Schools can handle infractions in-house and not have to notify law enforcement.
The Sewers of Loudon County
On Tuesday, news broke about the Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) possibly covering up the sexual assault of a 15-year-old girl by a male student in the girls’ bathroom. Unfortunately, the scandal gets even darker.
In 2020, Virginia lawmakers voted to update the procedure that schools had to go through during instances of sexual battery, stalking, violent threats against a person or property, or violations of a protective order. This updated code would allow schools to handle said incidents in-house and not have to notify law enforcement. Sexual battery is classified as inappropriate touching that is forced or coerced. In Virginia, sexual battery is considered a misdemeanor. What happened to this girl was aggravated sexual battery (rape and sodomy), which is a felony. That’s bad enough, but this new law allows the stifling of misdemeanors. It comes into play here because, according to the father of the victim, Scott Smith, the school told him it would be handling the incident “in-house” after passing it off as just an assault.
After ascertaining that the assault was much worse, the incensed Smith caused such a stir that the principal had to get the police involved — but not for the sake of reporting the incident to law enforcement. They were called to deter the irate father of the victim. This is evidenced by the letter Stone Bridge Principal Tim Flynn sent home to parents that evening regarding the incident:
There was an incident in the main office area today that required the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office to dispatch deputies to Stone Bridge. The incident was confined to the main office and the entrance area to the school. There was no threat to the safety of the student body. The incident was witnessed by a small number of students who were meeting with staff adjacent to the main office. Counseling services and the services of our Unified Mental Health Team are available for any student who may need to talk about today’s incident. Students might have noticed Sheriff’s Office personnel on campus and I wanted to let you know that something out of the ordinary happened at school today. The safety of our students and staff is the top priority of Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS).
Smith said of the incident, “Thank God that I drew enough attention to it, without getting arrested, that we got an escort to the hospital and they administered a rape kit that night.” Does this sound like a school willing to comply with the law? Does this sound like a school that has any sympathy for the horror inflicted upon this young girl?
There was another incident on October 6 in which a male student — some have posited that it was the same one in the Smith case — forced a girl into an empty classroom, held her there against her will, and touched her inappropriately. That makes two cases of sexual battery in this school district that would have gone unnoticed had Smith not sounded the alarm. In fact, the family is now pursuing civil action against the district.
Both the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office (LCSO) and the LCPS released separate statements on Wednesday in response to the flood of coverage. The LCSO wanted to make it clear that LCPS was following the legal procedures. LCPS wanted to assure the public that the school board had no knowledge of the assault until the news broke on Tuesday. This seems pretty far fetched. Ian Prior, director of Fight for Schools, explained why: “Much of the community became aware of Smith’s situation in the days that followed his arrest.” Surely that included school board members. The LCPS also asserts that it had no record that Smith was supposed to talk at the contentious meeting on June 22. In the LCPS statement, it gave no apologies or sympathy for the victims or their families involved in these crimes. In fact, it seemed to care more about the privacy of the male delinquent than the girls he allegedly hurt.
Networks such as CBS, NBC, CNN, and ABC did not give this story any primetime coverage. Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center, wrote: “SHAME. How can one call itself a news organization when it blacks out coverage of a story like this, which has such broad impact on the safety of our children and education? And they wonder why ratings and trust of the media continue to tank.”
Prior also had this to say about the lack of mainstream media coverage: “This is about the safety of our children, and any media outlet not digging into what LCPS knew, and when they knew it, is engaging in journalistic malpractice.” Much like how Katie Couric whitewashed Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Leftmedia won’t report stories that don’t align with the woke agenda.
The nightmarish school rape also adds a soupçon of spice to the Virginia gubernatorial race. Democrat Terry McAuliffe already made inflammatory statements saying that parents shouldn’t be telling schools what to teach. Smith’s family went through a firestorm. He was the face of what the school boards were calling “domestic terrorism,” and his child was a victim of a heinous crime committed because of lax policy that allows students to go into the bathrooms of their preferred gender. This completely disproves McAuliffe’s stance since it was school policy that was taken advantage of by this predator.
Ultimately, this story still seems like a cover-up. The ridiculously dangerous law that allows schools not to report certain crimes to the police. High schools calling the police but seemingly not for the reason they gave. LCPS’s statement about the board “not knowing.” The MSM ignoring this story because it doesn’t fit their narrative. It stinks to high heaven. This is exactly why parents should continue to protest, as they are the only advocates for their child’s best interests. Clearly, the schools are not.
10/22 Update: An email was provided to WTOP News by the Loudoun County School System showing that the school board was informed of the sexual assault in the girls’ bathroom on May 28 — the same day the rape occurred, which is significant because Superintendent Scott Ziegler had earlier in the case claimed that the school board didn’t know about the incident until The Daily Wire broke the story. This email has now proven that the school board’s claim of not knowing was a falsehood. Ziegler has since apologized, claiming that he misunderstood when asked directly if the school board knew about the assault: “My comments were misleading and I apologize for the distress that error caused families.”
Written by Emmy Griffin for The Patriot Post ~ October 15, 2021