Does Loudoun County seriously not know what is happening on its own school campuses? Or does it just not care?
During a June 22 school board meeting, Superintendent Scott Ziegler claimed he did not have any knowledge of “any record of assaults occurring in our restrooms” when confronted about the school’s transgender bathroom policy. However, it was recently reported that at least two sexual assaults occurred within Loudoun County’s schools over the past year, and both were allegedly committed by the same “gender fluid” male student.
Either Ziegler really did not know about the assaults, or he helped school officials cover them up.
Whether Ziegler had a direct role in it or not, there is no question that someone has been hiding information from the public regarding sexual assaults within its schools for years. Public records uncovered by the Daily Wire show Loudoun County Public Schools have failed to record multiple known incidents of alleged sexual assault in its schools since at least 2018, despite a state law requiring all alleged assaults and other statistics about school safety incidents to be reported to the superintendent and made available to the rest of the public.
In its public database, called Safe Schools Information Resource, Loudoun County Public Schools claimed Stone Bridge High School, where a ninth-grade female student was allegedly raped by a male student wearing a skirt in the female restroom earlier this year, had zero sexual assaults for the 2020-2021 school year. That male student is now being held in a juvenile correction center after he allegedly attacked another student at a different school a couple of weeks ago.
And in 2018, when three football players at Tuscorara High School were arrested and charged with sexual assault after they allegedly “held down” a younger player and “inserted objects into the victim” in a locker room, Loudoun County Public Schools still reported zero instances of sexual offenses in SSIR.
Every single Virginia parent should be asking how many other assaults occurred but were not reported. Do we only know about the assaults that attracted media attention? And why were school officials not reporting these cases?
Under state law, school officials, including the superintendent, who fail to comply with Virginia’s public reporting requirements are “subject to sanctions by the local school board, which may include, but need not be limited to, demotion or dismissal.” A thorough investigation is required into why Loudoun County has not been accurately reporting sexual assaults in its schools and whether it handled them correctly.
But it certainly seems like Ziegler deserves to lose his job, as do the other officials who not only tried to hide the most recent assaults from the public but also supported a policy that made them possible.
