Timothy Grendell (Geauga County Probate-Juvenile Court).
A local judge in Ohio has been sanctioned for sending two boys to a youth lock-up facility so as to force them into visiting their father.
In an 88-page slip opinion and summary, the Supreme Court of Ohio found that Geauga County Probate-Juvenile Court Judge Timothy Grendell violated ethics rules for judges in the Buckeye State.
Ultimately, the court issued an 18-month suspension with 12 months stayed. Grendell was immediately taken off the bench without pay and must remain misconduct free for the entirety of his suspension. In the event the judge engages in any further ethical lapses, the stay will be lifted and he will be forced to serve the full 18-month punishment.
Love true crime? Sign up for our newsletter, The Law&Crime Docket, to get the latest real-life crime stories delivered right to your inbox.
The sanction stems from the judge's first foray into the work performed by an Ohio domestic relations court, according to the majority opinion. Before 2019, Grendell had never worked such a case.
That year, another judge emailed Grendell and asked him to take over a child custody case described variously by the court as "extremely difficult," "heavily contested," and "highly contentious."
The case itself concerned the divorce of Stacy Hartman and Grant Glasier — and what to do with their three children. Over time, Hartman moved to Ohio from Florida and Glasier eventually followed in an effort to be closer to his children — one daughter and two sons.
"Under their 2010 judgment of dissolution of their marriage, Hartman was awarded primary custody of the children and Glasier had visitation rights," the state supreme court opinion explains.
But the going was not easy.
Copious documentation from a court-ordered clinical psychologist summarized the children as "seriously alienated" from their father.
While noting the children "were heavily entrenched in their view that their father was an abusive, alcoholic individual, who should be out of their lives," the psychologist concluded Glasier did not have a problem with alcohol, ascribed some of the alienation to the mother and her boyfriend, and, in the end, advised a slow process of reunification.
But over a year passed and the children were still "refusing to see their father or Skype with him," the first judge wrote Grendell.
In August 2019, Grendell took up the case.
Several efforts at so-called "therapeutic visitation" failed because "the children refused to see their father" and a third-party contractor hired by the state "was unwilling to force them to participate," according to the supreme court opinion.
As the process of more and more psychological help — and concomitant monetary costs — played out, the children still refused to see their father. Grendell quickly acknowledged the couple's daughter was a special case because she was nearly 18 years old at the time. So, the since-suspended judge focused on the two teenage boys.
During a hearing in May 2020, Grendell learned the therapeutic visitation process still had not started. At one point, the judge inquired about the father's visitation status and "Glasier responded that he had not seen his children in over three and a half years," the opinion notes.
The response seemingly frustrated Grendell — so the calculus shifted.
The judge "found therapeutic visitations to be a lost cause in the case" and ordered the boys to visit with their father "on alternating weekends," the opinion explains.
Getting the two boys from their mother to their father was to begin that upcoming weekend — and would occur at the county sheriff's office with a constable overseeing the transfer, the judge ruled.
That transfer, however, did not occur at all.
"Hartman dropped off the boys with the constable as ordered," the opinion reads. "The older boy began indicating that he and his brother would not go with Glasier for the weekend."
So, the constable called the judge. Then, the judge called Hartman. Then, the judge "called the juvenile court's director of probation to inform her that two children were being placed in detention for unruliness based on their refusal to attend visitation." Then, the constable called for a sheriff's deputy to detain the boys. After a last-minute intervention from their mother, the detention process moved forward — with the judge OK'ing the three-day stint behind bars.
"The boys spent that weekend in the detention center with no communication with their parents, although their priest was allowed to visit," the supreme court opinion explains.
In short order, an appeals court stayed Grendell's order giving Glasier visitation rights. In July 2020, a dust-up over a GoFundMe about the boys' detention led to Grendell enjoining Hartman — and threatening to "claw back" the funds community members raised for her family's legal fees. In September 2020, Grendell relinquished jurisdiction and sent the case back to domestic-relations court.
In sum, the supreme court found Grendell violated three judicial conduct rules. One rule concerns a judge's ability to perform their duties, the second rule concerns a judge's objectivity, and the third rule concerns the public's confidence in the judiciary.
"Grendell maintained that the unruly charges had been prepared by the constable on the constable's own initiative and that he had simply approved the boys' subsequent detention," the opinion notes.
But that was not quite true. Rather, the judge "directed that the constable draft the charges," the state supreme court found.
From the opinion, at length:
Judge Grendell used the threat of detention—and when that failed, actual detention—in an attempt to coerce the boys to attend visitation with their father. He used his constable to orchestrate the filing of trumped-up charges and ordered the boys detained on those charges with little basis. In doing so, he willfully turned a blind eye to legal safeguards designed to protect the best interests of children and avoid unnecessary detentions. We do not question Judge Grendell's good faith in believing that visitation with their father was in the children's best interests. But the means that he employed to accomplish that end evince both a conscious disregard for the law and a failure to impartially perform his duties.
"The record in this case demonstrates that Judge Grendell may have taken on the Glasier case with the best of intentions but that over the course of the case, he lost his objectivity to such an extent that he could no longer be impartial," the opinion goes on. "Improperly ordering two teenage boys to spend a weekend in detention is not an act that instills public confidence in the impartiality of the judiciary."
The court also dinged Grendell over the GoFundMe contretemps.
"We are particularly troubled by his threat to 'claw back' money raised through that page and use it to reimburse the county for the boys' appointed counsel," the opinion goes on. "We are not aware of any basis for such a 'claw back,' and Judge Grendell's comments at the hearing appear to have been motivated more by his own anger at the page's negative portrayal of him than by a legitimate concern for the welfare of the children."
