The drama surrounding Duane “Dog” Chapman’s marriage to Francie Frane continues as he denies allegations from daughter Bonnie Chapman about why she was not invited to the upcoming wedding. After being accused of excluding the 22-year-old and her stepsister Cecily Chapman due to their social justice work with UnleashedTV, the Dog the Bounty Hunter star told TMZ all the allegations against him were “false.”
It wasn’t that Bonnie and Cecily are working with the network that allegedly fired Dog for his use of over racial and homophobic epithets that got them uninvited, he told the outlet, but that they were being “groomed” by shady former associates of his. “Please pray for Bonnie and Cecily to be released from whatever hold these people have on them,” he continued. “Despite the sadness, we feel at this rift in our family, Francie and I are looking forward to celebrating our wedding next week with the rest of our family and close friends.”
Bonnie previously released to TMZ alleged texts from Frane telling a different story. “[L]et’s not beat around the bush, You & Cecily both know You haven’t been invited to the wedding because your (sic) living under the same roof with people who stabbed (him), robbed, lied, manipulated, smeared his name and tried to ruin his career,” the screenshots read.
Bonnie told the outlet that her work on The System, which follows the racial justice movement in the legal system and supports the Black Lives Matter movement, upsets her father, whom she claimed called BLM protestors “thugs” and other derogatory terms. Cecily, meanwhile, said she thought her father was “having a hard time” getting remarried with the memory of late wife Beth Chapman so close by.
“What I’m seeing personally is that my dad is having a hard time dealing with the fact that maybe he’s not gonna be able to replace my mom and that maybe me and Bonnie bring out a lot from my mom and that he sees our mom in us,” Cecily said. “I feel like that scares him. Yes, he can move on, yes he can get married again — that’s not the problem. I think he’s just scared that we remind him too much of our mother.”