DaddyOFive is coming back to YouTube: MommyOFive gives video update on the family

This past April a scandal erupted over the “prank” videos on the channels DaddyOFive and MommyOFive (Mike and Heather Martin) that showed was appeared to be severe emotional child abuse. The channels had grown to be incredibly popular and lucrative before the mother of two of the children realized what was happening to her children. The YouTube community sparked outrage over the situation and even helped raised money for the young two kids’ mother Rose to get custody awarded back to her. The oldest three boys are Heather’s children and are still in the home. For a while it was unclear if the family would ever make videos again, and if they were going to lose custody of the other three children. Heather uploaded a video late Sunday evening announcing that the family’s videos were coming back.

While some emotional music plays, Heather starts off by thanking everyone for support and apologizing to the fans.

“We’ve been through a lot in the last couple of months,” Heather Martin says in the video. “There’s been a lot of changes in the last couple of months, but the first thing I want to say is the amount of love and support that’s we’ve received from you guys has been amazing.

“I also wanna say that I’m sorry to our fans that you all have, for lack of better words, taken some heat for us,” she went on. “We never intended that. We never wanted any of you guys to basically have a type of backlash from the decisions that we made. And I also wanna say sorry to you guys because we didn’t tell you we were a blended family from the start.

“It’s just something that we didn’t want to discuss,” Heather continued. “To us, it doesn’t matter. Blood doesn’t matter. Family is family. Our kids are our kids and we just din’t want it out there. And we also didn’t want some of their past to be public knowledge. We did try to protect them from certain things. Unfortunately there are some opportunists out there that did not have the same mindset as we did. We could sit here. We could be petty. We could go tit for tat when it comes to Rose and her family, but we’re not going to. We haven’t said anything in the past and we’re not going to say anything now because the only people that’s gonna end up hurtin’ is our kids. We won’t be commenting on anything about her, or court, or any of that in any of our future videos . . . not at this time and I really don’t know if we ever will.

“The only thing I will say is trust is the liar’s most useful tool,” she says in the video. “If the equation doesn’t add up, it’s probably because the truth wasn’t in it.

“We see now the mistakes in judgment that we have made. When you see your 3 a.m. ugly cry all over the news, that is when you realize you done got yourself in something you know nothing about,” she explains, referencing the first apology video she and Mike made, which has since been deleted along with the rest of the DO5 videos. The MO5 channel still has some prank videos on it, including a very scary one where DO5 apparently pulls a gun on his son and wife because he thinks they’re robbers.

“I am not proud of that moment,” she says about the first apology video. “I look atrocious. Some people have compared me to Shrek. That picture is terrible.”

“I just wanted everything to stop. I wanted the videos to stop. I wanted the media to stop. I wanted to put my life back together and protect my kids from any further scrutiny. We made that video and it was a bad decision to make that video.

Now she says she understand why people might have been upset over their videos, but “it’s been a few months now guys. Is putting your opinion out there or sending that hate tweet really gonna do anything to help them [the kids]?”

“DaddyOFive is severely depressed. He doesn’t even want to get out of bed most days. He’s been being better with tweeting little things and I’ve been trying to be encouraging to him, but he’s just really down in the dumps. It’s been a lot of change. It’s been a lot of things that happens . . . He misses you guys and he says hello and we are working on something special for you guys. We’ll be releasing the trailer for that soon and I think you guys are going to really enjoy it.”

She goes on to say that for now the kids will not be in future videos. One of the things they’re going to be doing is have DaddyOFive come back to his gaming channel. Heather says even his therapist has been encouraging about him returning to YouTube gaming.

She expresses that they want to continue sharing their story because they don’t want this scandal to be the end of their story for their kids.