Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s effort to discredit his Democratic opponent Amy Acton’s childhood abuse claims has taken another turn after her long-lost stepsister emerged to back her account.
Ramaswamy has drawn widespread backlash for an ad featuring Acton’s estranged mother, Donna Arthur, who sided with her husband after 12-year-old Acton accused her stepfather, Cledith Arthur, of rape.
In the ad, Donna Arthur calls her daughter a “liar,” saying, “She says she grew up living in a tent. None of that is true. She’s lied her entire life.”
Ramaswamy, 41, and President Donald Trump have only doubled down, with the gubernatorial hopeful calling Acton “crazy,” “unstable,” and “a liar,” at a campaign stop this week.
But now, Acton’s stepsister—Cledith Arthur’s biological daughter—has come forward to back Acton’s account, telling the Daily Mail her claims of sexual abuse and a period when the family lived in a tent were true.
The 62-year-old woman, who lives in Youngstown, Ohio, where Acton also grew up, said Cledith Arthur raped her late sister, Christine, while he was married to her and Christine’s mother, Theresa A. Arthur.
“Yes, he raped her, and it was more than once,” the woman, who asked that her name be withheld, told the Mail.
Contemporary newspaper accounts show that Cledith Arthur was charged with incest in 1974 over allegations involving Christine, according to the Mail.
Cledith Arthur married Acton’s mother Donna in 1975, and was charged with raping Acton in 1978. He fled the state and remained a fugitive until his death in 2004.
“After knowing what he did to my sister, I have no doubt he also assaulted Amy,” the stepsister told the Mail, adding that she had heard allegations that her father molested another young girl in the neighborhood.
“I just recall specifically hearing that [my father] liked young girls,” she said.
The woman condemned the ad for dredging up painful memories of what happened to Christine, who died in December 2024 at age 66, saying, “Seeing it played out in this campaign and on TV has brought a lot of terrible memories back.”
She also backed Acton’s claim that the family lived in poverty and was at times homeless.
“Oh, I know they were homeless for a while and living in a tent,” she told the Daily Mail, claiming Cledith had lived in a tent with his second family in the north side of Youngstown. “All that is definitely true.”
Ramaswamy’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In response to the ad, which Ramaswamy’s campaign produced and committed $4 million to promoting, Acton’s campaign released its own 30-second spot featuring her brother, Phil Stearns, condemning the Republican.
“I received a lot of abuse, but Amy always got the worst of it,” Stearns says. “She continued to receive that abuse because she knew she had to protect me from that, and if she hadn’t done that, who knows where I would have ended up.”
Stearns continues: “She was 11 and 12 years old, and to think that that’s somehow a talking point—shame on Vivek. The contempt he has for Amy is the contempt he has for Ohio. He’s not fit to lead.”
Acton led Ramaswamy by 4 points in a new Suffolk University-USA TODAY poll released Wednesday.
