Marion Jones was sentenced to six months in prison for her use of drug enhancements, but during those six months, not once did she let her kids visit her. At the time that she was put behind bars in 2008, Jones had only two children — Monty was four, and Ahmir was less than a year old, per People. Despite these pivotal moments in her son’s lives, she didn’t want them to see her in jail, and there was a good reason why.
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In 2013, Jones revealed on OWN that her kids weren’t naive to the fact that she went to jail. She shared, “There have been a few times that I’ve heard them talking amongst themselves about, um, ‘Well, mom went to jail.'” Jones has taken this as an opportunity to teach her kids a lesson that she made a poor choice, and they shouldn’t do the same. During her jail time, Jones and her husband, Obadele Thompson, agreed not to have the kids visit her in prison. She explained, “I never wanted them to be comfortable in that setting … I would see other kids who would come to visit their mothers while in prison and how comfortable the kids looked there, and to me, I had a problem with that.” The track star believed if her kids felt comfortable visiting a prison at such a young age, what difference would it make if they got in legal trouble later down the road?
