HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania – A judge on Thursday refused to seal the records and proceedings in the ongoing custody battle between Sean Parnell, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, or to grant Parnell’s motion to ban his wife from having previous injunctions speak that she had applied against him.
Parnell filed the petitions after a Republican nomination rival, Jeff Bartos, and an affiliated super-PAC attacked Parnell on the matter, calling him “ineligible”.
Bartos and his allies aired the attacks in September, days after former President Donald Trump backed Parnell.
However, Butler County’s divorce and custody judge James Arner told Parnell and his wife that they are unable to divulge any information about ratings or assessments – such as mental health – of the children or each other in the case. Such reviews from children are usually sealed. Parnell’s campaign has denied the notion that the injunctions requested by Laurie Parnell in the contentious divorce proceedings – which were issued prior to a hearing by both parties – were evidence of wrongdoing. Neither of these lasted more than a few days. Parnell’s wife agreed to withdraw her first application. One judge decided against making the other permanent after a hearing that Parnell attended.
Both were later ordered to be deleted, and the orders for orders – the document detailing the allegations – are no longer part of the publicly available records in their divorce proceedings.
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