His parents

22 January 2021 · Their filing

Motion to intervene, and a complaint for visitation

Five months into their son's divorce, his parents moved to intervene in it as parties and filed a Complaint for Visitation under R.C. 3109.051, seeking court-ordered access to their two grandchildren. Both signed. The motion was notarised in Hamblen County, Tennessee, where they live.

They attached sixteen pages of photographs of the children to the filing. Those pages are not reproduced here.

His ex-wife filed a brief in opposition on 3 February 2021.

Motion No. 438024 · Horner v. Horner, No. DR-20-382383

22 September 2021 · Sworn statement

The same allegations, sworn, a year before the lawsuit

Kathy Hogarth Horner swore an affidavit in Hamblen County, Tennessee, and filed it into the divorce record. It makes many of the same allegations against Catherine and Allison Stark that a court later found defamatory when her son William Easton Horner published them. Those passages are redacted here.

The Starks sued him for defamation on 12 October 2022. On 26 February 2024 the court found he had defamed them by falsely stating that they had engaged in criminal conduct, and recorded that “there is no evidence that Plaintiffs have been charged or investigated by any local, state, or federal agency for criminal conduct.” It awarded them $907,002.13, which grew to $1,064,234.75 once attorneys' fees were fixed.

Kathy and William Dean Horner were not parties to that case. The court made no finding about anything either of them said.

Affidavit of Kathy H. Horner · Horner v. Horner, No. DR-20-382383 · findings in Stark v. Horner, No. CV-22-969917

See also. The judgment and what it was for, on the defamation page.

Exhibit A to the affidavit

Fifty-seven pages printed off the internet

The affidavit describes its exhibit as “Research documents relating to child alientation from family members” [sic] and cites it as authority. It is fifty-seven pages of web pages, printed with their URLs still in the headers.

• Nine pages of an article on “Divorce Related Malicious Mother Syndrome,” reprinted on a fathers'-rights website
• Nine pages from healthline.com, seven from liveabout.com, five from a blog called gagasisterhood.com, one from a Wix site
• Newspaper articles from the New York Times, the Irish Times and the Sun Herald
• A ScienceDirect abstract — the summary only, with no article behind it
• A page from Educaloi stating the law of Quebec, filed in an Ohio custody case

One item in the stack comes from a court-affiliated body: seven pages of Trends in State Courts, published by the National Center for State Courts.

The fifty-seven pages are not reproduced here.

Exhibit A to the Affidavit of Kathy H. Horner · No. DR-20-382383

In her affidavit · Sworn

She described not being allowed to see her grandchildren as elder abuse

Two of the numbered grounds in the affidavit read:

“6. Refusing to allow the paternal grandparents to have access to the grandchildren, which is a form of elder abuse
7. Refusing to contact the paternal grandparents on the health, safety, and welfare of the grandchildren, which is a form of elder abuse”

She returns to it later in the same document: “It has been almost two years since the paternal grandparents have seen or held their grandchildren. This is Elder Abuse.”

She repeated it on the disciplinary grievance form she filed against Judge Jones. Asked for the result of the court action, she wrote: “Abuse of biological father and elder abuse of paternal grandparents.”

Four of the fifty-seven pages she attached are an article headed “Is Grandparent Alienation Elder Abuse? Child Abuse?”

Affidavit of Kathy H. Horner and attached grievance form · Horner v. Horner, No. DR-20-382383

Their filing

She filed a disciplinary grievance against the judge hearing the case, then filed a copy into that judge's docket

Kathy Hogarth Horner completed a grievance form against Judge Tonya R. Jones, the judge presiding over her son's divorce and over the grandparents' own motion. She then attached a copy of it to her affidavit and filed it into the open record of that case.

The form she used carries the instruction on its face: “The Rules of the Supreme Court of Ohio require that investigations be confidential. Please keep confidential the fact that you are submitting this grievance.”

Her sworn affidavit, filed the same day, states that Judge Jones “showed prejudice” and asserts “a calculated and coordinated effort by the officials of the Cuyahoga County Judicial System.”

Grievance form, filed as pages 8–10 of the affidavit · No. DR-20-382383

See also. Her son's own campaign against the courts hearing his cases, in the chronology.

13 October 2021 · Judgment entry

Denied — on the ground that their own filings showed it

The court denied the motion to intervene. Its stated reason was the filings themselves:

“The Court further finds that the Defendant currently resides with paternal grandparents and that through filings with the Court, the paternal grandparents demonstrate a lack of understanding of Defendant's diagnosed mental health condition.”

The court further found that “it would be against the children's best interest to grant the motion to intervene,” and ordered court costs paid by the movants, William and Kathy Horner.

The motion had been pending for nearly nine months.

Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas, Division of Domestic Relations · Judge Tonya R. Jones · Horner v. Horner, No. DR-20-382383