Smith - the victim’s father - did not speak at the meeting. Heather Fruzzetti making a statement during a Loudoun County school board meeting on Tuesday. Ziegler replied, “To my knowledge, we don’t have any record of assaults occurring in our restrooms.”
One teacher had already been suspended for speaking out against the policy and then reinstated in his job by a judge.ĭuring that meeting - which became so chaotic that the board ended it early amid shouting and parents chanting, “Shame on you” - Ziegler was asked by a board member, “Do we have assaults in our bathrooms or locker rooms regularly?” On June 22, the victim’s father, Scott Smith, went to a Loudoun County school board meeting, which attracted controversy because the county was planning to implement a policy allowing students to use bathrooms based on their gender identity and was going to require teachers and staff to use gender pronouns requested by students, and vice versa. On May 28, Superintendent Scott Ziegler sent an email to the board noting that “this afternoon a female student alleged that a male student sexually assaulted her in the restroom.” The county school board was notified as well. The school administration at Stone Bridge High School notified the Loudoun County sheriff’s department immediately after the reported assault. The basic facts of the high school incident are this: On May 28, a ninth-grade girl was sexually assaulted in a girls' bathroom at Stone Bridge High School in Ashburn by another student, a 14-year-old male. Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin at a campaign event in Roanoke, Va., on Wednesday. Loudoun County residents - suburban, college-educated and upper-income - are the prototypical voters the GOP needs to win back across the country after Trump. It is a fast-growing collection of exurbs about 30 miles west of Washington, D.C., that has traditionally been more Republican-leaning than other northern Virginia suburbs, but the GOP lost ground there under former President Donald Trump. Loudoun County is a crucial part of the state for Republicans to win back, after losing ground there over the last decade. That would be a dramatic reversal in the area’s political trends. You watch: We’re going to do better in northern Virginia than any Republican’s done in a long time, and we might just win Loudoun County.” “And this is actually turning Loudoun County our direction, but not just Loudoun County: all of northern Virginia. “They’re not standing up for children’s safety,” Youngkin said. 2 election against Democrat Terry McAuliffe. The Republican said on Fox News Tuesday evening that the outrage sparked by the incident was providing his campaign with a significant boost ahead of the Nov.
Regardless of the complex set of facts, Youngkin has said one thing is clear: It’s helping him politically. The county sheriff’s office and school board are now openly feuding over their shared response. And while there are legitimate questions about the local school board’s handling of the issue, the truth appears to be more complex than how it has been portrayed in right-wing media. Media figures and politicians rushed to judgment and made the story about a transgender male preying on a young girl, when in fact the first of two assaults took place in the context of a previously consensual sexual relationship between two teens. Some of the most inflammatory claims are false. Republican politicians and right-wing media have used the story of a sexual assault in a school bathroom to claim that public schools are run by ideologues imposing liberal dogma on children, that the assault was the result of misguided policies to accommodate transgender students, and that the school system and the mainstream media hide information from parents and the public if it is politically inconvenient.Ī close look at facts that have emerged shows a far more complicated picture.
The hard-fought gubernatorial election in a Democratic-leaning state is widely seen as a test case for how Republicans could try to win elections in other states next year. A sexual assault case involving high school students in northern Virginia has become a major talking point for the Republican Party in the Virginia governor's race, adding another hot-button issue to an already volatile political environment.