An actress known for “Blue Bloods” and “Gossip Girl” is speaking out after her family reported her missing.
Chanel Banks, 36, was reported missing Nov. 8, according to the Los Angeles Police Department, after she allegedly disappeared from her apartment. LAPD said she was found safe Nov. 11 in Texas.
“She is fine,” LAPD spokesperson Charles Miller told People magazine. “No danger. She is OK. She has been taken out of the missing person system for us and we have closed our investigation.”
Banks, who appeared on one episode of “Blue Bloods” in 2010 and three “Gossip Girl” episodes in 2007, said on social media that was never missing. Her verified Instagram account said she was trying to distance herself from relatives she accused of abusing her.
“My name is Chanel Banks I’m a 36 year old American nobody, and for my entire life I have been silently carrying the pain of the ritual… abuse, manipulation, and outright endless torment I’ve endured continuously since I was a defenseless baby, at the hands of my own so called family, whom are all so very ‘concerned’ about my current whereabouts,” Banks said.
She also accused her “so-called concerned family” of exposing her personal information and “trying to embezzle money for a fraudulent and since closed gofundme.” Banks added that she went to Texas to get baptized and be “finally free.”
Banks did not elaborate on the alleged sexual abuse and manipulation she suffered, but her family claim the woman is an “imposter” despite being shown police body cam footage of a wellness check.
“What I saw was a woman who did not look like my cousin,” Banks’ cousin Danielle-Tori Singh said at a press conference Wednesday, according to the Los Angeles Times. “She was much skinnier, the woman in the body camera footage. She was wearing things that my cousin would not normally wear and her voice was different. Her accent was different.”
Singh and Banks’ aunt and mother first claimed the actress was missing in a GoFundMe page, which has since been taken down. Banks said she had not spoken to Singh in more than 15 years.
Banks further claimed her family and her husband’s family were trying to put her into a conservatorship, according to the Times. Her husband, Carlos Jimenez, denied his family attempted to do so, but confirmed to the publication that Banks had accused her family of abuse.
Chanel Maya Banks has not appeared in any acting roles since “Blue Bloods” in 2010, according to her IMDb page. She was credited as Chanel Farrell on the CBS TV show, plus “Gossip Girl” and the 2010 film “Twelve.”
