Two Loudoun County Public School officials have been hit with a total of four felony and misdemeanor charges related to the school district's handling of multiple sexual assault cases during the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 school years. The news vindicates parents who for months demanded answers from administrators, only to be stonewalled and vilified by Democrat leaders in the state.
A grand jury report released last week slammed Superintendent Scott Ziegler and the school board in Loudoun County, Virginia, for their handling of a string of sexual assaults in two district high schools, citing a "stunning" lack of transparency and accountability.
As first reported by the Daily Wire, in May of 2021, a male student dressed in female clothing raped a 9th grade girl in a Loudoun County high school bathroom. Instead of expelling the student, school administrators worked to cover up the incident and transferred the offending student to another district high school, where he sexually assaulted a second girl in a classroom.
The grand jury report found that administrators "failed at every juncture" to prevent the second assault from happening, and engaged in a systematic effort to silence staff members who raised concerns about the offending student. Even the offender's grandmother reportedly told the school that he was a "sociopath," and multiple teachers tried to raise concerns with administrators.
At a school board meeting in June, shortly after the first assault, the board began discussing implementation of a new policy that would allow students to use restroom and locker room facilities in accordance with their "gender identity" rather than biological sex. When parents raised concerns about sexual assault, Ziegler claimed that there had "never" been a sexual assault in a Loudoun County school bathroom.
One man then began shouting at Ziegler claiming that he was lying.
Police quickly arrested the man, and the entire meeting was declared an unlawful assembly. That man was Scott Smith, the father of the girl who was raped. In the following weeks, far-left prosecutor Buta Biberaj personally prosecuted Smith in court, attempting to imprison him for misdemeanor charges. Meanwhile, the rapist, whom Biberaj was also in charge of prosecuting, was on house arrest, and would soon be allowed back in school to assault another girl.
The grand jury report lays out the failures at every level in shocking detail, including how the board demonized parents for demanding accountability. Ziegler now faces three misdemeanor charges, while public information officer Wayde Byard faces one count of felony perjury.
While it took over a year, the grand jury report and these charges are a monumental win for parents, even if they can't undo the trauma experienced by the victims and is only a first step toward accountability. And leading the charge was Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin who was one of the first signers of the 1776 Action “Educator/Administrator Pledge” and a fearless advocate for parents' rights.
The 1776 Action “Educator/Administrator Pledge” states that as an educator/administrator, I believe that:
The United States of America is an exceptional nation whose people have always strived to form a more perfect union based upon our founding principles.
Our Founding Fathers – including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson – as well as leaders like Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass and Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. were among the greatest Americans to ever live, and they deserve to be honored as heroes.
Our children and grandchildren should be taught to take pride in their country, to respect our founding principles of liberty and equality, and to have a sense of American history that is both truthful and inspiring.
Civics education should focus on the serious study of our founding documents and principles – not coerce students into engaging in extracurricular political action on behalf of contemporary policy positions.
Our young people should be taught to view one another not according to race or gender, but as individuals made in the image of God.
Teaching children to hate their country and each other is immoral and deeply harmful to our society and must be stopped.
THEREFORE, I PLEDGE to promote within my school an honest, patriotic view of America that respects our history, our values, our rights, and the God-given dignity of every person.
These hard-fought victories are turning the tide in the battle for our schools. These administrators thought they could get away with covering up sexual assault by keeping parents in the dark, and angry moms and dads once again proved them dead wrong.
Content courtesy of the “Superintendent, PR Officers INDICTED In Loudoun County High School Sexual Assault Case” article from The Cause on December 14, 2022 and 1776 Action website.
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