Mama June Shannon continues to deny that she's dating her daughter's child molester, but Anna "Chickadee" Cardwell is speaking out against Mama June and her molester. In a new interview with E! News, which will play in full on Tuesday night, the 20-year-old talks about her childhood abuse and the fear she has regarding her sisters' proximity to sex offender Mark McDaniel. After reports first surfaced that the TLC star and matriarch of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo was dating a convicted sex offender, Cardwell stepped forward to say that the 8-year-old child McDaniel had molested was her.
Since making that admission, Cardwell has bravely told her story to several news outlets in hopes of having her mother wake up to the reality of dating this man. "I’m mad. I’m upset. I feel betrayed. I feel very hurt. That’s the main thing that I am — I feel very hurt that Mama let him come around," Cardwell confessed to Entertainment Tonight.
Shannon has denied that she is dating McDaniel. But pictures don't lie and it's clear that dating or not, McDaniel and Shannon are spending time together — some of it has even been with Shannon's 9-year-old daughter Alana "Honey Boo Boo" Thompson.
That's why this story is so twisted, because Shannon's daughter is only one year older than Cardwell was when she was molested. I cannot imagine why Mama June would bring this man back into her life, but I applaud Cardwell for refusing to back down about the situation.
It would be easy for her to stop fighting and just cut her mother out of her life, or to refuse to speak to the media about it. But what Cardwell is doing is very important. Unfortunately, it seems if people aren't continually inundated with news, that news can fade away. It's so important that what Mama June is doing doesn't just get pushed under the rug. By speaking to E! News, Cardwell is helping keep the conversation open and she's making Shannon take responsibility for her actions.
In a two-minute preview of Tuesday night's full interview, Cardwell talked openly and harshly about her mother — and I don't blame her one bit. "Mama can be very selfish," Cardwell says in the interview "She ain't tell me she love me in a long time."
Further troubling is the alleged lack of money in her TLC income-based trust fund, and what may have happened to it. "I called the bank and said 'how much is in it?' $17.90. I have a feeling Mama used that money to buy a car or buy [McDaniel] what he wanted," Cardwell said.
Mama June denied that claim as well, but her dismissals are pretty weak considering there's photographic evidence of her spending time with McDaniel and she keeps denying that relationship, too.
In the interview, Cardwell also opened up about McDaniel's abuse saying, "You're 8 years old, you don't know. To me, it was kinda like, oh, get off me, it hurts. Stay off and leave me alone. And I'd just go to sleep and cry."
In an interview with People, Cardwell revealed that when she told Mama June what McDaniel had done to her, Shannon blamed Cardwell.
A week or so after it happened, I talked to Mama and she was upset, crying and saying, ‘I don’t believe you, I don’t believe you, why would you do this to me?’ And I was like, ‘Mama, he did that to me and I can’t do anything about it. You were never there to see it. You were always at work.’”
I'd always thought that Shannon was a good mother, if an untraditional one. But the more I hear, the more it seems like maybe someone else getting custody of her kids for awhile is a good thing. After all, as much as Shannon wants to deny that this happened or that it could happen again, as Cardwell pointed out, her sisters are in danger "if Mark's back in the picture." And right now, he unfortunately seems to be.
Images: E! News
