Mama June Shannon is in another child molestation scandal, although this one doesn’t involve her directly. However, depending on how you want to look at things, it does show that the TV industry is willing to turn a blind eye to certain uncomfortable truths if there’s money to be made.
As you are no doubt aware, Mama June made a triumphant comeback to TV this year with the WEtv program Mama June: From Not to Hot , which documented the 37-year-old’s transformation from morbidly obese to a Size 4.
Reality Recap: Mama June rushed to the hospital; collapses after drastic weight loss https://t.co/HX0tn0MXGy pic.twitter.com/DI2T3ra5Wj
— Howard (@rocksouth1) April 24, 2017
June didn’t make the decision to lose all that weight out of nowhere; she had a reason for the timing. Specifically, ex-husband Mike “Sugar Bear” Thompson was getting remarried, to Jennifer Lamb, and June wanted to throw her weight loss in her ex-husband’s face.
Now, thanks to some reporting by the Daily Mail , it turns out that there’s a pretty big skeleton in Jennifer Lamb’s closet, one that she went to great lengths to hide from the producers at WEtv: She was married to a convicted child molester .
In 1994, Lamb married then-truck driver Raymond Lamb Jr. In 2014, Raymond was convicted of sexually abusing a minor in 2013. For his crimes, Lamb was sentenced to 35 years; the Daily Mail determined, through a public records search, that he’s currently serving his time at Wheeler Correctional Facility, a medium-security prison in Alamo, Georgia.
Jennifer Lamb hides ex-husband’s child molestation charges https://t.co/mvWkLFqmRn pic.twitter.com/omhAcoatFL
— Billy Bloke (@eBayDownUnder) April 26, 2017
Insider sources close to Jennifer told the Daily Mail that Jennifer went to great lengths to hide her past from producers at WEtv.
“Jennifer has got lots of skeletons in her closet that she’s desperate to keep hidden. She has been especially terrified that the show would find out about her ex-husband. She’s even been threatening some of her family members with lawsuits if they reveal any of her secret past.”
Further, say the sources, Lamb had a good reason for keeping her past quiet: all that money.
“This TV show means everything to her – and she loves all the drama surrounding it – even though she pretends she doesn’t. She’s always bragging about the money she made from the show and how she’s bought this and that for her house.”
Whether WEtv producers knew about Lamb’s past is debatable. It seems like this is something that a simple public records search could have turned up, and TV producers generally screen the people who are going to be on their shows. So does that mean WEtv turned a blind eye to a sex abuse scandal? TLC, the network that made Mama June and her extended family TV stars, most certainly did not look the other way.
Back in 2014, as you may recall, Mama June and her extended family were riding high on the popularity of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo . That is, up until news broke that June had taken up with convicted child molester Mark Anthony McDaniel Sr. McDaniel had been convicted of aggravated child molestation against an 8-year-old girl — a girl who would later be identified as June’s oldest daughter, Anna Shannon (now Anna Cardwell).
At the time, June denied that she was involved in any way with McDaniel, and claimed that she hadn’t seen him in over 10 years. Nevertheless, the damage had been done, and TLC canceled Here Comes Honey Boo Boo , leaving June and her gang without a TV show — that is, until WEtv took a chance on her and produced From Not to Hot .
Do you think Mama June’s latest sex scandal will hurt her any further?
[Featured Image by MediaPunch Standard/AP]