Thanks for putting all this information together. I did not know exactly when they separated and certainly did not know she ever had custody of them and that he took them without permission.
“...weaponized their pain to to use against Amber...”. I think when you chisel through everything, those words are the core truth to this entire case.
(Because that post above wasn't nearly long or detailed enough...
)
They married in Chicago in 2004, when she was 19, and after knowing each other for just 6 weeks. She hadn't graduated from high school, he was part-time college bound.
Fast forward to the fall of 2011. They had just moved from Missouri, where he'd finished college, to South Carolina, where he had landed a well-paying job with Intel. Jr. bought a trailer that was so delapidated that it took Senior days to make the bathroom usable, and so rural it took Senior days more to clear cut enough of the surrounding woods to create a semblance of a yard.
Jones senior insinuated Amber became enraged that Jr. had chosen a trailer instead of the great big beautiful house Amber was all along using him to nab, and that she "checked out" altogether because she didn't get what she wanted.
Jr. told his father he bought the trailer (and goats and chickens and a bevy of other creatures that needed tending) because he had always dreamt about homesteading. In reality, Jr spent his days away from his "homestead," working at Intel. Amber's world ended at the treeline a few yards from the largely uninhabitable trailer's front door. She didn't have a driver's license, and in fact, had never learned how to drive. Moving to that trailer isolated her still further, and made her absolutely dependent upon Jr.
When they moved into the trailer in 2011, after 7 years of marriage, Amber had already given birth to 3 babies (ages 3, 4, and 5), had months earlier suffered a miscarriage, and was pregnant again.
Three babies and one on the way; living in a trailer that was only made habitable in small increments, with work seemingly only performed by Tim Senior during his occasional visits; no family or friends in the state; still no HS degree and no prospect of obtaining one; a work history of unskilled service work that had ended 7 years prior; and the chief thread connecting all these pieces: a controlling husband who demanded her utter submission to him.
Junior became suspicious that she was cheating on him. Maybe she was, maybe she wasn't at that point, but the 19 year old boy she did become involved with by the time divorce proceedings had been initiated lived "next door," where, as DSS noted, approvingly, on several visits in fall 2011, Amber frequently took her babies because Jr.'s trailer was too unsafe for her to care for them there.
DSS notes indicate Amber & Jr had separated by April 2012, and that Jr. began seeing the therapist who thought him so admirable on May 3. On May 29, 2012 Amber reported to the DSS that Jr. had assaulted her the prior weekend (perhaps when he also threatened to "snap her neck"). DSS advised her to file a police report and to take the babies with her to a battered women's shelter. Their notes indicate that Amber "said she didn't want to do that ".
They filed for divorce on June 7, 2012. Amber still had custody of all her babies, but Jr. took the oldest 3 anyway, to his father's home in Mississippi.
On June 11, 2012, Jr. walked into the trailer on an unannounced "visit." He found the 19 year old "boy" there (same age as both Jr. and Amber when they married), and, outrageously, imo, his ammunition to use against Amber over custody.
Amber spoke to DSS again on June 18, 2012.
She told them that Jr. had taken her babies out of state, to live with Senior. DSS advised her to call the police, to hire an attorney, and to go to a battered women's shelter for safety.
Amber (or her mother) left a message for DSS on June 26, 2012, telling them that Amber had gone to Mississippi to get her children but was told : "they ain't getting them loose."
Jr. gained temporary custody of all 4 babies on July 30, 2012, via what DSS described as an "open child protection services case by way of a temporary order in a private case. "
South Carolina's DSS tried to contact Mississippi DSS in August, 2012 "but received no response"; they closed Amber's case in October without trying again, following up, or providing her any referrals/assistance/support.
Bottom line: Amber wanted her babies. She did not relinquish them voluntarily- they were taken from her. Jr. had the money & family support to hire an attorney, buy a therapist, and to keep the babies away from her in another state.
She had.....nothing, and by October 2012, not even the sporadic "support" of DSS.
((No wonder she sued the DSS in 2016-- did she win?? And everlasting shame on those in the legal system who made her forfeit her babies at all, much less for "committing adultery," much less to a
with a felony record who kidnapped the babies, then took them out of state to be "cared for" by a grandfather with a felony record and a record of long-term spousal abuse)).
I can't imagine what their lives must have been like. So sad.
