Ruling on a the case that has seized national attention and reinvigorated debate over parental rights in public education, a Virginia juvenile court judge concluded Monday that a transgender teenager sexually assaulted a female student in a Loudoun County high school in May.
Chief Judge Pamela L. Brooks found there was sufficient evidence to determine the individual guilty of sexual assault.
The decision comes after the Daily Wire revealed spoke to the victim’s father, who said the male student forcibly sodomized his ninth-grade daughter in a school bathroom while wearing a skirt. When the father attempted to describe and protest the incident at a local school board meeting, he was arrested for disorderly conduct, allowing the sexual abuse to stay underground for months.
After the assault, the perpetrator was transferred to another school where he allegedly assaulted a second female student in early October.
In the interim, the Loudoun County School Board passed a sweeping gender-inclusivity policy allowing students to use restrooms and locker rooms, as well as compete in sports, according to their gender identity rather than biological sex.
The alleged gender fluidity of the perpetrator was not raised during the hearing, according to the New York Times, although court documents confirm the offender was wearing a skirt when the assault took place. In court, the 15-year-old girl testified that she engaged in consensual sexual activity with the defendant two different times in a girls' bathroom at Stone Bridge High School but on a subsequent occasion was violently coerced into performing sexual acts.
Many parents in the district were enraged to discover that the teenager remained enrolled in the school system while the case was pending and local law enforcement conducted an investigation.
In a statement released earlier this month, LCPS said that it was obliged to defer the initial criminal investigation to local law enforcement before conducting its own probe. The district also said it must follow the Title IX grievance process before taking disciplinary action against the accused student, clarifying that it will “impose interim measures to protect the safety of students involved in the original incident, deter retaliation…”
The Loudoun County rape case has become a focal point in the heated Virginia gubernatorial race. Republican Glenn Youngkin has calling for an investigation into the school board’s handling of the incident and defended parent involvement in public education more broadly, drawing a contrast with his Democratic adversary who suggested parents should not be involved in school curricula decisions before backtracking in a recent ad. At an event in Fairfax County last week, Youngkin questioned why the Biden administration is targeting and penalizing parents rather than “those those who covered up a heinous crime in our schools.”
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