Before we get going, let’s do a minor CONTENT WARNING. I am going to talk about alleged sex crimes. It will not be graphic, but we are going to talk about it. So, if you don’t want that kind of discussion — and there are many good and understandable reasons not to — you might want to click away.
In any case, strap yourselves in, this is going to be a long one.
One of the things I really hate is when politics drives people’s perception of the facts in a controversy. I remember Bill Clinton being asked in the 1992 campaign if he believed Clarence Thomas or Anita Hill, and him pretending to be serious about it and eventually saying he believed Hill. My eyes just about rolled out of my head. It was obvious that he said that purely because Thomas was conservative and Clinton was not.
A few years later, I watched when members of the Duke Lacrosse Team were accused of rape and thousands of people declared that they were certain they were guilty. I remember at the time hearing the arguments and saying, ‘how can you pretend to know what happened there? I’m not saying they are innocent, but I don’t know how anyone can say they know they are definitely guilty.’ Naturally I felt vindicated when they were actually proven innocent — not just acquitted but proven innocent. I was also frankly shocked when Durham County (NC) District Attorney Michael Nifong was actually disbarred over his conduct in that case.
The Duke Lacrosse case highlighted one of the worst aspects of politicized justice: People have to decide immediately that they know the truth, when they really don’t know enough to prudently draw a conclusion. Like, I don’t know if the Cornell 7 committed a gang rape or not, and I get irritated when people declare based on so little evidence that they are guilty or innocent. That’s not to say that they don’t enjoy a presumption of innocence, or that there is no evidence pointing toward guilt or innocence, just that we really don’t know enough to know one way or the other. And thus, the presumption of innocence kicks in, even if presuming that everyone is innocent is somewhat contradictory.
So, I want to take a moment to look into the Amy Acton/Donna Arthur dispute, and bring to you my perspective as a person who has worked as a lawyer in family law cases.
Before I begin, let me start with a ‘war story,' to try to get you to see where I am coming from. I will clean out enough details that you won’t know who was actually involved in the case, or even my role (there are more roles a person can play in such a case than just being an attorney for one of the parties), because I have to protect their confidentiality, but I can tell you this.
I know of one case where a woman was doing a visitation exchange with the sister of the baby’s father (the father wasn’t in the picture at the moment — long story). Let’s call that sister ‘Jane,’ and the mother ‘Sally.’ The names are being changed to protect the innocent and the guilty. Typically, these exchanges are done in public places. The parking lot of a police station is one popular spot — very good if you are concerned that one party or the other might get violent. A random McDonald’s is another popular choice — just about every kid likes a meal at MickeyD’s and there is often a small playground, too. That’s where the parties did the exchange in this case.
Suddenly, at a new hearing, a witness came forward. She said she was at the same McDonald’s during the exchange and, while she was there, Sally solicited drugs from her.
And, it turns out that the witness was Jane’s cousin. But she totally didn’t have any idea that Sally and Jane would be doing a visitation exchange that day! She just happened to be there and, Sally, who had no prior history of drug use, just happened to ask a random stranger for drugs while doing the exchange.
So it was pretty obvious that this was a complete set up and this witness was lying. And, thankfully, the judge saw it the same way.
Or here’s another story that I heard, second hand. It’s a little long, but trust me, I am going somewhere with this.
A woman was beaten by her husband on a regular basis. Let’s call her Jill and him Dave. Of course, once again I am changing the names. At the time it happened, she had a 3-year-old daughter and a son on the way.
She decided to separate from her husband, but she had a hard time of it. I mean, she was able to physically leave, but she ended up being very poor, while trying to take care of her two kids. He kept the house and the only car, so she was starting with nothing. She tried to get a protective order but the court refused to issue one. He was making over $500,000 a year and was only giving her about $400 a month in child support.
Initially, Jill had custody of her children and they were divorced. Let’s call them Angela and Randy. But Dave still got visitation. And during visitation he did something particularly awful: While he was watching the kids, he would pump them for information about Jill, including about any men she might be seeing. This is frankly textbook controlling behavior by an abusive man. One time Angela admitted to Jill that she lied to Dave about Jill, in order to please him.
Years later, Jill met and married a new man. Let’s call him Bill. Bill had one piece of baggage he brought into the marriage. He had a daughter (with another woman) before he married Jill, and that daughter falsely accused him of rape. He was indicted and while the charges went nowhere, the accusation played havoc on his life.
Angela learned about that. She shared that with her father, Dave. At the same time, Dave was looking for a way to get custody of the children away from Jill. Bill had the kind of lawyer a man could afford when he makes $500,000 a year, and Jill couldn’t afford any. And then suddenly, Angela alleged that Bill had raped her, too. Jill knew Angela was lying — possibly being encouraged to do so by Dave. Angela even convinced a grand jury to indict Bill.
Jill got a loan from her family to hire a lawyer for Bill. Bill was scared because it was his word against this child’s, and if the girl made up the allegation, he had to worry if she or someone also falsified other evidence against him. There was no rape kit, no physical evidence, no third-party witnesses to the act, but he was afraid of evidence being manufactured against him. His lawyer told him that the best thing for him to do would be to leave the state for a while, let the issue die down and the charges would be dropped.
Jill faced an agonizing choice. Bill was definitely going to leave the state. She could stay, keep trying to fight her ex-husband — a man who made over $500,000 against a woman barely scraping by and now having a $10k debt over her head. She didn’t believe the system could work for a woman like her, being so poor. It broke her heart but she decided she couldn’t effectively fight an ex-husband with a slick lawyer and a daughter willing to lie on his behalf and so she left the state with her husband. And she hasn’t seen her daughter since.
Heartbreaking, huh? A true injustice, right?
It’s also a patented Aaron Walker head fake (trademark pending). You see, this is a slightly fictionalized version of Donna Arthur’s account of what happened between her and Ohio gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton. So don’t take what I wrote above as the gospel truth. First off, it’s only based on Donna Arthur’s story. Mrs. Arthur could be lying and you would be a fool not to at least consider the possibility. And second, I made up small parts of it, extrapolating from my experience to what might have reasonably happened based on what Mrs. Arthur said and my own experience in child custody/visitation cases and life in general. And a little later on, I will tell you exactly what I changed in the fictionalized version (besides the names, duh). And I will explain why I engaged in this entire exercise.
Recently, we covered how an absolutely brutal ad had been released in the Ohio gubernatorial race, against Amy Acton, the Democrat nominee. In it, Donna Arthur, Acton’s mother, basically said she was a liar, she needed help, and she was unfit to be governor. Just for reference, here is the ad again:
Well, boys, here it is, the October surprise. Amy Acton is cooked after this one. I wonder if the betting odds on Kalshi have adjusted to this yet because I’m about to throw some money down. I think we can safely say Vivek will be our next governor in the state of Ohio. pic.twitter.com/t8Uotv0Gxs
— Adam from Price Hill (@still_hustling) October 20, 2026
This drew sharp condemnation from the Acton camp. Acton has repeatedly claimed that her mother was a horrible person. For instance, an opinion piece in the Vindicator (you will see that name again), a Youngstown, Ohio, newspaper gives us a typical version of this account:
You people are vile Just to try to win a Governor’s officehttps://t.co/w0KQ4aOu7G
— Buford Callaway (@scst72268) October 20, 2026
From the piece:
Acton’s parents separated when she was just three, and in the decade that followed before reuniting with her father, she lived in a constant state of uncertainty. This included living in more than a dozen places in as many years across the country, some less desirable than others; she lived once in an unfinished basement, and even spent a winter in a tent. Only after abuse at the hands of one of her mother’s string of boyfriends did life for Acton finally start to turn around. Her father was granted full custody, and she’s never seen her mother again.
‘I have so many crazy stories. ... I spent so much time being scared as a kid, but also navigating the adult world,’ Amy said.
One guy finally hung around for marriage. That’s when Amy’s life got worse. She was between age 9 and 12.
The guy had accusations of molestation events in his past, she said. With his abuse of Amy, there was finally enough evidence that officials were called in and criminal charges were filed.
It was winter, and the family was living in a tent in a campground outside Youngstown.
‘I was lucky that it got bad enough, because it got me out of there.’
She was finally able to move in with her dad and his relatives.
That is her version of events.
But, as I alluded at the beginning, there is a radically different way of looking at these events if we bother to find and examine Mrs. Arthur’s version of events. We can’t get the perspective of Cledith Arthur, her second husband (the one who allegedly raped Mrs. Acton), because he is dead. And for that matter, Gerald Stearns, Acton’s father and Arthur’s ex-husband is not alive either, to give his story, including defending himself against charges of abuse. But we can find Mrs. Arthur’s version of events, beyond simply the ad I showed you a minute ago, in this article:
Why did Donna Arthur say in this interview that her and her husband have to leave the state after Amy’s accusation? Is fleeing prosecution something innocent people do?https://t.co/LlzGqk0P50
— IDONTKNOWYOU (@IDNTNOYU9999) October 20, 2026
From the article:
Donna met and married Jerry Stearns…
She is plainly referring to people by their nicknames, rather than their formal names. Back to the article:
… and they made their home in the Youngstown, Ohio, area. But it wasn’t long before he began physically abusing her.
Donna tried to report the domestic abuse she suffered, but at the time, prosecutors in Youngstown were reticent to prosecute such cases.
The family moved to Florida briefly, but Jerry couldn’t or wouldn’t find work. The last straw came one night when Donna asked Jerry about his employment situation. She was seven months pregnant with her son and Amy was just three years old. She claims he beat her in front of Amy, then went across the street to a bar. Donna said that night, she became like a ‘Mamma Bear.’ She put Amy to bed then walked across the street to the bar where Jerry was drinking. He and his friends began to laugh at her, so she hauled off and punched him. She described that act as completely out of character for her, having been raised a pacifist in the Brethren Church.
The family returned to Ohio and divorced soon after that. Amy was three and Donna was still pregnant with Amy’s brother.
‘I divorced him because he was violent. I was at a point where I was going to take my own life from what he was doing. It was a typical abuse situation. I was so isolated,’ Donna told Operation Rescue. ‘You don’t get the keys to the car. You don’t ever go anywhere. You don’t ever get any money. So, I went through all this, but I never said this stuff to my children.’
Donna described her ex-husband as a manipulative man who was constantly checking up on her to the point that she often felt she was being stalked. She tried to get a protective order against him, but the judge refused to grant her one.
Donna was a single mom for six or seven years. During that time, she insists they were never homeless, always had food to eat, and always paid her bills. Instead of living in 18 different locations, Donna says there were only four different homes until she married her second husband, Bud, after which there were two more moves.
She was a student during at least part of that time, and was pursuing an education so she could have a career and a better life for herself and her children, who she described as the ‘center of my life.’
After her graduation with a degree in psychology, Donna said her first job was with Children and Family Services, where she worked with abused women and pushed for prosecutions. It was between the tumultuous years of 1969-1971. She claimed she tried to write about the subject of violence against women for the Vindicator, the Youngstown newspaper, but at that time they were not interested in covering the subject. Instead, she met a Black woman whose husband was on the Board of the NAACP at the time and published a newspaper for the Black Community. Donna said that paper published a couple of her articles.
…
Despite the divorce and spousal abuse, Donna said that Jerry had visitation rights and would take Amy and her brother for overnight stays. At that time, Donna says Jerry had a good job and was making six figures per year, but only paid $40 per month per child in support. She suspected that Jerry had some connections with people of influence who helped him to avoid higher payments.
During the overnights, Jerry would question Amy about various things, including her mom. According to Donna, even when Amy was a young child, her ex-husband would ask Amy ‘if she ever saw her mother in bed with another guy.’
‘It was horrible!’ Donna said. She tried to help Amy understand that she did not have to answer such questions.
Donna claimed that Jerry tried to manipulate Amy by buying her things when she was cooperative and not allow her to have things when she was not cooperative. Often, according to her mother, Amy would cry when confessing that she had lied under her father’s questioning.
Finally, when Amy was 12, she accused Donna’s husband, Bud of raping her. Apparently, Bud had a daughter from a previous marriage that had earlier made similar unfounded claims. It is possible that this and suggestions made by her father gave Amy the idea for making that particular accusation.
There was a grand jury investigation and Amy was called to testify. Donna had gone to court that day to support her husband. She was never personally accused or charged with any crime.
There are two accounts of what happened when Amy came out of the grand jury room.
Acton has claimed that she went to kiss her mother, but her mother turned away from her.
Donna claims that she was surprised to see Amy with a new haircut and wearing an outfit that seemed to be not age appropriate for a 12-year old. As Amy come out of the grand jury room, Donna called to her daughter, but Amy turned and went to her father instead.
It was the last time Donna would ever see her daughter.
Donna borrowed $10,000 from her father and hired an attorney who recommended that she and Bud move away for awhile until things could calm down and charges could be dropped. A search of Mahoning County court cases shows there is no record of any criminal charges ever having been filed against Donna or her husband in Mahoning County.
It has pained Donna to read her daughter’s account of their lives together in the news, but she believes that Amy was taught at an early age by her ex-husband, who passed away in 2015, that lies would get her what she wanted in life.
Much, but not all of this account can be heard directly from Mrs. Arthur’s mouth in recordings posted on the Operation Rescue website, if you choose to go there.
I will also note that the National Review has claimed to find some court records that Operation Rescue didn’t:
NEW: Following the release of an ad in which her mother, Donna Arthur, attacks her, court records obtained by @NRO confirm key parts of Amy Acton’s personal history, including that she was sexually abused by her stepfather while Arthur was married to him https://t.co/6UGIxBMK7G
— Charles Hilu (@charleshilu73) October 20, 2026
From the article:
While Donna Arthur was married to Cledith Arthur in 1978 when Acton was 12 years old, Cledith Arthur was charged with having sexual contact with her, documents show. Evidence against him included a sworn statement from Acton’s biological father, and Acton herself was called to testify as a witness. Following his indictment by a grand jury, Cledith Arthur skipped town.
And this might bear on our examination of the facts:
Donna Arthur also has her own criminal history, including pleading guilty to theft by deception while living in Pennsylvania in the 1990s and being accused of animal abuse as recently as 2021.
I don’t find the animal abuse allegation terribly interesting because there is no meat on those bones. I have no idea what she is alleged to have done or if there is any proof. The fact she was accused rather than ‘convicted’ or even ‘found liable in a civil suit’ means it could be basically nothing. For instance, maybe she accidentally ran over a squirrel and someone accused her of doing it on purpose. I’m not saying that this is the truth: I am giving an example of a relatively benign explanation for how a person could be accused of animal abuse. On the other hand, for all I know, she could be actually guilty of Michael Vick type behavior. But really, without more information, I can’t really say whether or how it reflects on Mrs. Arthur.
But on the other hand, pleading guilty to ‘theft by deception’ does give us a bit more to chew on. Again, I am not sure specifically what she is alleged to have done, except that deception — if not outright lying — is involved. I looked up the statute and it says pretty much what you would guess. The statute does not literally require a lie, but covers things like when a person ‘creates or reinforces a false impression, including false impressions as to law, value, intention or other state of mind[.]’ This was supposedly committed in the 1990’s, the Operation Rescue article was published in 2020, so there is a minimum of twenty years between her statements today and this conviction. You can decide for yourself how much it reflects on her credibility.
And let me clean this up by telling you what I changed in the fictionalized version of events.
First off, most basically this is Mrs. Arthur’s version of events. I pretended it was the truth, when in fact I don’t know if it is the truth. Naturally, I changed the money from 1970’s money to today’s money. For instance, Arthur claims her ex was making six figures a year. If we assume Mr. Stearns was only making a hundred thousand dollars a year — the minimum you have to make to be able to say you are making ‘six figures — that translates to a bit more than half a million in today’s money.
In the fictionalized version, my stand in for Mrs. Arthur had to leave the house behind and Stearns retained it, as well as their only car. I don’t know that this happened but it is extremely typical of a woman leaving an abusive man to find herself in that position, especially back then. Today, courts are better about helping a woman get support if she is leaving an abusive man. It is frankly easier to get a restraining order, and judges routinely grant the victim possession of the house and a car, and even a temporary order providing spousal support and/or child support that is a bit more than the 1970’s equivalent of about $200 a month per child. I regularly tell people that divorce is a financial disaster and for that reason, you should never enter into it lightly. This is a concrete example how it can be such a financial disaster, and, if you believe Mrs. Arthur’s allegations against Mr. Stearns, an example of where divorce was quite necessary.
I also wrote that Angela, my fictionalized version of Mrs. Acton, knew about the prior allegations against Mr. Arthur and how much it disrupted his life. First, I don’t know that the prior allegations disrupted his life at all. It could have. I would even go as far as to say it usually would. But I don’t know that the prior allegations disrupted his life at all, let alone whether his step daughter knew about the disruption. Also Mrs. Arthur’s account strongly suggests that Acton knew about the prior allegations. But there is enough wiggle room in her account that Acton might not have known — even if you take everything Arthur said as gospel. So, the part where I imagined that Angela definitely knew about the prior allegations and how it disrupted Mr. Arthur’s life is fiction, but a reasonable possibility based on the facts we do know.
I also wrote that there was an indictment of Mr. Arthur. That isn’t in Mrs. Arthur’s account, but several news outlets claim to have located reports of the indictment of Mr. Arthur for ‘incest’ in 1974, and people reasonably assume it is related to the allegations his biological daughter made. I say in my fictionalized version of Mrs. Acton’s account that the charges went nowhere. While we don’t know how the case was disposed of, the charges apparently did go away, most likely dismissed by the prosecution.
In terms of the custody battle, I don’t know that Gerald Stearns (Acton’s biological father) hired the kind of lawyer that you can afford on his six-figure salary as I said in the fictional version, but it seems pretty logical to assume he would hire a lawyer and get a pretty good one. I said that Mrs. Arthur didn’t have a lawyer, but I don’t know that for sure. But by all evidence, she was very poor at the time and therefore, she seemed unlikely to be able to afford a lawyer.
I talked about Mr. Arthur (as ‘Bill’) being very scared because he was innocent and felt he was being framed. It is scary to know someone is trying to frame you for a crime, but I don’t know Bill felt that fear. I don’t know that ‘There was no rape kit, no physical evidence, no third-party witnesses to the alleged act[.]’ But I haven’t heard anyone claim that this kind of evidence existed, either, and I tend to think if that evidence existed, we would have heard of it by now. And of course, I don’t know that Mrs. Arthur had felt despair, believing that that she couldn't beat her husband in court. But it is a reasonable surmise. Sometimes people have a strong case and they decide to give in anyway — sometimes even based on irrational pessimism. And I am not sure her pessimism was irrational back then.
And let’s not forget this was over 50 years ago. Society wasn’t as supportive of women who were abused back then, as suggested by a lot of what I just wrote. And somewhat contradictory to Acton’s claim that women always won custody battles back then, Ohio had actually made it illegal to discriminate between men and women in custody and visitation decisions by that time. To be fair to Acton, that doesn’t mean that judges always followed the law — I have seen many cases where judges in custody/visitation cases have directly disobeyed the law to do what they subjectively thought was right (not to mention in non-domestic cases). So just because it was illegal, didn’t mean it didn’t happen. But it is worth remembering it was illegal.
And you might ask reasonably, why I created a fictionalized version of Mrs. Arthur’s version of events.
I have observed over time that very often the first person to speak in a dispute is presumed to be right. And that is what this is: A dispute. The assumption that the first to speak is right is a bias and a very common one. Mrs. Acton has been able to speak first for many people. I wanted to give Mrs. Arthur a chance to speak first. But if I said it was Donna Arthur’s account from the outset, then anyone who had already heard Mrs. Acton’s version of events would immediately have their back up. I wanted you to hear Mrs. Arthur’s story as if you never heard Acton’s version first, to put them on more equal ground. Hopefully my little exercise accomplished that.
And, to square the circle, the first “war story” I told was 100 percent genuine, and my point in sharing it is to give you some sense of the absolutely awful and underhanded behavior that routinely occurs in custody/visitation disputes. In Virginia, and every other American jurisdiction I am aware of, most of what happens in relation to domestic relations is private. This goes against the grain of how justice usually works in America — normally courts and cases are open to the public — but considering how many personal and embarrassing details come up in these cases, not to mention how often children are involved, you can at least see the logic in making these cases private. But the price of privacy is that people just don’t know what goes on in those cases, and I wanted to give you a sample of the absolute nastiness that happens in this area of the law. If you think no father would ever convince his child to make absolutely horrible and false accusations to gain the upper hand in trying to get custody, you are naïve. And, on some level, I envy your naivety. Part of me wishes I didn't know this.
While I am cleaning up, let me address four other arguments that are often made about this case, and while I think they don’t prove very much.
The first is people keep assuming that because a person was indicted, that is some evidence of guilt.
Actual lawyers know this is bogus. We have a saying: ‘A prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich.’ What it means is that a person can be indicted on ridiculously weak evidence.
Another 'war story' might illustrate this point. I once represented a man who did a friend a favor and let her teenage daughter hold a party in his house. He did his best to ensure none of the kids had any access to alcohol and were overall very safe. But, unfortunately, the fact there was a party at his home got out on social media and some kids showed up uninvited and drunk, bringing their own alcohol. They were all apparently underage. My client was literally in the process of throwing them out as trespassers, when the cops arrived. The cops charged him with contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
At trial, the prosecution presented nothing more than the testimony of the arresting officer and rested its case. That testimony amounted to nothing more than that the officer found drunk minors on his property. I moved for what is called ‘striking the evidence.’ It is a way of saying that the prosecution hasn’t even offered evidence to fulfil every element of the crime, let alone proof. Like if they accused a person of murder, without providing evidence that a person died — not just no proof, but no evidence. The judge agreed, stating that there was literally no evidence that my client had any intent to allow children to get drunk on his property. This is without my client giving his side of the story — the prosecution’s case was that lame. Therefore, the case was dismissed.
So, to review, the prosecution went forward with the case, even though I tried to convince them to voluntarily dismiss it, and they didn’t even have evidence on a crucial element necessary to prove a crime. That kind of experience — it was far from the only example — is why truthfully, it is meaningless it is to me when a person is merely ‘charged’ with a crime, including several high-profile Democrats who have been charged since Trump took office. All it tells me is there is going to be a trial, but I don’t assume guilt — not even a little bit. I can be convinced by other evidence, but I don’t assume guilt based on an indictment or any other charging document.
And, incidentally, something like that seems to have happened with Mr. Arthur. I was arguing about the case, and one person brought this up to try to prove something or other about him:
— Paladin_MG (@MgPaladin) October 23, 2026
Now, the screenshots are real. I verified them myself. On the other hand, I can’t verify that this is the same guy — for all I know, for instance, his middle name is actually ‘Milhous.’ Still, I don’t know about you, but I literally never even heard of Cledith as a proper name before this controversy exploded and, well, what are the chances that there are two Cledith Arthur’s in Pennsylvania at roughly the same time frame? So, I will presume it’s the same guy, while being open to being proven wrong.
But what does it actually show? Well, it shows he was charged with theft by deception and conspiracy. And it shows that the charges were dismissed on a demurrer. According to the second screenshot, the defendant missed the hearing. But the judge, on his or her own motion, dismissed the case.
And frankly, a demurrer is the easiest kind of motion to survive. It means that the judge found that the prosecution failed to even allege that a crime occurred. The prosecution wasn’t required to provide any evidence, let alone proof. They just had to allege what happened in enough detail for the judge to determine that, if they proved the allegations, that a crime occurred. And they couldn’t even do that. It’s another example of how I just don’t place any value at all on someone being charged, indicted or anything like that, and you shouldn’t, either.
Second, another point often made is ‘but he fled.’
The courts have dealt for centuries with the phenomenon of fugitives. I tend to assume this has been a problem as long as there has been criminal trials. And court have recognized that innocent people sometimes flee.
This is not just a guess. Via the National Exoneration Registry, we get the story of Harold Buntin. Mr. Buntin was accused of rape and robbery of a woman. They don’t name the alleged victim. Before the third day of the trial, he fled and lived under a fake name for years until he was caught and extradited to stand trial again. I presume the judge had him held without bail, this time. In any case, he ended up being convicted of both charges in 1994. But after that, DNA analysis positively exonerated him of the rape: It was not his genetic material in the victim. (And she seems like she was genuinely a victim, just that he was not the perpetrator.) By implication, it exonerated him of the robbery and he was eventually released from prison in the early 2000s. Indiana ultimately gave him over $500,000 in compensation for his time in prison.
So innocent people will run. And courts didn’t need DNA evidence to figure that out — they figured that out ages ago. That is why the rule is, in every jurisdiction I am aware of, that the fact a person fled is treated as some evidence of guilt, but it’s not treated as a confession or otherwise conclusive proof of guilt.
(And you can still be convicted for essentially being a fugitive. Richard Kimble could have easily gone to prison if The Fugitive happened in real life.)
And it is worth noting that Ohio didn’t seem very interested in finding him. The man wasn’t having to hide out constantly. He lived a sedentary life in Pennsylvania until the day he died.
Third, I will address the claim that a girl like Acton wouldn’t lie about rape at that age. It’s ‘believe all women’ 2.0, only now it’s believe all children, or maybe only if they are girls. (They are not clear on this point.) A few people have claimed that a 12-year-old doesn’t even know enough about sex to make up such a lie. That claim is especially strange coming from people who belong to a party pushing for sex ed to be taught to increasingly young children.
Still, it is an objective fact that children do lie about this sort of thing, even at that age. For instance, The National Registry of Exonerations shares the story of Marshall Moreno. He was convicted of aggravated sexual assault and two counts of indecency with a child, committed against a girl only identified as ‘A.M.’ in their article. The same girl later admitted when she was 33 years old that she lied and that led to his release from prison. She first made the allegation when she was 10 years old — two years younger than Acton was when she first made her allegation against Mr. Arthur — with A.M. originally claiming the crime occurred just before her eighth birthday. It is sad that it happens — you really wish that children could be more innocent — but it happens.
Fourth, many people think she must be a bad mother because she lost custody. The first problem with that argument is that it appears she primarily lost custody because she stopped fighting. Second, the ugly truth is the difference in wealth alone would lead many judges to transfer custody for that reason alone, especially back then. Naturally, that is screwed up, in my opinion, but it’s reality. So her losing custody doesn’t mean that much to me.
On the subject of cleaning up, there is another perspective to consider: The brother, Philip Stearns. I wasn’t very impressed official campaign statements on paper, but now he has shot an ad pushing back against what Mrs. Arthur said.
I will make a few observations about that ad. First, he was literally not even born when his parents first separated and was, therefore, about nine years old at the time Amy Acton accused her stepfather of rape.
He claims — for the first time I am aware of — that his stepfather abused both him and his sister. I had not previously seen allegations of abuse against him. Now, maybe he wanted to stay out of the limelight, and asked his sister to limit any public discussion of abuse to her abuse, because he didn’t want to talk about it publicly and that is perfectly normal. So, if these allegations are new, that doesn’t necessarily hurt his credibility.
And he is frustratingly vague about what he even means by abuse. I have seen people claim that cruel words are abuse. And more traditionally people refer to sexual abuse as ‘abuse’ or mere physical abuse (without a sexual component) as abuse, too. If I was interviewing him, I would want him to clarify. Having helped women in physically abusive situations, I prefer to reserve the term for physical and/or sexual abuse, but that isn’t how the rest of the world talks.
And we can’t rule out the possibility that he has an incentive to lie today, in 2026. Now, I want to be clear, I have no evidence that Philip Stearns ever did anything wrong in his life, let alone that he lied about anything. But it is a true observation that very often the families of a politician suddenly start to get rich when a person takes office, Hunter Biden being one of the more prominent examples. Again, Philip could be an actual Catholic monk for all I know about him, but as a class of people, you can’t discount the possibility that if someone in his family became governor, he might be able to clean up. Or he might be hoping for other benefits. Think of that what you may.
Personally, I would like to see him speak in a lot more detail about things. This comes off as a summary and sometimes when you get into detail, the evidence gets stronger. But sometimes, when you get into detail, the evidence falls apart. I have seen both happen.
In any case, that gets us all the perspectives that exist, as far as I am aware.
So... who is right? Who is wrong? Because this is a politicized matter of fact and law, we are all expected to speak with absolute certainty about who is right and wrong. But the truth is, I don’t know. I don’t think anyone can rationally say they know. This was about fifty years ago and what Acton is alleging is a crime that typically occurs in private, making it often a matter of he said, she said. And the thing with evidence, is that it typically doesn’t get better with time. I mean, famously there is at least one exception: If DNA evidence is properly preserved, it can easily be useful today, when it wasn’t several decades ago. But, otherwise, evidence tends to get worse as time goes on: Memories fade, witnesses die, documents and other physical evidence get lost, and so on. An accused might have a perfect alibi witness who unfortunately kicked the bucket, and naturally this can happen to the prosecution’s witnesses as well. More specifically to this case, the man Acton is accusing is dead, and so is the man Arthur is accusing. Mr. Arthur might have had a solid alibi at the relevant time, but all necessary witnesses are dead, now, and the knowledge he even had an alibi died with him. Or if he could be brought back to life to answer five questions, a la Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, he might have admitted he did everything Mrs. Acton accused him of and begged for forgiveness. And I can say pretty much the same thing about Gerald Stearns. We will never know how these men might have defended themselves, or even if they would have.
So, I think we just don’t know what the truth is. Maybe new evidence will come to light that will make us able to answer the question, and there is certainly evidence on both sides. And I am not expecting proof beyond a reasonable doubt. But I require more evidence than I have seen right now, before I can draw a conclusion one way or the other.
But I wanted to get across to you that I consider both versions of events — the Acton story and the Arthur story — to both be very plausible stories. Acton would have you believe she had been raped by her stepfather and her mother sided with the rapist. There are, unfortunately, mothers who would knowingly side with such a person over their own daughters. It’s horrifying and I can’t imagine that mindset, but it does happen. Likewise, I have seen parents — especially abusive ones, like Gerald Stearns allegedly was — manipulate children into telling the most horrible lies to gain an advantage in child custody cases.
And here’s a third, plausible scenario: They are both telling the truth. Acton really was raped, and her mother genuinely thinks she is lying about it, and that resulted in the breakdown of the relationship. And of course, the question is how reasonable the mother would be in that scenario. Was the evidence so clear that she could only believe her husband was innocent if she is actively deluding herself, or did she have good reason to doubt her daughter? And so far, we have no idea which is the truth. And again, that is only a hypothesis based on what has been said about this situation.
On a related note, I want to address one other issue: The ‘ick’ factor. There are a number of people who think that Vivek Ramaswamy should not have run the ad at all, because they see it as unseemly. They are free to believe that, but I don’t follow the logic.
Amy Acton has been trashing her mother for years. She used her story of abuse to help her politically.
Should anyone be shocked that her mother emerged and shot back?
If Acton didn’t want to talk about what happened when she was younger, she shouldn’t have brought it up.
And I am not saying that Acton is wrong to have spoken out. Whether she is right or wrong, depends on whether or not she is telling the truth, and you already know I don’t know what the truth is. But if you accuse someone of wrongdoing, truthfully or not, you should expect that person to push back. I have found myself in situations where I talked to the press about a person’s wrongdoing and I fully expected them to speak to the person I was accusing and get his side of the story. It’s how mature adults approach disputes: You listen to both sides and try your best to figure out who is right. And you expect others to do the same, even if you are in the dispute and you know you are right, as I did.
A related objection is that Mrs. Arthur shouldn’t have come forward in an attack ad for her political opponent. This is rich coming from the people who amplify Mary Trump's greivances against the President on a regular basis. But Mrs. Arthur did come forward in a different and quieter way, through Operation Rescue, and apparently her claims were ignored until the attack ad came out. The truth is the mainstream media was never going to give her side of the story any attention unless she did something dramatic such as that ad.
And of course, how you feel about the ad depends very much on what you think the truth is. If you think Mrs. Acton was telling the truth, then this is just the latest example of Mrs. Arthur being a crappy mother at best. But if you think that Mrs. Arthur is telling the truth, then she is providing voters with important information they deserved to hear.
And you know what I am going to say. I don’t know about the underlying truth, therefore I can’t judge whether her tactics in getting her version of the story out was righteous or vile.
Finally, I have been getting a lot of flack for saying pretty much what I just said in this piece on Twitter/X: I don’t know who is right, there is a possibility that the mother is right and Acton is wrong, and we should hear both sides before we judge. This in particular caught the ire of a man named Alex Furlin who apparently writes for The Onion, and he got very, very mad at me, writing for instance that:
@thefurlinator I ask you again for proof that the man committed that crime, let alone that her mother knew he did. Do you think you can provide it this time? To be fair I know I’m tearing you away from writing those hilarious jokes at the onion. How’s your readership these days?
— (((Aaron Walker))) (@AaronWorthing) October 22, 2026
That led to him writing perhaps the funniest thing anyone from The Onion has written in nearly a decade:
Don’t need proof, I believe her.
— wife supremacist (@thefurlinator) October 22, 2026
‘Don’t need proof, I believe her.’ Doesn’t that about sum the Left’s approach to justice these days? And even though there are two women in this story, ‘her’ obviously only refers to the Democrat.
Where does Amy Acton’s mom fall on the believe-all-women spectrum?
— John Ocasio-Rodham Nolte (@NolteNC) October 20, 2026
That’s (D)ifferent, John. You know that.
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