An oft-embattled Lakota Local Schools board member may not be able to attend school board meetings after another board member filed a civil protection order against her.
According to a press release from Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones, the protection order was filed against Darbi Boddy by fellow school board member Isaac Adi. The protection order, filed because Adi alleged Boddy was stalking him, prevents Boddy from going within 500 feet of Adi or attending school events where Adi is present until September 2025.
Jones also released a letter penned to him by Butler County Prosecutor Michael Gmoser, which advises that Jones should arrest Boddy if she violates the protection order at any point.
Being a school board member does not create an exception to the protection order, which also prohibits Boddy from entering Adi's place of employment, like a school board meeting, Gmoser wrote.
"We have both become aware ... (Boddy) is under the belief that the court order issued by a court magistrate is not effective until the expiration of a 10 day appeal period," reads the letter. "Further, it has been reported that (Boddy) does not intend to follow the order during such appeal time and expects therefore to be arrested and pursue all available rights based on such arrest."
Despite Boddy's apparent claims that the order is not enforceable until a 10-day window has passed, Gmoser told Jones this was incorrect and that any violation at any point following the issuance of the order should trigger an arrest.
"From the media reports, (Boddy) intends to rely on the advice of another to violate the terms of the order and she does so at her own risk of arrest, unless stayed by the court or the order is reversed on any appeal that may be filed," Gmoser wrote in the letter dated Sept. 21. "Hopefully, whoever is advising her not to follow the order as it now stands and subject her arrest will revise the wrong advice given."
The 10-day appeal window does exist, Gmoser wrote, but that window does not also mean the order is not in effect at that same time. He called it "common sense" that a stalking case should not give the person the order is filed against a full 10 days in which they could continue to stalk or contact a victim.
The order was issued by the Butler County Common Pleas Court after evidence in the case was presented before a judge. The order itself says Adi filed the request for the protection order after Boddy's actions caused him distress that resulted in hospitalization.
The order says Boddy, despite two investigations that revealed nothing, continued to claim Adi was in support of a pedophile, calling him out in various public spaces.
According to the order, Boddy called Adi out during an April conference in Florida before "reading from a prepared statement to a crowd, which on at least two of those occasions consisted of 200 to 300 attendees."
One of those instances happened during a question and answer session at the conference, "which based on the evidence submitted was no an appropriate time to do so," the protection order says.
Another incident happened in June after a meeting with other school board members. The order says Boddy followed Adi after a meeting and filmed him at close quarters while expressing she was upset about derogatory remarks about her.
Then, in August, after Adi had already filed for the protection order, Boddy began filming Adi again, while asking him about why he stepped out of a committee hearing to take a work-related call, the order says.
"There will be no preferred treatment no matter your elected position, if you violate a civil protection order, you will be arrested on site," reads a quote attributed to both Jones and Gmoser in the sheriff's office's press release.
Lakota officials said they will review the protection order and make adjustments as needed.
Boddy said she plans to "continue to carry out my responsibilities as an elected board member."
Her attorney Robert Croskery called the case against Boddy flimsy and said it would likely be overturned on appeal. That appeal was officially filed on Friday.
"I was flabbergasted that the order was granted to start with," Croskery said.
He worried the judge's order would disenfranchise the concerns of the 8,418 voters who elected her in 2021.
"While it is couched under the terms of a protective order, what it really is is an order to shut up Darbi Boddy — to keep her from being at a school board meeting to represent the conservative philosophy she was elected to espouse," Croskery said.
When asked about Gmoser's reference to reports Boddy would violate the terms of the protective order and allusions that council had advised her to do so, Croskery said "I would love to tell you what my legal advice to Ms. Boddy is. That would violate attorney-client privilege so you'll have to stand on what I've said so far which is that I'm a strong believer in the law, and that Ms. Boddy is a strong believer in doing the right thing in representing her constituents."
Boddy has been a controversial member of the Lakota Local Schools board for some time. In the last year and a half, she has been issued a trespassing notice for entering a school property without being properly authorized to do so, posted a link to a pornographic site on her Facebook that she claimed had been the result of "a typo" and compared the district's suicide prevention and mental health groups to the Salem witch trials.
In addition, Boddy has waged war on many programs and student-led organizations within Lakota Local Schools and proposed rules in an attempt to ban transgender students from playing girls' sports and using bathrooms that align with their gender identity.
Boddy's role as school board member has even had an impact on staffing within the school district. The district's previous superintendent, Matt Miller, wrote a letter to the board of education in January to explain that his recent resignation was a result of "the increasingly hostile work environment caused by Ms. Boddy."
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