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Harmony Montgomery’s Father Allegedly Once Told Relative He Gave The Girl A Black Eye After He ‘Bashed Her’ Around The House
Adam Montgomery's uncle told police he had seen him use "abusive discipline" in the past that had "raised concerns" including spanking his daughter Harmony, forcing her to stand in the corner for hours and making her use her toothbrush to clean the toilet.
Harmony Montgomery’s father once allegedly told a relative he gave the missing girl a black eye after he “bashed her” around the house, shortly before she disappeared, according to a redacted affidavit in the case obtained by Oxygen.com.
Harmony hasn’t been seen since 2019, but was never officially reported missing until two years later. The young girl’s father, Adam Montgomery, 31, was taken into custody Tuesday by Manchester Police in connection with his daughter’s disappearance, but new disturbing allegations are now emerging about past violence within her New Hampshire home before she vanished.
Adam’s uncle Kevin Montgomery told police he had not seen Harmony since “late 2019” and recounted one instance in July of that year when he returned home from a trip to Florida and found Harmony had “a black eye,” according to the affidavit.
According to Kevin’s account, Adam said he had given his daughter—who was just 5-years-old at the time—the black eye as punishment after he had asked her to watch her baby brother while he went to the bathroom. The baby started to cry while he was gone and Adam told his uncle he returned to find Harmony “holding her hand over the child’s mouth to stop him from crying” and hit her in the face.
“I bashed her around this house,” Adam told his uncle, according to the report.
Kevin told police he had also observed “other forms of abusive discipline” around the same time that had “raised concerns,” including seeing Harmony being “spanked hard on the butt” and “being forced to stand in the corner for hours,” the affidavit states.
In another instance, police said Kevin told them that Adam had forced Harmony to scrub the toilet with her toothbrush.
Adam’s brother Michael Montgomery also told police that the last time he had seen Harmony and Adam he had “concerns that Adam was physically abusive” toward his daughter, according to the court documents. He described Adam as being “super short” with Harmony.
The child wasn’t reported missing until November of 2021 when Harmony’s mother, Crystal Sorey, called the Manchester Police Department to report that she hadn’t seen her daughter in a long time.
An official investigation was launched on Dec. 27 after officials from the New Hampshire Division for Children, Youth and Families reported that they had been unable to find Harmony.
Sorey told police that she had last spoken to her daughter around Easter of 2019 on a video call and recalled her daughter seeming “frightened.”
Sorey lost custody of the child to the state of Massachusetts in July of 2018 as a result of substance abuse problems—which she alleged Adam had also struggled with.
She regained sobriety and later tried to find her daughter but told police that Adam and his wife Kayla Montgomery “had blocked all communication” from her.
“Crystal said over the years she made attempts to locate the child by contacting various schools, and driving by addresses associated with Adam, but was unable to make any progress,” investigators wrote.
When police spoke with Kayla Montgomery, she told authorities the last time she had seen Harmony was in November or December of 2019, according to the affidavit. She told police she remembered seeing Harmony one morning before work and said Adam told her he was driving the child back to her mother in Lowell, Massachusetts. Kayla told authorities she “never saw, or heard about” Harmony again.
On Thursday, the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office announced that Kayla, 31, had been arrested and charged with welfare fraud for allegedly collecting $1,500 in food stamps from December of 2019 to June of 2021 designated for Harmony. Authorities have alleged that Kayla failed to remove Harmony from the family’s account even though the child was no longer living with the family.
Police said Kayla told them that she had seen Harmony with a black eye before but she believed at the time that Harmony had gotten the injury after one of three children she shared with Adam had hit Harmony in the eye with a toy, according to the affidavit.
She told police she not seen Adam since October of 2021. She said he had been living in a sober living house before he left to go to Maine to live with another woman, identified by police as girlfriend Kelsey Smalls.
Police found both Adam and Smalls sleeping in a vehicle together in Manchester on Dec. 31, police said.
Smalls reportedly told police she had been romantically involved with Adam for more than a year and knew he had four children; however, he was not in touch with any of his children, according to the affidavit.
Police also spoke with Adam about his daughter’s whereabouts. He initially told authorities his daughter “was fine” and he had seen her somewhat recently, but later said he had not seen his daughter since Sorey had come to pick her up in New Hampshire around Thanksgiving of 2019.
Police said Adam stopped answering questions on several occasions, saying “I have nothing else to say.”
Sorey has adamantly denied that she ever took custody of Harmony at that time and her boyfriend, who she was living with at the time, told police the child never came to live with them at any point up until present day and that he had never met her.
In another discussion with investigators, Adam refused to provide any details about his daughter’s whereabouts and told police, “If I’m not under arrest, I’m leaving.”
Adam was taken into custody Tuesday and charged with felony second-degree assault, a misdemeanor charge of interference with custody and two misdemeanor charges of endangering the welfare of a child in connection with Harmony’s disappearance, according to a statement from police.
Investigators continue to search for the missing girl.
“I am in rescue mode right now. This is not a recovery. All efforts are focused on that Harmony is alive ... until somebody points to me that proves that she is not,” Manchester Police Chief Allen Aldenberg said Monday according to The Daily Beast. “We have to operate under the assumption that she is alive.”
