Did Cher kidnap her own adult son? The allegations, explained

In a bizarre case of family drama gone awry, shocking accusations have swirled around pop singer icon Cher. But just where did these allegations come from and what do they say?

The entire affair involves Cher, her son, Elijah Blue Allman, and his estranged wife, Marie Angela King. Specifically, King leveled the accusation in a signed court declaration that Cher hired four men to “forcefully remove her son” from a New York hotel room on the night of Allman and King’s anniversary, according to Variety.

This court document was filed back on Dec. 4, 2022 in Los Angeles Superior Court but was only recently made public. It is but one piece of the couple’s ongoing divorce proceedings, which Allman first filed in Nov. 2021. The alleged kidnapping occurred one year after that, in Nov. 2022.

According to King’s filing, she and Allman had spent 12 days together by themselves in New York with the intention of working on their marriage. All of this occurred after Cher asked King to leave the family home. Then on Nov. 30, 2022, the marriage anniversary of King and Allman, that is when the kidnapping allegedly took place.

When the four men came into the couple’s hotel room, removing Allman in the process, King alleged one of them told her they “were hired by [Allman’s] mother.” She added, in the document filed in Dec. 2022, that she is unaware of her husband’s “wellbeing or whereabouts,” saying that she is “very concerned and worried about him.”

The statement concluded by saying King was told Allman is “currently in lockdown at a treatment facility,” whose location was not made available to her, with no access to a phone. Allman has publicly talked about his struggles with drug addiction in the past, including regularly going through periods of repeated recovery, the article said.