Jonah Bevin has filed for a restraining order against his adoptive mother, former First Lady Glenna Bevin, partly in an attempt to recover documents about his biological family in Ethiopia.

Filed April 7 in Jefferson Family Court, 18-year-old Jonah is asking a judge to uphold a restraining order against his adoptive mother, which would prevent her from being within 500 feet of Jonah and communicating directly or indirectly with him.

Judge Angela Johnson has already granted Jonah an emergency protective order against his adoptive father, former Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin, which will be in place for six months before its downgraded to a restraining order.

Glenna filed for divorce from the one-term governor in 2023; it was finalized last month. The Bevins adopted four children from Ethiopia, including Jonah when he was 5, and have five biological children.

The order filed Monday against Glenna is the latest in a public display of friction between Jonah and his adoptive parents, against whom he filed an emergency protective order in March, though the order was largely aimed at his adoptive father.

The April 7 filing asks that Glenna 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.”

That documentation, including Jonah’s adoption file, must be provided to Jonah’s attorneys within a week of a judge signing the order.

Turning that information over to Jonah’s attorneys was already a stipulation the Bevins agreed on in a court hearing last month, as was the restraining order against Glenna and the emergency protective order against Matt.

But neither of the Bevins have yet to turn over that information, Jonah’s advocate Dawn Post and his attorney John Helmers told the Herald-Leader Wednesday.

“No information, to date, has been provided from either one of them,” Post said.

“We have not yet received any substantive information on his biological family,” Helmers added.

The Monday request puts a time constraint on when that information must be provided to Jonah via his attorneys, if it exists.

Steve Romines, Glenna’s attorney, did not immediately return a request for comment Thursday morning.

‘Part of me hopes’

Jonah filed for an emergency protective order against his adoptive parents March 7, after he said they pressured him to board a flight to Ethiopia to meet family they’d otherwise told Jonah his whole life were dead, including his mother.

Jonah’s relationship with his adoptive parents was already strained when they urged him to fly home to Ethiopia in February. As a teenager, the Bevins sent Jonah to Atlantis Leadership Academy in Jamaica, where staff were physically and emotionally abusive.

Matt called Jonah in February to tell him that his biological mother was actually alive and urged him to get on a flight to Ethiopia but offered few details about his family or where he would be going once he arrived in the West African country. Glenna, too, called and texted Jonah encouraging him to get on the flight.

Jonah told the judge last month he was distrustful, particularly of his adoptive father. He feared he was being lured to a country to be abandoned, similar to how he felt the Bevins abandoned him in Jamaica. Jonah backed out of the trip at the last minute, and then filed an emergency protective order.

“They’d told me my whole life my mom has been dead. And now they told me she’s alive. You told me it was a secret,” Jonah said to his adoptive father during a March 21 court hearing. “I would never keep a secret like that.”

In that court hearing, the former governor contradicted this, telling the judge Jonah knew it was a possibility some of his family may be alive. Jonah described the former governor as “threatening,” “intimidating” and “manipulative.”

In a second hearing March 25, a judge upheld the emergency protective order against his adoptive father for six months, at which point it will be downgraded to a restraining order if it’s not violated. It also established a civil restraining order against Glenna.

The April 7 filing of that restraining order is a “formalization” of that agreed-upon request, Helmers said, and places a time constraint on when the Bevins must provide Jonah with information about his biological family.

The fact that neither of the Bevins have yet turned over that information could mean it doesn’t exist, Helmers and Post said.

Post said she has conducted her own investigation to try and track down these details, which included speaking with a facilitator hired by the Bevins in the U.S. and a guide in Ethiopia. But “they were unable, either one of them, to provide any identifying information, including names, addresses, locations, general locations, anything,” she told the Herald-Leader.

But they still hold out hope that by at least getting Jonah’s adoption file will provide a starting point for finding his family.

“There’s always a part of me that hopes because Jonah hopes,” Post added. “To have that hope given to him, because he was so desperate for that, how cruel it is if none of that was true.”

This story was originally published April 10, 2025 at 10:23 AM.