A South Carolina judge has ordered the arrest of former Survivor: China contestant Jaime Dugan Huffman after she allegedly vanished with her 16-year-old son, Harper Huffman, and failed to return him to his father following a weekend visit. Harper was last seen with his mother on August 30 in Cayce, South Carolina, and the FBI has since opened an investigation into where the pair might be.
According to the New York Post, citing a Daily Mail report, the FBI is investigating the disappearance of Dugan and her son after she did not hand Harper back over to his father, Erik Huffman, as required. Harper is now considered missing and endangered. Dugan, 41, rose to fame as a contestant on the 15th season of CBS's Survivor: China in 2007, and she has since built an online following of more than 70,000 under the influencer handle Charleston Blonde, per the same report.
A Contempt Order and a Call for Arrest
Spartanburg County Family Court Judge M. Todd Thigpen held Dugan in direct contempt on September 21, after finding that she had kept Harper from his father and missed subsequent court dates, per the Post's report. The judge ruled her absence from an in-person hearing on September 18 was willful — Dugan had instead joined an earlier emergency hearing remotely on September 15 but refused to reveal her and Harper's whereabouts, according to the report.
In response, Thigpen suspended Dugan's visitation rights, awarded Erik Huffman sole custody of Harper, and ordered Dugan to surrender her son's passport. The judge also directed that Dugan be jailed at the Spartanburg County Detention Center once she is taken into custody, and he called for her immediate arrest, the outlet reports.
Under South Carolina law, withholding a minor child in defiance of a custody order can carry serious criminal exposure. Per Justia Law, custodial interference involving a child under 16 is a felony punishable by up to five years in prison in South Carolina, though returning the child within three days of the violation can reduce the charge to a misdemeanor carrying up to three years.
Abuse Allegations Clash With Custody Defiance
Dugan has accused Erik Huffman of physical abuse and accused Harper's paternal grandmother of sexual abuse, reporting those allegations to law enforcement and the state's Department of Social Services, according to the Post's reporting. But Dugan reportedly refused to cooperate with investigators or make Harper available for an interview, and Judge Thigpen deemed the abuse allegations unfounded, ruling they were not an excuse for defying his custody orders. Erik Huffman has denied the allegations.
The couple's divorce was contentious well before this latest turn. In divorce court filings from May 2024, Dugan accused Erik Huffman of physical abuse, excessive alcohol consumption, marital infidelity, and attempted sexual assault during their 15-year marriage, according to The Mirror. Erik Huffman denied those allegations during the legal proceedings. The claims came months after Erik Huffman was arrested in January 2024 by Spartanburg police on a third-degree domestic violence charge stemming from an argument with Dugan over a phone at a convenience store, as reported by Us Weekly; police records noted that case was later administratively closed.
From Reality TV Romance to Eight-Day Trial
Dugan and Erik Huffman, now 45, met on national television during the 2007 premiere of Survivor: China, discovering they had grown up roughly 25 miles apart in South Carolina's Upstate region, per the Post's report. They married in Charleston in 2009, winning an $80,000 wedding courtesy of the Charleston Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, and welcomed Harper in 2010. Erik Huffman works as a physician assistant.
The marriage ended in 2024 following an eight-day divorce trial, which awarded Erik Huffman custody of Harper while granting Dugan every-other-weekend visitation, the outlet's reporting states. That arrangement held until Dugan allegedly failed to return Harper after a scheduled weekend visit two months ago.
Additional Legal Trouble Surfaced Before Disappearance
Dugan also faced a 2025 cyberstalking charge in Moore County, North Carolina, accused of repeatedly sending unwanted messages to one of Erik Huffman's friends; that charge was later dropped, according to the Post's reporting. Separately, Dugan has sought Chapter 13 bankruptcy protection in South Carolina federal court, reporting debts exceeding $509,000, per the same report.
Erik Huffman has pleaded for his son's safe return, saying he fears for Harper's safety, according to the outlet. Jonathan Lewis, who represented Dugan during her divorce, said she is considered innocent until proven guilty or liable through proper court proceedings and said he is praying for Harper's safe return and a resolution in the teenager's best interests, per the Post's report.
Why Family Abduction Cases Are Different
Cases like this one carry outsized weight in the missing-children system. Family abductions made up just 4.1% of all reported missing children cases in 2023 but accounted for 59% of all AMBER Alerts issued nationwide that year, according to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. Research published by the organization in late 2025 also found that family abduction cases carry the longest average duration of disappearance among all missing-children categories, at 326 days, compared to 61 days for runaways.
Federal involvement in parental abduction cases typically hinges on specific legal steps. For the FBI to assist using an Unlawful Flight to Avoid Prosecution warrant, state authorities must first establish probable cause of interstate flight, issue an outstanding state felony warrant, and agree to extradite and prosecute the abductor, according to the agency's own guidance.
