Richard Cox is a 58-year-old repeat Tier III sex offender who spent the second half of 2024 prowling female locker rooms in northern Virginia, where he would ogle schoolgirls and expose himself to bystanders.
Fairfax County, where Cox exposed himself repeatedly last year, never prosecuted him because, as the police chief put it, “The policy of Parks & Rec allowed him and other persons to use the locker room of the gender that they identify with.”
In both Fairfax and neighboring Arlington County, county officials allowed Cox to undress in women’s locker rooms because of the counties’ fealty to gender ideology. Police in Fairfax didn’t arrest him because, under county policy, Cox counted as a woman. The Washington Post gave the story nearly zero coverage because the story of Cox is a reductio ad absurdum of the gender dogma that the outlet follows.
FAMILY UNFRIENDLY HOUSING DISCRIMINATION
To do the right thing, Fairfax prosecutors, Arlington school employees, Fairfax Parks & Recreation officials, and the Washington Post would need to reject their side’s professed belief that “transgender women are women.” However, they couldn’t reject that belief, so women and girls suffered.
Here, in brief, is the story of how liberals in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., allowed a repeat sex offender to victimize women and stalk children for months.
More than 15 months ago, in June 2024, Cox was charged with indecent exposure for exposing his penis in a female locker room at a Planet Fitness. In his defense, Cox argued, “Transgender people identify as belonging to a gender which may not conform to the sex they were assigned at birth. For a transgender person to be observed in a locker room nude is no proof that this also was anything more than platonic.”
He said he showed the staff at Planet Fitness his Virginia driver’s license, which listed him as a woman. In 2020, Virginia Democrats passed a law, lauded by activists as “allow[ing] individuals to go about their daily lives with identification that accurately reflects their identity.”
At the time, county officials knew that Cox was a Tier III sex offender, the most serious level. Cox was charged in the 1990s for allegedly exposing himself to children and masturbating in front of them. He was convicted in Arlington of “taking indecent liberties with children.” He was twice charged with a felony for failing to reregister, but Fairfax County dropped those charges.
All this was a matter of record when Fairfax County dismissed the indecent exposure charge against Cox on July 25. Police said it was because “the victim did not show up” in court.
Set free to roam the Virginia suburbs and armed with a Virginia driver’s license declaring him a woman, Cox began a multimonth tour of county-run female locker rooms (often with children present), where he knew liberal county officials would let him in.
In September 2024, an Arlington woman complained that Cox entered the female locker room at Washington-Liberty High School in Arlington, which is shared with the Washington-Liberty Aquatics Center, a pool available for community use.
“We walked into seeing a man changing in the girls locker room,” the woman told local reporter Nick Minock of WJLA. “Completely naked, facing the doorway. My little girl saw it. She was ahead of me, ready to get changed and dried off, and that’s the first thing she walked into.”
The woman complained to the pool officials, who were employees of Arlington Public Schools, but they told her Cox was allowed to use the female locker room because he identified as a woman, Minock reported. School officials likewise told WJLA that they allowed Cox into the female locker room because “APS permits pool patrons to access restrooms and facilities that correspond to their gender identity.”
Despite the complaints, nobody stopped Cox, so he kept going.
In October, Cox entered the female locker room at Arlington’s Wakefield High School, which is also open to the community for use.
Then, in November, Cox intruded on the female locker rooms in three different Fairfax County recreation centers.
Minock, who has done most of the reporting on Cox’s story, asked the Fairfax County police chief in July, “Why hasn’t the Fairfax County Police Department charged registered sex offender Richard Cox for allegedly going to rec centers, exposing himself allegedly to women and girls in locker rooms, and visiting Franconia Rec Center that has a licensed pre-school?”
Police Chief Kevin Davis replied, “He was in a shower in a locker room, taking a shower. The policy of Parks & Rec allowed him and other persons to use the locker room of the gender that they identify with. So a crime was not committed. So he was not arrested.”
“He was allowed to be in there,” Davis said. “The policy that Parks & Rec has allows Richard Cox and others like him to use the restroom, locker room of the gender he identifies or she identifies with.”
Eventually, Arlington County arrested Cox and is holding him in custody.
While liberal politicians, bureaucrats, and the police officers who followed their orders directly endangered the public by looking the other way, the Washington Post has almost totally ignored the story.
Cox was first arrested and set free in the summer of 2024. On Jan. 17, 2025, Minock first reported on Cox’s autumnal tour of female locker rooms. Plenty of other local media followed Minock. Three weeks later, I noted in these pages that the Washington Post had, so far, totally ignored the story.
Finally, on Feb. 28, six weeks after WJLA first reported the story, the Washington Post ran an article on the case. If you carefully read the story — to date the only story the outlet has run on Cox — you’ll notice that no pronouns are used to describe Cox. It’s never “he” or “him” or “his,” it’s just Cox or Cox’s.
The Washington Post cannot, according to its rules, call Cox a “he.” It also cannot follow its rules and call Cox a “she” if it wishes to maintain any credibility.
DEMOCRATS AND THE LIBERAL LONG ASSAULT ON FREE SPEECH
For liberal media, telling the story of Cox presents an untenable dilemma. His case is the reductio ad absurdum of gender ideology, and so the liberal media has handled his story by pretending it doesn’t exist.
But those who followed the Left’s rules, including Fairfax County Police, Fairfax Parks & Recreation, and Arlington school officials, to name a few, ended up showing how the Left’s rules, divorced from all reason and decency, lead to harm.
