Catherine Areu Jones: Former Fox News guest 'Liberal Sherpa' accused of kidnapping and exploiting mother, 88

“Every incident of alleged elder exploitation or abuse touches our heart and never fails to shock us,” State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said. “It seems particularly harder to understand when the alleged perpetrator of the exploitation is a daughter, or a son or another blood relative,” she added.

Investigations into Jones' abuse of her mother began in 2019 after a report was received by state welfare investigators. In the press release, it was stated that Jones had received the elderly woman's home via a quit claim deed, a document which the victim denied ever signing. The report stated that Jones claimed other people had exploited her mother and that she had brain damage or dementia.

During the early 2000s, Jones was the publisher of Catalina magazine, which was “devoted to breaking stereotypes about Latinos in the United States.” Her Fox News bio, which is still available on the network website, also claims she served as a contributing editor for the Washington Post Magazine between 2000 and 2012.

She is a podcaster and a frequent liberal voice on Fox News, the influential right-wing cable network. A lawsuit was filed in July 2020 against Tucker Carlson, Ed Henry, Sean Hannity, and Howard Kurtz, who are some of the network's most prominent personalities. Jones, an unpaid guest on the network, accused the company of sexual harassment and a hostile working environment. Eventually, a judge dismissed the complaint, stating that as an unpaid guest, she had no legal standing.

A press release alleges that she placed her mother twice involuntarily in an assisted living facility in an effort to gain control of her mother's assets by using a revoked power of attorney. Jones, according to prosecutors, admitted her mother to a facility after convincing the woman she was going on an "ice cream outing" with her granddaughters, Jones' children, on the first occasion. In response to the mother's call for help, Jones told the facility to prohibit her from using a phone and allowing visitors, prosecutors said. During a second incident, she and her cohort are accused of dragging the elderly woman from her home and transporting her to another facility.

According to police, the woman's shoe was found in the driveway and the front door was open, causing alarmed neighbors to call the police. Ultimately, the elderly woman was released from both facilities after Florida Department of Children and families determined that she no longer needed to live there.