Comedian and former talk show host Rosie O'Donnell has publicly acknowledged the arrest of her second adopted daughter, Chelsea Belle O'Donnell.
On September 17, the 27-year-old was charged with four felony counts, including drug trafficking, child neglect, possession of methamphetamine and possession of THC. At the time of the arrest, which occurred on September 10, In Touch Weekly reports that Chelsea's 11-month-old son, Atlas, was found in the home, which was pervaded with meth pipes, feces and garbage.
Chelsea called police to the scene during which she reportedly got into a verbal altercation with her boyfriend, Jacob Nelund. In addition, O'Donnell was handed misdemeanors of disorderly conduct/domestic abuse and possession of illegally obtained prescription drugs.
As the arrest surfaced online in the weeks since, Rosie O'Donnell reacted to unfortunate news on Instagram, sharing a picture of her daughter and grandson "from a better time."
"Sadly this is not new for our family - chelsea has struggled with drug addiction for a decade," O'Donnell wrote. "We r all hopeful she will find her way out of this deadly disease."
Along with her infant son, Chelsea has three older children; daughter Avery Lynn in February 2022, Riley in January 2021, and Skylar Rose in December 2018.
O'Donnell adopted Chelsea alongside her ex-wife, Kelli Carpenter, but both women had a troubled relationship with their daughter as she became older. In 2015, when she was 18, Chelsea reportedly ran away twice, once to be with her birth mother, and during a second incident, she was found with a 25-year-old man, Steven Sheerer, who was later charged with child welfare endangerment, per CNN. Chelsea would later deny that she ran away but was instead kicked out, per Daily Mail.
O'Donnell has four other adopted children, Parker, 29, Blake, 24, Vivenne, 21, and Dakota, 11. In a 2023 episode of The Kelly Clarkson Show, O'Donnell claimed that she was "too lenient" with her older children.
"I wanted to give them everything, my older ones, when I was a young mother in my early 30s," O'Donnell said around the 2-minute mark of the video below.
She continued, "And I come to find out now, as a 60-year-old mother of a 9-year-old that making the world smooth and without a bump for them doesn't serve them in adulthood. It really doesn't ,and I was much too much of a lenient mother with my older ones and too much in trying to repair my own childhood through mothering them."