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June Shannon, Mama to Honey Boo Boo, Assigns Blame in Molestation Scandal

June Shannon, aka Mama June, continues to put the blame elsewhere for the Here Comes Honey Boo Boo scandal, which led to the cancellation of the reality show. On an appearance on Dr. Phil, the 35-year...
June Shannon, Mama to Honey Boo Boo, Assigns Blame in Molestation Scandal
Written by Pam Wright
  • June Shannon, aka Mama June, continues to put the blame elsewhere for the Here Comes Honey Boo Boo scandal, which led to the cancellation of the reality show.

    On an appearance on Dr. Phil, the 35-year-old reality star maintained that she is not dating Mark McDaniel, the convicted sex offender who was jailed for molesting her eldest daughter, Anna Marie “Chickadee” Cardwell.

    “There’s some truths and there’s some lies that’s out there, and there’s the truth between that,” she told Dr. Phil.

    Shannon alleges she has only seen McDaniel twice since he was released from jail in March. She told the host she accidentally ran into him while she was spending some time in the mountains with her family. The second time she met with McDaniel was while dropping off 33 packs of diapers for his son.

    “The second time, he said ‘Hey, how you doing?’ I said, ‘Hey, how you doing?’” Shannon recalled.

    She did admit, however, to allowing her youngest daughter, Lauryn “Pumpkin” Shannon, to meet with the convicted sex offender so that she could better understand why he left the family.

    Shannon, who says another jailed sex offender, Michael Anthony Ford, is Pumpkin’s father and not McDaniel, helped raise Pumpkin from when she was two months old until she was five. Her daughter claims he was in the picture until she was four.

    Shannon also maintains that Chickadee, who was eight at the time of the alleged molestation, never told her that McDaniel was abusing her.

    “I do, in a way, feel like I failed to protect Anna, but I didn’t know,” Shannon said. “She admitted that too. I was at work when all this happened so I knew nothing. Nothing about anything, she never comed to me, anything, the whole time it was happening.”

    In an example of assigning blame, she said Chickadee often lies. However, she did concede that she should have done more to protect her daughter.

    “The only way I can fix that, is constantly apologize and be there for her through the situation,” she said. “And try to move on from the situation. I know it’s hard to move on because she feels like she’s reliving it again, but it’s like, in some instances she’s lied about certain things too.”

    Dr. Phil doesn’t seem to believe Shannon‘s story, although he didn’t say as much during the show.

    “I think this woman has been making really bad choices with these children and with the men in her life for a long, a long time,” he told TMZ before the show. “This is nothing new.”

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