Let’s walk through this carefully, because the details matter and a child’s safety is not a partisan prop.
Representative Max Miller, an Ohio Republican, filed a lawsuit in February 2025 against a Westlake, Ohio daycare provider. His daughter, then under two years old, had been rushed to the emergency room on January 27 with injuries, in the lawsuit’s own language, “on her thighs, face, groin, and vaginal area of her body and she was caused to incur psychological trauma.” A daycare staff member had alerted police and the Department of Children and Family Services. The child’s mother, Emily Moreno, took her to the hospital.
Here is what the lawsuit does not do: it does not clearly state where those injuries came from. And here is who is not on the complaint: Emily Moreno. Miller filed this suit alone, four months before his divorce was finalized, naming the school and four employees as defendants who “abused and neglected a child dependent upon them for protection.” The daycare denied the allegations entirely, stating the toddler was not “injured, brutalized, or harmed in any manner” while in their care. The case was dismissed. No settlement has been disclosed.
Now hold that in one hand. In the other, hold what Mother Jones documented in July after reviewing more than 2,000 pages of court filings and police records. A 48-page investigatory file on a possible child abuse incident involving the same child’s broken collarbone. Emily Moreno’s statements to police accusing Miller of throwing scalding water at her, shoving her against a wall during a custody exchange, and holding a gun to her head while she was changing their daughter’s diaper. A child protection specialist noting that the collarbone injury came with a bruise resembling a handprint. Moreno telling police that her daughter expressed fear of her father.
Police ultimately called the child abuse finding “unsubstantiated,” meaning there was not sufficient evidence to prove abuse or neglect. That is a legal threshold, not a vindication. It does not erase the gun, the scalding water, the handprint-shaped bruise on a toddler’s body.
Brian Thorpe (Public domain) via Wikimedia CommonsAnd the girl’s own grandfather, United States Senator Bernie Moreno, has spoken publicly. He called the situation “the seventh circle of hell.” He said, “My daughter lives in constant fear of this man.” Those are not anonymous internet whispers. Those are the words of a sitting U.S. senator about a sitting U.S. representative, about his own daughter and granddaughter.
Since the Mother Jones report, further allegations have surfaced: Miller allegedly withheld his daughter’s beloved blue bunny as leverage and admitted to sharing an inappropriate photo of her online. Each new detail makes the daycare lawsuit look less like a parent seeking justice and more like a man building a legal narrative to outrun his own record.
This is the structure of accountability failure. A congressman with a documented pattern of abuse allegations, a police investigation that could not meet the evidentiary bar, a family fractured enough that a senator is speaking on the record about fear, and an institution, Congress, that has done nothing. Miller still holds his seat. He still has a vote on legislation affecting women, children, and families. He still walks through the Capitol with the privileges of office.
The House Ethics Committee has the authority to investigate conduct that disgraces the institution. The people of Ohio’s 7th District have the authority to recall who represents them. And every person who encounters this story has the authority to refuse the reflex of looking away, because a toddler with bruises on her thighs and face and groin is not a political football. She is a child. The adults around her failed her. The system around them is failing her now.
Demand the investigation. Demand the accountability. Refuse the silence.