Sophie Turner filed court documents today in New York asking the court to intervene to arrange “the immediate return of children wrongfully removed or wrongfully retained”. In her filing, she says that Joe Jonas is holding onto their daughters’ passports, preventing Sophie from travelling back to England with them. There’s now also more information, from Sophie’s perspective, about the backstory to their split.
According to Sophie, she and Joe agreed to make England their “forever home” in December. They sold their place in Miami and had relocated to England by April so that Sophie could start work on her new television series. She included details about the children’s activities there, establishing that for the last five months, until the Jonas Brothers tour started, that was the kids’ home. When the Jonas Brothers tour started in August, Sophie agreed “with hesitation” to have the children stay with Joe in North America because his schedule allowed for more time with them and that by September, once filming was over, they’d return to England.
But they got into a fight on August 15th, and that’s when Sophie says things escalated. Joe initiated divorce proceedings, and Sophie claims she only found out about that “through the media” which might be another thing that Sophie and Taylor Swift have in common because Taylor told us that Joe broke up with her on a phone call that lasted 27 seconds.
Apparently Sophie and Joe met up earlier this week to work things out but that’s when Joe supposedly told Sophie that he didn’t want the kids to be in England anymore and now, allegedly, won’t turn over the passports which brings us to today.
As for Joe’s side of the story? TMZ incoming. OF COURSE. Joe’s lawyers have released a statement saying that Sophie’s exaggerating the situation, that he’s concerned about violating a court order because he filed for divorce in Florida, and that he does not oppose the children being raised in both the UK and the US. The language in Joe’s statement suggests that they had come to an agreement, Joe thought it was all fine, and it's Sophie who’s now being unreasonable and blindsiding him with this recent filing and accusing him of blocking Sophie from being with their children. I haven’t seen any mention of the point about how Sophie found out that Joe was divorcing her – again, it was from the media.
So it’s a mess. And probably no one is 100% in the right or 100% in the wrong. And in the end, none of this is good for the kids.
But also it was messy from the start, with all that shady leaking that suggested that Sophie wasn’t around for her kids and that weird story about the Ring camera that, really, could have only come from those in Joe’s camp because there is no way Sophie would leak that sh-t about herself. The reason I bring this up is because women, even successful women like Sophie, are often at a disadvantage in these situations. Joe has more money, he has more resources, and if he was out here trying to lay the groundwork that she was an absent parent, for me anyway, through my lens, even though I’m not saying I agree that this is going so nuclear so publicly, I get if she might feel like she’s on defence and has to take it to this level. Because up to this point, if he’s been going to the media and if she’s finding out about his divorcing her through f-cking TMZ, in her mind she could be thinking that she has to blow it open to make sure he doesn’t continue controlling perception.
Going forward then? Maybe some assurances that nobody will be playing media games anymore. Shut this sh-t down and bring it all back behind closed doors. And stick to it.