Lakota school board members in court over request for protection order

LIBERTY TOWNSHIP, Ohio – Two Lakota school board members were in court Friday morning as one seeks a civil stalking protection order against the other.

Isaac Adi and Darbi Boddy campaigned together in the fall of 2021 but now the relationship "has deteriorated to the point that Ms. Boddy is extremely aggressive toward me and has become very confrontational,” Adi wrote in his Aug. 16 petition to the court for protection.

After a four hour hearing, Butler County Magistrate Matthew Reed did not issue a decision. He said he would put out a written one at a later date.

“I am disappointed there was no order issued today but I understand that the magistrate wants to review the evidence and take the matter under advisement, which is normal for the court to do,” said Adi’s attorney, Robert Lyons, who also is a part-time judge in one of Butler County’s three area courts.

Boddy’s attorney, Robert Croskery, said:

“We respectfully await the court’s ruling but believe the petition calling Darbi a 'stalker' for questioning Isaac Adi’s votes and for going to board meetings and gathering information for her constituents borders on frivolous. Had Magistrate Reed seen the need for a protective order, we suspect he would have issued warning instructions from the bench. We have great confidence that the correct decision, as well as the morally right one, is in favor of Darbi Boddy.”

Adi, Boddy, board chairwoman Lynda O’Connor, board member Julie Shaffer and Assistant Superintendent Stacy Maney all took the stand and gave sworn testimony.

Boddy was the only one to testify in her defense; O’Connor, Shaffer and Maney all testified for Adi.

Adi alleged in his request for the protection order that Boddy is verbally attacking and confronting him in a growing “bullying” pattern that has become “harassing” to the extent he feels “threatened” and suffers “anxiety.”

“With Ms. Boddy’s aggressive and threatening behavior, I do not feel safe with her around me,” Adi wrote in a page-long document attached to his petition describing why he believes she would cause him “physical harm or cause or has caused (him) mental distress.”

He’s also concerned because he says she has indicated several times she carries a gun.

“While I am a strong believer and supporter of the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and I do have a concealed carry permit, I feel even more uncomfortable with Ms. Boddy’s aggression when it is my belief that she is carrying a firearm,” he wrote.

On the stand Friday, however, Adi said he was not trying to take away her gun rights. Adi testified Friday about two additional incidents: Stress over social media posts became so bad that he was taken to the hospital because his body was shutting down. He said he was in the hospital for three days and two nights and submitted a medical bill to the court.

Adi’s petition asks the court to order Boddy not to:

• abuse him “by harming, attempting to harm, threatening, following, stalking, harassing or contacting” him.

• enter his residence, school, business, place of employment, child care providers or daycare centers, including the buildings, grounds and parking lots at those locations.

• possess, use, carry or obtain any deadly weapon, firearms, and ammunition.

A Butler County Common Pleas Court magistrate held an emergency ex parte hearing the same day Adi’s petition was filed to consider immediately granting the protection order, court records show.

The magistrate denied it, writing in her Aug. 16 court entry that Adi “failed to present evidence that an ex parte order is necessary for (his) safety and protection from immediate and present danger” according to Ohio law.

The magistrate scheduled a full hearing on the matter for Aug. 30 so both sides could present their cases.

That hearing was delayed until Tuesday when it was rescheduled again, this time for Friday.

“By intimidation and bullying, she’s been making Mr. Adi’s life miserable,” Lyons told FOX19 NOW in an interview earlier this week.

“There’s been a lot of anxiety and stress because of her actions and nobody should have to put up with that. I don’t believe she is going to stop that so that is we are asking the court to get involved. Mr. Adi is just a very kind caring and gentle person. he’s not going to lash out at a woman. it’s just not his culture. That’s not how he reacts. It’s really sad he’s had to endure this. We are just hoping he can get some relief from her aggression.”

Croskery, Boddy's attorney, rejected that in a statement to FOX19 NOW:

“This attempt by one Lakota School Board member to silence a fellow Board member, Darbi Boddy, who has called him out for his hypocrisy, is a sad reflection, on the local level, of the same abuse of the legal system we see on the national level.

“This is the latest in a string of frivolous attacks, misleading leaks, falsehoods, and slanders against her for speaking conservative truths. Darbi will continue to do the job she was elected to do, protecting Lakota’s parents’ and children’s rights.”

Adi: Boddy sent 'bullying' text messages

Adi’s request for the protection order says his relationship with Boddy turned sour after they had "confrontational" phone calls and she sent “bullying” text messages to him right after they were elected to the school board, from Nov. 16, 2021, through Jan. 8, 2022.

“While these texts do not seem threatening on their own face, it was how the bullying started,” he wrote, “as these texts come after confrontational phone calls to me from Ms. Boddy. After the confrontational telephone calls from Ms. Boddy, for which she apologized, I decided not to communicate with her, so to avoid conflict.

“While we still had to have contact during school board meetings, I tried to limit my contact with her.”

Copies of the text messages showing her apologies are attached to his request for the civil protection order.

“Issac, I apologize for the way I handled the conversation yesterday,” one reads.”I did not understand what you where (sic) trying to accomplish. I thought you where (sic) agreeing w/the other side. Now I realize what you were doing.

“I do understand the other side. We have been dealing with them for over 2 years. I get where you’re coming from though. Hope you have a great weekend and I will let you know how our conversation goes with Matt (Miller, Lakota’s superintendent at the time.)”

Adi says Boddy verbally attacked him at conservative education conference in Florida

Then, in April of this year, Adi continued in his request for the civil protection order, Boddy “was abusive towards me” three separate times in front of groups of people during a leadership conference they both attended in Florida in April.

Their attendance at the “Learn Right: Education Leaders Summit” hosted by the Leadership Institute in Sarasota, Florida, was sponsored by the Lakota school board, according to court records.

Adi attached an email outlining the incidents that he sent to the Leadership Institute shortly after the conference, which he said he attended for training, because it described “Ms. Boddy’s harassing confrontations at the conference that led to my anxiety and concern for my safety. Also attached, is an email to me from another conference attendee, confirming Ms. Boddy’s actions.

“At all three attacks on me at the conference, Ms. Boddy was loud, rude and made numerous false statements about me. Most concerning was her falsely accusing me, in front of the group, of supporting and protecting a pedophile.

“Ms. Boddy’s attacks on me at the Leadership Institute conference had nothing to do with the conference topics. She just took advantage of having a microphone to publicly demean and insult me with her lies.”

In his email to the Leadership Institute, he wrote that he repeatedly went to security during the conference for help after she yelled false allegations out at him, including once when “she grabbed the microphone from the presenters and publicly again harassed me and abused my integrity.”

But, he wrote, it did no good, even when he went to the police: “Nothing happened to her, nobody defended me from this individual who openly abuse(d) my integrity.”

Another educator who attended the conference, Melody Bolduc, lead teacher, founder and CEO of Keys Educational Resource Center in Jacksonville, Florida, wrote an email to Adi on June 23.

Her email documented that she attended the conference, met him there and recorded some of one of his alleged encounters with Boddy after a speaker finished a presentation and was taking questions.

“Rather than ask a relevant question, this blonde woman who was otherwise strikingly beautiful and professional in appearance unleashed an sic) verbal assault on Mr. Adi that she read directly off her cell phone,” Bolduc wrote.

“She accused him of not being a conservative and of supporting and protecting a pedophile, along with a litany of other things. She pointed at him backwards (sic) across the table. Mr. Adi was just a few rows behind me and a few seats over, and I saw the look on his face and was just so grieved over how sad he looked."

Bolduc wrote that she approached Adi after the session and apologized for the woman’s rudeness and that nothing was done by the hosts.

"I was shocked to learn that she sits beside him on the Lakota School Board," she wrote. "I looked them up on the website for the district and was able to identify the woman as Darbi Boddy. This is not the behavior becoming of an education leader or a public figure. Isaac shared with me that she had done this three times that day, which is harassment, pure and simple. Whether it is slanderous would have to be determined by those who know Mr. Adi better than I do."

Adi cites June confrontation in request for protection order

The third and final incident Adi cites with his protection order request is one that resulted in Boddy filing an assault report against him with the Butler County Sheriff’s Office on June 13 as they left a school board executive session, according to an incident report.

The sheriff’s office presented the case to the Butler County Prosecutor’s Office, who determined “it didn’t meet the elements of assault, so we closed it out,” Lt. Joe Fuller said.

Boddy reported Adi told her "your brain is empty" as they were leaving an executive school board meeting last month. She then started recording him on her phone, and he slapped her hand away.

When Boddy posted the video to Facebook, she wrote: “At least twice now Isaac Adi has assaulted someone for merely attempting to record what he is saying to them. I’m posting this because I think it’s important to expose abusive people like this contemporaneously when possible.”

Adi recalled the incident differently in his civil protection order request:

“As I was leaving the building Ms. Boddy came back into the building and aggressively got into my face. I tried to walk away from her and leave the building. As I was walking out the door with my back towards her, I turned around to make sure the door would not hit her. At that time, she put her cell phone in my face and demanded that I answer her questions while she was recording the event. I then left the building and went to my car. (This encounter was recorded),” he wrote. “Ms. Boddy posted information about the occurrence on social media and contacted the (media)."

Lyons said Adi would have requested the protection order sooner than two months after that encounter, but Adi was out of the country in Africa.

However, two days after Adi filed his court papers seeking the order, Lyons said Boddy was confrontational with Adi again at a school board meeting, asking why he left the room, recording and challenging him when she had “no business” to do so.

This report was provided by Enquirer media partner Fox19.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Ohio school board member seeks protection order against fellow member