Mother says her son’s hateful ideology sickens her after he was arrested with alleged Patriot Front group
Jun 15, 2022, 10:01 PM | Updated: Jun 25, 2022, 8:52 pm
Police officers guard a group of men being arrested in Coeur d'Alene. (Credit: North Country Off Grid/Reuters)
(Credit: North Country Off Grid/Reuters)
(CNN) — Karen Amsden hoped that being arrested and accused of criminal conspiracy to riot would change her son’s heart. When he stood by his hateful views, she says she told him to get out of her house.
Jared Boyce was one of 31 men arrested in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, on Saturday as they gathered near a Pride parade. Police said they believed all are affiliated with or part of the White nationalist Patriot Front group and were planning to “antagonize and cause disorder,” according to a court filing.
Boyce, 27, posted bond, and went back to his home in Provo, Utah, his mother told CNN. It’s unclear whether he has entered a plea.
Asked by his mother whether he would talk to CNN, Boyce declined.
“When he came back from this weekend in Idaho, I was hoping after spending some time in jail that maybe this will be a wake-up call for him like to question, ‘What is this group that I’ve been involved [with], where’s this really getting me,'” she said.
But when she saw him, Amsden said her son stood by the group and its plans.
She said he told her, “We were there to prevent them from grooming children. We were doing what we thought was right.”
Her son had instead become more entrenched in a White nationalist group, she said. And that became a wake-up call for her and how she would be with her son, who had been living in her basement since his marriage broke up, she said.
“That’s when I said … you can’t live in my house and be doing this kind of stuff and putting this kind of hate out into the world and putting yourself in danger,” she told CNN of her confrontation with her son. “You need to move out of my house.”
Amsden said she did not know what else to do, having reached the end of her tether with her son. She said he was raised with love and had friends of different ethnicities and cultures before he became involved with extremists and started to spout their views.
“That’s not who I am and it makes me sick to listen to it and sicker to know that this is coming from my son,” she said.
Boyce is next scheduled to appear for an arraignment on the misdemeanor charge of criminal conspiracy in August, Idaho court records show.
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