouTube page states.

The biological mother of the couple’s youngest two kids, ages 9 and 11, announced Monday in a YouTube video on a separate account, that she has in fact been granted emergency custody of them.

Rose Hall, told the Baltimore Sun that she reunited with her children on Friday and that she hadn’t seen them since 2014 and 2015, respectively. Their reunion followed a tumultuous custody battle with Mike Martin.

Hall calls the DaddyOFive series “heartbreaking” to watch.

As of Wednesday, the DaddyOFive channel had over 762,000 subscribers. The videos of the “pranks” have all been removed, and just a video of the Martins tearfully apologizing remains which was viewed over 2 million times.

The Martins have always denied abusing their kids and said the videos had been staged with their children’s consent. However, in this latest video, they say they “made some terrible parenting decisions.”

“This has been the absolute worst week of our life and we realize that we have made some terrible parenting decisions and we just want to make things right,” Heather Martin says.

“I do agree that we put things on the internet that should not be there,” Mike Martin adds. “We did do things that we should not do.”