Cher Addresses Allegation She Plotted to Kidnap Her Son

Cher is addressing allegations that she hired four men to kidnap her 47-year-old son, Elijah Blue Allman. The musical icon, 77, denied having contracted men to kidnap her younger son from a New York City hotel room after being accused of the apparent intervention in recently-surfaced divorce documents Allman’s estranged wife, Marieangela King, filed last December.

Cher told PEOPLE “that rumor is not true,” but declined to comment more directly. She did confirm, however, that the issue was a private family matter related to her son’s addiction issues. “I’m not suffering from any problem that millions of people in the United States aren’t,” Cher said of witnessing her son’s documented substance abuse issues. “I’m a mother. This is my job – one way or another, to try to help my children. You do anything for your children. Whenever you can help them, you just do it because that’s what being a mother is. But it’s joy, even with heartache – mostly, when you think of your children, you just smile and you love them, and you try to be there for them.” She continued, “I could fill a . . . I don’t even know, something gigantic with what I don’t know [about parenting]. I just keep trying.”

King alleged in court documents that Cher had hired four men to remove her son, whom she shared with the late Gregg Allman, from a hotel room where he was trying to “reconcile” his marriage. King claimed the two had spent “12 days alone together from November 18-November 30, in New York, working on [their] marriage” when four men arrived to remove Allman. One of those four men reportedly told King they had been hired by the “Believe” singer.

Allman has previously spoken about his addiction issues publicly, telling Entertainment Tonight in 2014 that he began using marijuana and ecstasy when he was around 11 years old before moving on to harder drugs like heroin and opiates. “I [was] just looking to escape all the things in my past and, that’s when you turn to those kind of drugs, you know heroin and opiates,” he said at the time, saying that he had been sober since 2008. “[Heroin] kind of saved me … If I didn’t have that at that point, I don’t know what I would have done …You may jump off a bridge. If you can only just go through that time period and live through it and then get help.”