Butler County State Rep. Sara Carruthers settles lawsuit over 'illegal' adoption agreement

State Rep. Sara Carruthers has settled a lawsuit filed by a woman who gave birth more than a decade ago to twins Carruthers adopted and who alleged the lawmaker breached their adoption agreement.

Court documents filed last month in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court say that “all issues have been amicably resolved.” Details of the settlement were not made public.

Jamie Robinson sued Carruthers in February 2019, just three months after the state representative was elected for the first time.

Carruthers, a Republican from Hamilton, is running for re-election this year.

The lawsuit alleged that Carruthers broke promises she made to Robinson before Robinson became pregnant with donor sperm that Carruthers provided – and then again in 2018 when Carruthers was running for office.

Documents filed in the case say Carruthers befriended Robinson in 2006 when she worked as a waitress at a restaurant in Hamilton, the Coach House Tavern, which Carruthers and her parents often visited.

The lawsuit said Carruthers, the daughter of wealthy Butler County philanthropists – her late father, Pat Carruthers, is related to the Procter family of Procter & Gamble – promised the woman a house as part of an “illegal adoption contract.”

Instead of going through a typical adoption process, the lawsuit says Carruthers hired attorneys to prepare a written agreement, although the home was not part of the written agreement.

At the time, Robinson had three children of her own but was “near destitute,” court documents say.

After living in the house for about a year, Robinson alleged that Carruthers and her parents forced out Robinson and her children with the threat of eviction in 2007.

When Carruthers ran for office 11 years later, in 2018, the lawsuit said her campaign reached out to Robinson. Consultants for the campaign had done opposition research, court documents say.

The lawsuit said Carruthers promised to make things right with Robinson, saying she would pay Robinson for the “loss she sustained” by not being given the home more than a decade before.

Court documents say Robinson recorded the call in which they talked about this.

In exchange, Robinson agreed to maintain public silence that she is the biological mother of Carruthers’ twin children.

But after Carruthers won the election in November 2018, Robinson's attorney said in court documents that Carruthers “rejected all requests to make good on the 2018 promise.”

“She went silent,” the documents say.

Carruthers' attorney said in court documents that Robinson tried to leverage the situation by threatening before the election to disclose the adoption agreement to the media and to Carruthers' campaign opponents.

Carruthers' attorney characterized it as an extortion attempt.

Robinson, the documents say, was "upset that she did not get paid for her role she played in 2006 regarding the adoptions. Now (she) wants her money."

Carruthers confirmed Tuesday that “the case has been resolved and dismissed.” She declined to comment further.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Butler County State Rep. Sara Carruthers settles adoption lawsuit