‘Nobody checking on me': Matt Bevin's adopted son asks for financial assistance
The adopted son of former Kentucky governor Matt Bevin is asking to intervene in his parents' divorce case in hopes of obtaining the financial support he says his parents did not give him after they sent him to an abusive facility in Jamaica.
When Glenna Bevin, the former first lady, filed for divorce from the one-term governor in 2023, Jonah Bevin was 16 and living at Atlantis Leadership Academy in Jamaica. He was later held in the care of Jamaican child welfare services after they discovered facility staff were physically and emotionally abusive.
The Bevins have five biological children. Jonah is one of four children the Bevins adopted from Ethiopia.
'My parents didn't tell the court anything about my circumstances in Jamaica at all,' Jonah wrote of the divorce in an April 21 filing. 'They didn't try to include me or even check on how I was doing. It's like I was invisible to them. Despite the fact that I was a minor, there were no provisions in the divorce that related to my support. There were no plans made for me to come home, no real guardian, and nobody checking on me.
'I'm asking the court to let me be a part of this divorce case because what's happened in it has affected my life in huge ways, ways that have been ignored, twisted or just left out by my parents, Matt and Glenna Bevin.'
In a court hearing to weigh in on this request Monday, John Helmers, Jonah's attorney, said his client is seeking financial support until he can get his college diploma.
'There's an ongoing duty for the parties in this action to continue to contribute until (Jonah's) legal emancipation date,' Helmers said.
But Matt Bevin's attorney called this request a ploy to 'garner media attention and invoke outrage,' but said the love he has for Jonah is 'unshakable.'
Glenna also asked via her attorney that the court not to allow Jonah to intervene in the divorce case, saying in an April 18 filing, 'Glenna would like to make clear that she is very sad that it must be dealt with as it has. She loves her son Jonah and wants only the best for him. But she does not wish for her son to be able to debate parenting choices with her in court.'
This petition from Jonah — and his parents' respective responses to that request — is the latest in a public display of familial friction relationship between Jonah and the Bevins, who adopted him at the age of 5. The Bevins in 2023 sent Jonah to the behavioral health facility in Jamaica, where some staff were later arrested and criminally charged with abuse.
Jonah, who said he felt abandoned by the Bevins, was granted an emergency protective order in March against Matt and a restraining order against Glenna, after he said they pressured him in February, while providing few details, to board a flight to Ethiopia to meet family they'd otherwise told Jonah his whole life were dead, including his mother.
In 2023, Glenna filed for divorce, and it was finalized last month. That case has become inextricably wrapped up in the family court case involving Jonah. But the Bevins have asked a judge to keep their divorce settlement under confidential seal.
In a Monday afternoon hearing in the case, Matt Bevin's attorney, Jesse Mudd, said his client is not currently the governor, has been out of office for longer than the four years he served in office and therefore he and Glenna are 'private individuals.'
But Michael Abate, counsel for the Courier Journal who is arguing for the settlement to be kept public, disagreed.
'This is not your average case by any stretch of the imagination. The public interest prong weighs more heavily here than it would in a routine case,' he said. 'We have a former governor and first lady who made adoption (and) child care the center of their political platform and career. And now we've seen very serious allegations that they failed to provide for one of their minor adopted children.
'If an average family has to see the terms of their divorce decree in the court record, (the Bevins) are asking for special treatment, because they were political leaders.'
Helmers, Jonah's attorney, said his client is seeking financial compensation in part to help finish pay for his college education and to recoup his attorney's fees.
'There's an ongoing duty for the parties in this action to continue to contribute until (Jonah's) legal emancipation date,' Helmers said in the April 21 court hearing.
'I am seeking to have a word in the divorce because my parents abandoned me, both physically and financially,' Jonah wrote in a case filing. 'I am seeking the court's assistance for support and to allow me to complete my education.'
Both Glenna and Matt asked Judge Angela Johnson not to allow Jonah to intervene in their divorce, arguing there's no legal basis for it.
Mark Dobbins, Glenna's attorney, said Jonah's adoptive parents 'have spent more on Jonah probably than any of their children. We don't see any other children complaining to the court.'
Jonah 'has difficulties (but) this divorce case is not the place for Jonah's difficulties to be addressed.'
In addition to accusing Jonah and his attorneys of intending to 'garner media attention and invoke outrage,' Mudd said, 'the truth is entirely different, and it is heartbreaking to Matt to see his son being caught up in this web.'
Mudd wrote, 'Jonah is deeply loved by his entire family and has always been cared for emotional and financially to the best of his parents' ability, just as has been done for every single one of their children. When all the noise fades away and the circus has moved on, his family will still be there to whatever extent Jonah needs or wants, because that is what family means and that is what family does.'
Mudd added that the former Kentucky governor has 'unshakable love and commitment for his son.'
In another court filing, Jonah said it 'saddens my heart to hear my father say that he loves me and supports me when I had to sleep under 24/7 security because of the threats made against us (in Jamaica), or that my mother says that she is sad about what happened.
'Where was the love that my parents said they had for me? Because they didn't show it when they left and ignored me. Other parents came and got their kids. My parents either lied or left out the truth over and over. Because of that, I've been on my own. The court can't just let this go like it didn't happen. I'm not just a name on paper, I'm a real person,' Jonah said. 'I've been trying to survive by myself. Now I'm trying to speak up because nobody has done it for me.'
As a stipulation of the protective and restraining orders Jonah was granted against his adoptive parents after he said he felt coerced to fly to Ethiopia, the Bevins are required turn over any documentation they have about Jonah's biological family, if it exists, so Jonah can contact his family.
Specifically in the restraining order against Glenna, she was mandated to provide to Jonah's attorneys 'any and all information in her possession regarding Jonah's adoption, including but not limited to documents, communications and notes related to his adoption by or between herself and the respondent and the adoption agency or biological family.'
Glenna's attorneys turned over 'all the records she has about the adoption,' Dobbins said Monday in court. That documentation includes Jonah's original adoption records, including the names of his parents. But it did not include recent or identifiable information about his family members, leading Jonah's attorneys to believe that information does not exist, they told the Herald-Leader.
'We now fear that the proposed trip to Ethiopia was never legitimate, that Jonah was nearly sent away with no safeguards, no answers, and no way back,' child advocate Dawn Post, one of Jonah's attorneys, told the Herald-Leader.
'This is exactly why the (restraining) order remains necessary,' she said. 'The person who should have protected Jonah — his own adoptive mother — was involved in sending him to Ethiopia without providing any identifying information.
'Jonah may not fear his mother directly, but he does fear how she acts under the influence of Matt Bevin.'
As for the notion that the Bevins have spent more money on Jonah than their other children, Post said, 'the money spent on Jonah was not too much; it was misused. Those resources were wasted on programs that traumatized him, not healed him. They paid for pain, not protection.
'That is not Jonah's fault.'
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