Rosie O’Donnell’s adopted daughter leaves to live with birth mother
Well, she wasn’t home very long.
Less than three weeks after she ran away, Rosie O’Donnell’s adopted daughter Chelsea has bolted again.
“Chelsea made a decision when she turned 18 that she wanted to go to her birth mother,” said O’Donnell spokeswoman Cindi Berger. “This was her choice.”
As a 17-year-old, Chelsea ran away from her home in Nyack, New York, on August 11. She was found a week later and 100 miles away in Barnegat, New Jersey.
Chelsea, now 18, was found in a home with Steven Sheerer, a 25-year-old man who has been arrested on charges of distribution of obscenity to a minor and endangering the welfare of a child, authorities said.
Sheerer was picked up Friday after investigators examined Chelsea’s cell phone, according to a statement from Ocean County Prosecutor Joseph Coronato.
On the phone, police found evidence of “inappropriate communications over the last several weeks between Sheerer and the minor,” the statement said.
Chelsea told authorities she went to the house voluntarily.
A computer and other digital equipment were seized as part of the investigation, according to the statement.
Sheerer is being held in the Ocean County Jail, with bail set at $40,000, the statement said. A judge ordered that he have no contact with the girl or her family.
Each third-degree count against Sheerer carries a possible penalty of five years in prison.
At the time Chelsea left home, O’Donnell said in a statement on her website that she had stopped taking medication for an undisclosed mental illness and “is in need of medical attention,” the statement said.
“Chelsea, like millions of people, lives with mental illness,” Berger said while the teenager was still missing.
CNN’s Christie Bear, Ray Sanchez, David Shortell, Emanuella Grinberg, Sarah Jorgensen, Alexandra Field, Greg Botelho and Carolyn Sung contributed to this report.
