‘Gossip Girl’ actress says she wasn’t missing and accuses family of abuse

Chanel Banks, an actress who appeared on Gossip Girlfound her name in the headlines after her family reported her missing. But days after she was found safe, Banks appeared to take to social media to say she was never missing at all – and that she was trying to distance herself from relatives she accused of abusing her.

Banks, 36, was officially reported missing on Nov. 8, according to the Los Angeles Police Department. But despite claims from her family that she had disappeared and that something was wrong, Banks was located on November 11 in Texas, where she had apparently left of her own accord.

A post on Banks’ verified Instagram account appears to explain where she went.

“My name is Chanel Banks. I am a 36-year-old American nobody, and all my life I have silently carried the pain of the ritual…abuse, manipulation, and downright endless torment I have endured non-stop since I was defenseless. honey, at the hands of my own so-called family, all of whom are so very ‘concerned’ about my current whereabouts,” a post on Banks’ account reads.

The post went on to say that she had gone to Texas to be baptized by her favorite priest and that she was “finally free.”

The alarm about Banks’ whereabouts was first raised publicly by her cousin, Danielle-Tori Singh, who wrote on a GoFundMe page that Banks had not been heard from since October 30. Singh wrote that she had flown from Canada to Los Angeles to help her aunt search for the missing actress.

Singh later told KABC that Banks typically did not go more than 48 hours without speaking to her or her mother.

Despite the Los Angeles Police Department’s claim that Banks is fine, the actress’ family held a press conference on Wednesday, November 13, in which they disputed that she had actually been found, despite apparently being shown body camera footage by Texas authorities.

“What I saw was a woman who did not look like my cousin,” Singh said, according to the paper Los Angeles Times. “She was much thinner, the woman in the body cam footage. She was wearing things that my cousin wouldn’t normally wear, and her voice was different. Her accent was different.”

The newspaper reported that Banks’ mother, Judy Kumar, also appeared at the press conference and made a similar claim.

Banks also spoke Times about the ordeal, saying she had to “keep her distance” from her family and reiterated that she is “fine.”

In the post on Banks’ Instagram account, she accused Singh of lying about the closeness of their relationship, saying she hadn’t spoken to her cousin in over 15 years, a claim Singh disputed in a Facebook post. Banker also called Singh, whose GoFundMe has since been removed, “fame hungry.”

Banks’ post also alleges that her family and her husband’s family tried to put her in a conservatory. Her husband, Carlos Jimenez, denied that his family had tried to do so while he was speaking Times. He told the paper that before she left for Texas, Banks had accused her family of abuse.

Banks told the paper that Jimenez had not harmed her.

Singh, Kumar and Banks’ stepfather could not immediately be reached for comment by PEOPLE. In a Facebook post on Thursday morning, Singh continued to insist police had not really found her cousin, saying a still from body camera footage showed a “fraudster”.

Banks appeared in three episodes of Gossip Girls, as well as an episode of Blue Blood.

PEOPLE was not immediately able to reach relatives of Banks or her husband.