CLEVELAND, OH – In 2020 Donna Arthur was interviewed by an organization called Operation Rescue where she called her daughter, Amy Acton, a liar. Her mother said they were not homeless. They did not move 18 times. They did not spend a winter in a Mahoning County park. She was not raped by her stepfather, Arthur’s husband, Cledith Arthur, who was 43 when it was supposed to have happened in 1978. https://www.operationrescue.org/ohio-health-directors-mother-comes-forward-to-set-the-record-straight-about-daughters-troubled-past/
Arthur said Amy, born Amy Stearns, was manipulated by a father, Jerry Stearns, who wanted custody of their two children. Stearn or Acton has a brother named Phillip Stearns. The last time Arthur saw her daughter, then aged 12, was in 1978 during her husband’s arraignment. Acton said she tried to kiss her, but she turned her head. Arthur has said that’s not what happened.
🚨 HER OWN MOTHER IS CALLING HER A LIAR — ON CAMERA!
Amy was three and her brother, Phillip, was 7 months old in his pregnant mother’s body when she said her husband, Jerry Stearns, took the family from Youngstown, Ohio to Florida while he looked for work. She told Operation Rescue writer Cheryl Sullenger Stearns had abused her in Youngstown, but male prosecutors during that era weren’t accepting complaints of spousal abuse from women.
Arthur told Sullenger Acton’s father’s abuse continued in Florida and grew worse. When he beat her in front of Amy and walked across the street to a bar. She put Amy to bed and later walked across the street to confront him at the bar because she felt like a “Momma bear.” He laughed at her in front of his friends, so she punched him and dumped him. At three, all of this personal history was unavailable to Acton’s mind.
Arthur told Sullenger she returned to Youngstown with Amy and Stearns followed. She divorced him, but he wouldn’t let go. She said his connections placed him into a six-figure income, so he ended up with visitation rights and paid $40 per week for child support.
According to Arthur, her ex-husband drilled their children, particularly Amy, who was older, on what was taking place in her household. He wanted to know if she was dating men, if they were entering the home, or sleeping in her bedroom, and Arthur said she told Amy those questions did not have to be answered.
According to the Amy Acton timeline, between the ages of three and 12, before she lived exclusively with her brother under the roof of her father Jerry Stearns, she lived with her mother for 9 years and an ex-husband with visitation rights looking for dirt. Why did he wait until they’d moved 18 times to obtain custody over 9 years if he had money and was connected? Why didn’t he snatch his two children when they were living in a Mahoning County park in a tent, and how did he not know?
What about Jerry Stearns’ parents, Amy’s grandparents during the 9 years she lived with her mother and moved 18 times? She’s said nothing about them stepping in or offering to take care of their wandering and homeless offspring.
I know people who drilled their children like Arthur told Sullenger her ex-husband did whenever they were in the homes of family members. They want the child to repeat conversations and remember what each person said. The child feels they have no choice. Events are manipulated into the parent’s interpretation and not what the child actually experienced. I’ve not seen that parental habit create a stable adult.
I published information from Acton’s Ohio Medical Board application and shared a link to Sullenger’s Operation Rescue story on August 6, 2020, after Acton resigned. I agree that the timing of Acton’s June 11, 2020 resignation came 8 days after Sullenger shared her mother’s words on June 3, 2020.
The media is not a place for personal therapy. Reporters are not therapists. A newspaper, television station, radio station, media or social media platform is not a place to share embarrassing family details.
Acton hasn’t seen her mother since 1978 when she was 12 years old, and her words have invalidated the last 48 years of her life. From her mother’s perspective she’s repeating her father’s bitter lines about her to reporters to make herself look like she is a hero who overcame personal challenges, all for political purposes.
Acton accused her stepfather, Cledith “Buddy” Lee Arthur, of rape at the age of 12 in 1978. Instead of standing before an Austintown, Ohio judge in the criminal division of the Mahoning County Court of Common Pleas, he and Arthur relocated to Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania where he died in 2004. Arthur built a quiet life there away from her two estranged children.
Arthur’s life was peaceful until Acton shitted all over her mother during interviews with reporters in 2020 about 18 moves, abuse and sleeping in a tent, and she has not stopped. Her daughter’s words invaded her privacy by casting her in a false light to the residents of Mechanicsburg and Youngstown who knew nothing about her two children.
I would argue Acton’s words have been disgustingly insensitive as they forced Arthur to discuss and relive a level of pain she had suppressed, especially knowing from her perspective that Acton was spreading lies about her, and that it was reaching her neighbors, coworkers and intrusive reporters and social media critics judging her life without knowing anything about it. She’s repeating in the only forum where she can defend herself the same information she shared with Operation Rescue’s Sullenger, which was Amy will make your life worse. We already know.
I don’t criticize Vivek Ganapathy Ramaswamy for giving Arthur “equal time.” Once media and social media platformers cast Arthur in the light Acton portrayed her, they accepted and repeated her story without question or concern for the “other side” and its one-sided effect on her mother. I think this aptly describes the “equal time” battle President Donald Trump is having with the Federal Communications Commission and broadcasters who think they own the airwaves.
Acton is being held responsible for her words by her mother. She can’t claim defamation because her mother is publicly responding to being defamed and cast in a false light. Acton’s words invaded her privacy. Ramaswamy gave her the equal time and the equal sized platform to respond. I’m okay with it.
Ramaswamy is not casting Acton in a false light with commercials that challenge her mental health and credibility. Democrats hid President Joseph Biden’s declined mental capabilities behind an autopen. Democrats I know who are attending events with Acton tell me the party knows she’s mentally defective, which is why they’re shielding her from the voters like they did Biden. They allowed her to be the only candidate for Ohio governor.
I’m not condemning Ramaswamy for giving Acton’s mother a chance to respond to her disrespectfully malicious daughter’s widely spread words. Exodus 20:12. “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.”
Ramaswamy has also given Acton’s daughter’s words an audience from her 911 call to police about Mom’s drunken stupor. Like daughter like daughter. This tragic gubernatorial candidate’s tragic story suggests she didn’t learn a mother’s love from Jerry Stearns.
Donna Arthur looks like she gives great hugs. Acton and her brother don’t know what they missed.
