Ambrose Seeks Forced Return of Teens in Rhode Island

Chris Ambrose has moved CT Superior Court to have an expedited hearing on motions for contempt against the mother of his three teenage children, Karen Riordan.

He claims Riordan is violating Judge Thomas O’Neill’s August 8th Orders of Protection concerning their three teenagers — Sawyer, 13, Matthew, 16, and Mia, 16.

Judge O’Neill’s restraining orders bar the mother from coming within 100 yards of her children and making any phone or email contact with them.

This required the teens to move out of the home they were living in with their mother.

Judge O”Neill never met or saw the children, but determined that Riordan engaged in a pattern of coercive control of the teenagers.

Earlier – on July 21, 2023, Judge Eddie Rodriguez denied Ambrose’s request to restrain the mother from seeing Mia. Then Rodriquez recused himself from the case.

That same day, Judge Gladys Nieves denied Ambrose’s motion for a restraining order on behalf of Mia (against her mother), and also denied Ambrose’s urgent request for the arrest of Riordan.

Judge Nieves

The case was then transferred to Judge Thomas O’Neill, who issued the restraining orders against the mother.

The teenage children claim Ambrose abuses them.

Ambrose claims he does not, but that the mother has such coercive control over the children that they lie about him, saying whatever she tells them to say.

At the two-day coercive control hearing before Judge O’Neill, Ambrose testified at length – often breaking down into tears – over his loss of his children and loneliness.

Chris Ambrose

The mother, Riordan, also testified, claiming Ambrose tried to coercively control the children and that they do not want to live with him.

The judge declined Riordan’s request to hear from the children.

All three teens have court-appointed attorneys, but Judge O’Neill declared their claims of abuse were the result of Riordan’s brainwashing.

Up until last week, the three teenagers lived with their mother.

Upon issuance of the restraining order, they moved out of their Madison home.

Based on the restraining order, the juvenile court dismissed the teens’ cases despite their attorneys’ arguments to have the children heard.

The teens continue to claim they want to live with their mother.

Ambrose, through his attorney Alexander Cuda, alleges that Matthew and Sawyer, after being barred from their mother, were required to come back to his home.

Matthew Ambrose, 16, with his mother, Karen Riordan. His father Chris Ambrose claims the teen is under her coercive control and cannot think for himself. Therefore, Matthew fails to realize that he is better off with his father than with his mother. 

Nothing in the order so requires that.

Neither teen chose to live with Ambrose, and he alleges the only reason they could escape the desire to be in his care is that Riordan exerted coercive control.

Cuda alleges Matthew, 16, and Sawyer, 13, went to stay with their maternal grandfather in Narragansett, Rhode Island – about 70 miles from their home in Madison.

Ambrose blames Riordan for coercively controlling Mia, who also declined to live with Ambrose.

On August 9, 2023, Mia was discharged from the hospital. Before leaving, CT DCF gave her the option of being released to her father or going to a juvenile detention center in Middletown, where she would become part of the foster care system under lockdown.

Mia left the hospital with her father. He had the Westbrook police there to attempt to force her to go home with him.

Mia refused. Police declined to subdue and handcuff the 16-year-old. She left to go to the home of a friend.

Ambrose alleges he expected Mia “would then return to [his] care.”

Instead, as Ambrose alleges, “Mia then disappeared from that [friend’s house] by the morning of August 10, 2023, and is now confirmed to be in Rhode Island with her siblings at Mr. Riordan’s residence.”

Ambrose calls the teenagers’ desire to be apart from him Riordan’s sole doing.

Attorney Cuda writes, “The Defendant has continued her pattern of coercive control – which is domestic violence under Connecticut statutes.”

Cuda, without evidence, adds that it was Riordan and not the teens themselves who found a way to get to their grandfather’s house.

Cuda states that “by [Riordan] sending the children to Rhode Island in an attempt to avoid the authority of the Court and frustrate implementation of its orders…  the Defendant is [continuing her]  abuse and interference with the children… so that the children do not return to the lawful care of the Plaintiff.”

Ambrose wants Riordan to “be found in willful contempt of the Court orders” and seeks:

1. That the minor children be returned immediately to the care of the Plaintiff.
2. That the Defendant be held in contempt.
3. Such ancillary and/or clarification orders as may be necessary related to the Orders of Protection to ensure the orderly return of the minor children to the care of the Plaintiff.
4. That the Defendant be sanctioned for her conduct.
5. That if the Defendant will still not comply, then the Plaintiff requests incarceration be considered by the Court as a sanction.

What Ambrose has not explained in his motion, and perhaps will explain in court, is how he can force three teens, who are determined not to live with him – whether coercively controlled or not – back into his home – whether he gets Riordan incarcerated or not.

The three have run away already, and if somehow they could be forced to return, nothing other than force can restrain them from leaving again.

Also complicating matters is that Judge Gladys Nieves on July 21, denied Amrbose’s application restraining Riordan from being with Mia. Based on the legal concept of res judicata, the restraining order against Mia is null and void as a matter of law. In fact the entire proceeding may be held invalid and all three restraining orders may be invalid based on material misrepresentations made to the court by attorney Cunha.

Riordan raised this issue with Judge O’Neill but Ambrose’s attorney, Cuda, misinformed the court and said the motion was never decided by Judge Nieves. This is a factual error, which records on file with the CT court demonstrate.

Stay tuned for more on this developing story.