Ed. Note: NOTE: A Go Fund Me Page has been established to help Karen Riordan and her three children, Mia, Matthew, and Sawyer, reunite and achieve justice. If it is within your means, please help this family.
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On August 8, Connecticut Superior Court Judge Thomas J. O’Neill issued restraining orders against a mother, Karen Riordan, forcing three teenage children – Mia (16), Matthew (16), and Sawyer (13) – out of their home.
The father brought the application for the restraining order on behalf of the teenagers – but against their wishes.
All three teens were adopted shortly after birth. The mother, Karen Riordan, raised them as a stay-at-home mother, leaving her full-time tenured position as a special education teacher, while the father was mainly absent working as a Hollywood screenwriter.
His career imploded in 2018 after allegations of plagiarism surfaced, and he returned to their Connecticut home and soon after, filed for divorce. Before he did, he changed the passwords on all the joint accounts and locked Riordan out of her half of the marital funds, as well as her own inheritance received before the marriage.
Ambrose was never required to submit a financial affidavit and got away with taking the entire marital assets as he left his ex-wife homeless.
The three teens remained under the primary care of their mother from infancy until three years ago, when the father, with ample money to pay family court professionals, won a shocking legal victory.
In 2020, Judge Jane Grossman flipped custody to Ambrose, alleging parental alienation.
Now, the new restraining order favoring the father, Christopher Ambrose, brought a payday for his attorney, Alexander Cuda, estimated to be around $25,000. Riordan could not afford an attorney and appeared pro se.
Judge O’Neill’s application of Jennifer’s Law to support the restraining order is perhaps precedent.
The law was named after Jennifer Dulos and Jennifer Mangano, both mothers involved in custody disputes whose husbands murdered them and then committed suicide.
The CT legislature intended the law to offer preemptive intervention in potentially dangerous domestic situations.
The restraining order against Riordan requires her to keep a distance of 100 yards from the three children –and have no phone or email contact with them.
No one has ever accused her of abuse or neglect of the teens. Nor has she ever been accused of violent behavior.
The basis of the restraining order is that Ambrose claims Riordan has exerted mind control over the teenagers, hypnotically forcing and/or intimidating them to lie about their father. The term of art is “coercive control.”
A recent photo of Matthew Ambrose, 16, and his mother Karen Riordan. The photo shows the teenager is large enough to not be physically intimidated by his 110 lb. mother. His father Christopher Ambrose instead alleges mind control.
Mia, Matthew, and Sawyer temporarily reside in Rhode Island with their maternal grandfather.
The abrupt upheaval in their lives via this restraining order is the second time CT Family Court has left them without their mother – their primary caretaker.
During the three years of Ambrose’s custody and control, they did not see their mother. Ambrose held them in his isolated rural home and insisted they could not see her or any of her family.
This year, they ran from Ambrose, and returned to their mother.
This month, after two days of hearings, Judge O’Neill, who refused to hear from the children and ignored allegations of sexual abuse made by Sawyer against his father, was persuaded that the mother coercively controlled Sawyer to allege abuse falsely.
Sawyer with his mother, Karen.
In a message posted to Frank Report, the biological mother of Sawyer, Tara Southern, brings new evidence that Sawyer, independent of his adopted mother, seeks protection against his father’s abuse.
This speaks against the adopted mother, Riordan, fabricating the abuse stories then brainwashing the children into alleging them.
Tara was responding to an anonymous comment on the story, Ambrose’s Attorney Withdraws, as National Media Outlet Looks at Ambrose CT Custody Case
The anonymous comment was directed at her: Karen has done nothing? Hahahahhaha. You’ve been fooled, Tara. And you are participating in the abusive manipulation of your bio son. Sad.
Here is Tara’s response:
By Tara Southern
Chris, you are a fool. There are so many things I want to say to you. And I know you wrote this absurd message because you said my name. Tara! And then referred to me as the biological mother. Who else knows that?
Let me explain something to you. I haven’t seen or spoken to Karen other than the few days in Utah when I met you and her at the hospital when Sawyer was born.
I met my biological son, Sawyer, when I was in Connecticut to file the petition on his behalf against you.
Sawyer and his biological mother together for the first time since his birth.
I picked him up, and we spent some time together. I called him and let him know that I did it. And that I was going to be there for a few days, and if he wanted to meet me, just to let me know. And he did.
But before that, I’ve been in touch with him through text and phone calls since the day he found me on Facebook with the help of his siblings. And that was about a year ago. He reached out to me because he needed help.
The day I got that message, there were so many emotions going through me. I was mad. I was sad because of the things he said were happening to him. I was happy (because I talked to the son that I gave up for adoption 13 years ago.) I was hurt. And so many more.
But I was willing to do anything I could to help him. So the more we talked, the more we got to know each other. And a relationship was created between a biological mother and son and a whole other family that he has never even met, that are willing to do anything we can to help him.
Biological mother and her son.
As far as Karen is concerned, I don’t know what you and her have going on and really don’t care. From everything I’ve been told, it all boils down to the fact that you are a conniving, sick person that adopted my son and then started sexually abusing him.
I would’ve never thought that the man I met in the hospital on the day that my son was delivered, the man that seemed like a good person, could’ve ever turned out to be so fake and vindictive.
But that’s what you do. You wrote for the television show Law and Order. So you know how to do it well.
I want to let you know that Sawyer is a part of my life now, whether you like it or not, and that I am going to do everything I possibly can to see that you are punished for all of your wrongdoings. And sooner or later, you will be.
God does not like ugly.
And there are things that I’ve done in my life that I’m not proud of. I’m almost positive that everyone has. But I’ve never done anything as evil as what you have done.
Chris Ambrose wants Sawyer home with him and away from his adopted mother and her family.
The adoption was open. You know it, Karen knows it, and I know it. Oh. And the adoption agency as well. Don’t think for one second that I did not notify them of this situation. And they are in the process of seeing what they can do to help. You are about to have a lot of people, new people, in your life. Not these same ones that keep giving you a slap on the wrist.
Adoption paperwork showing the adoption was open
I don’t care who you are, how much money you have, where you worked before, or even who you know, none of that bullshit matters. All that matters to me is Sawyer Elias. Remember that. Know that. Don’t forget that!
Tara Southern
Frank Report commentary:
Independent of Karen’s influence, Sawyer, while living with his father, a year ago, told his biological mother that Ambrose abused him.
Now, Ambrose is trying to force Sawyer back, using Jennifer’s Law, named after two women who alleged their husbands, the fathers of their children, abused them and their children.
In both cases, CT Family Court misidentified the father’s potential for abuse, as loads of money were thrown at family court professionals who profited by obfuscating the obscene abuse.
The irony in Ambrose v Riordan is stupendous and colossal in its potential to ruin, as it did in the cases of the late Jennifer Dulos and Jennifer Mangano.
Once again, the court is misidentifying the dangerous one (though he has the money). The irony is that this time it is done in the name of the slain women, Jennifer Dulos and Jennifer Mangano, as if their husbands were justified all along.
