An Arkansas man is standing by his wife after she allegedly staged the fake kidnapping of their mentally disabled daughter in what he says was a desperate attempt to teach her about the dangers of talking to strangers online.
The incident on Nov. 17 — which reportedly turned violent and left the couple’s daughter injured — has led to criminal charges against the girl’s mother, Tamara Hamby, according to reports from the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, the Southwest Times Record and local outlet KFSM.
“We tried everything,” Tamara’s husband and the girl’s adoptive father, Jeffrey Hamby, told KFSM.
Jeffrey said their daughter had been communicating in an online chat room with a man who claimed to be country singer Luke Bryan. The couple believed the person on the other end of the chatroom had plans to kidnap their daughter and that repeated attempts to get her to end the contact had failed. As a result, Jeffrey told KFSM, his wife allegedly came up with a plan to stage a mock abduction to scare their daughter into understanding the risk.
“He was going to get her. He was going to take her,” Jeffrey told KFSM about the online conversations. “And so, my wife, without my knowledge, with her aide and a couple of their friends, tried to do an intervention.”
Citing local police, the outlets reported that Tamara allegedly arranged for two men to grab their daughter and take her to a field, where she was tied to a tree and left there. The 22-year-old — who Jeffrey says has the mental capacity of an 11-year-old — was reportedly left with bruises on her wrist from the zip ties used to restrain her.
“If your own special-needs daughter, who has the mentality of an 11 year-old, has an auditory processing disorder, and is a tactile learner, becomes influenced by an online predator she believes is the well-known public figure Luke Bryan, and that predator tells her he’s coming to pick her up, and she wants to go with him, how do you teach her, someone with no concept or understanding of evil, that danger exists?” Jeffrey reportedly wrote on social media while trying to explain the incident, according to the Arkansas Democrat Gazette.
He continued: “After exhausting every possible avenue trying to prevent contact including pleading with three different law-enforcement agencies for help and receiving none, a caring parent would try to show her, in the safest and most controlled way possible, what real danger looks like in order to protect her from this predator.”
According to the Gazette, Tamara was arrested and charged with suspicion of kidnapping and first-degree endangering the welfare of an incompetent person. Her alleged accomplices — David Q. Quach, 26; Austria L. Nico, 22; and Shannon Jazmin Yvonne Childers, 27 — face the same charges. County jail records reviewed by the outlets show all four are no longer in custody.
Tamara is scheduled to appear in court on Dec. 10, the outlet reported.
“My wife is arrested for trying to do the right thing,” Jeffrey told KFSM, though he admitted her alleged plan was “ill-conceived” and “really poorly executed.”
“We couldn’t talk her into understanding that danger existed, and so we wanted to show her that evil does exist,” he added. “And now she’s in DHS custody, and my wife is facing jail time.”
