Students at several high schools in Loudon County, Virginia, staged a walkout Tuesday morning to protest for safer schools after two recent sexual assaults at separate high schools involving the same perpetrator. The protests came despite the fact that the Loudoun County (Va.) Sheriff’s Department confirmed that they had made an arrest the case and a later a judge found the male student wearing a skirt guilty of sexual assault of a 15-year-old female in the girls’ bathroom.
Several media outlets reported that crowds of students were seen outside schools within the district, including Stone Bridge, Loudoun County High School, Briar Woods High School, Broad Run High School and Lightridge High School. During the Broad Run walkout, students were heard chanting, “Loudon County protects rapists.”
The two criminal acts have set off a firestorm in the county’s communities, which has led to the resignation of a school board member and the arrest of the father of one of the victims during a recent school board meeting. Scott Smith, the victim’s father in the second assault, is seeking a written apology and a full retraction from the National School Boards Administration after they characterized him and other parents who voiced opposition at school board meetings, calling them “domestic terrorists.”
On June 22, Smith was dragged out of a meeting after hearing members of the Loudoun County school claim they had received no reports of sexual assaults involving students in the bathrooms, when less than a month earlier, his daughter had reported it.
The NSBA has apologized for threatening to mobilize the FBI to prosecute parents after being asked to do so by the country’s ever-increasingly liberal public school system, but Smith says the organization hasn’t gone far enough with its apology.
“The NSBA defamed me, impugning my reputation and that of other concerned parents who dared challenge our local school board,” Smith told wjla.com. “I am owed an apology and I deserve one. I demand the NSBCA retract its statement that I am a ‘domestic terrorist,’ or I will have no choice but to seek a court do it for them.”
Smith and his wife said in a statement through their attorney after the verdict, “We are greatly relieved that justice was served today. No one should have to endure what this family has endured,” and that now their focus is completely upon their daughter’s health and safety as she progresses forward with her life.
Media reports say that Superintendent Scott Ziegler “sent an email to parents on the day it happened to say the school was investigating, but told the room on June 22, ‘To my knowledge, we don’t have any record of assaults occurring in our restrooms.'”
On Monday, Chief Juvenile Court Judge Pamela Brooks agreed with the charges against what the Sheriff’s Department called in a statement, “a 14-year-old boy.” That is the juvenile court equivalent of a conviction, but the perpetrator in both cases at two different high schools was not charged or convicted of rape.
The Washington Post reported that Brooks said she would wait to sentence the teen until the second case is decided in November.
The Loudoun County School Board continues to defend its promotion of the LGBT agenda and policies in its classroom and its schools, despite the fact that the Sherriff’s Department identified the student as boy. The two cases have garnered a great deal of national attention since May, when the Smiths said the charged youth was “gender fluid.”
That prompted renewed backlash against a policy in Loudoun County schools that allows transgender students to use bathrooms that match their gender identity. {eoa}
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