Before we go any further, read the Daily Wire scoops that blew the cover off of this controversy in Loudoun County, Virginia last fall. A man who'd been turned into an anonymous poster child of parents behaving badly at school board meetings turned out to be the father of a female high school student who was raped in a bathroom by a "gender fluid" biologically male student. He was treated horrifically by the school and the district, whose officials were busy covering up and lying about the incident. The appalling details (content warning):
On June 22, Scott Smith was arrested at a Loudoun County, Virginia, school board meeting, a meeting that was ultimately deemed an “unlawful assembly” after many attendees vocally opposed a policy on transgender students. What people did not know is that weeks prior on May 28, Smith says, a boy allegedly wearing a skirt entered a girls’ bathroom at nearby Stone Bridge High School, where he sexually assaulted Smith’s ninth-grade daughter. Juvenile records are sealed, but Smith’s attorney Elizabeth Lancaster told The Daily Wire that a boy was charged with two counts of forcible sodomy – one count of anal sodomy and one count of forcible fellatio – related to an incident that day at that school.
More from the Examiner:
At that same school board meeting, the county’s superintendent claimed concerns about transgender policies were unreasonable because the school system had no record of a sexual assault ever taking place in a school bathroom...School officials persistently tried to downplay the assault of Smith's daughter. They tried to avoid getting law enforcement involved, telling Smith they would handle it “in-house,” apparently in order to prevent controversy over their transgender policy. They also downplayed the assault when communicating with other parents, describing the incident as “something out of the ordinary.” And finally, they transferred the assailant to a different school, where he went on to sexually assault another student just a few months later. The Daily Wire’s Luke Rosiak writes: "Two girls, allegedly sexually assaulted in school, four months apart, by the same person. And so far, the only person to be convicted of a crime is the victim’s father. A school policy passed following what appear to be false statements from the superintendent — a policy whose passage would have been politically impossible had Smith’s story seen the light of day."
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This sexual assailant attacked Smith's daughter, he was arrested for "overreacting" at a school board meeting, having been bullied and provoked by progressive activists. His case was pursued extremely aggressively by the county's left-wing prosecutor, who is aligned with leftist school board members. The assailant in question was shuffled to another school, where he struck again, assaulting a second female victim. The boy has since been found guilty and sentenced. It has emerged that the district has allegedly failed to comply with state law on reporting sexual assaults in schools, with email evidence confirming that the superintendent informed the school board of the incident on the day of the assault. Less than a month later, the superintendent publicly denied knowledge of any sexual assaults in school bathrooms. Parents have called for the superintendent and board members to resign, accusing them of being dishonest and complicit in covering up sexual assault. There are active recall efforts against several members of the board, one of whom has resigned. Enter the local NAACP chapter, which is accusing the parents of engaging in "Jim Crow" tactics:
Wherein the @LoudounNaacp accuses THOUSANDS of parents in Loudoun County of supporting "Jim Crow effort" at removing elected officials that helped cover up a sexual assault and stood by and did and said nothing while parents were targeted by activistshttps://t.co/GfhZOGbh24
— Ian Prior (@iandprior) January 19, 2022
Parents' rights activist Ian Prior notes more context:
It's also interesting that she would want to intervene to defend a removal action based on school board members violating the First Amendment and open meeting laws in a Facebook group targeting parents and covering up a sexual assault to pass a transgender bathroom policy.
— Ian Prior (@iandprior) January 19, 2022
Ms. Thomas also helped rolling back race-blind admissions at the Loudoun Academies.
— Ian Prior (@iandprior) January 19, 2022
This is a leftist group protecting members of the tribe, using despicable race-baiting tactics to do so. These parents and residents, thousands of them, have entirely legitimate grievances that they are seeking to adjudicate under the rules, and they're being reflexively and baselessly smeared as neo-segregationists. This disgusting line of "argument" misappropriates history and wields a powerful cultural weapon in order to silence dissent. This is how the modern left argues, from the president of the United States on down to this county chapter of the NAACP. Opposition to progressive demands du jour is immediately labeled racism. Misusing the memory of racial injustice as a means to launch cheap political attacks deeply undermines such attacks' potency. It also insults those who've suffered genuine racism.
"Hopefully everyone will now see exactly what parents have been up against and why they've been so frustrated with the powers-that-be in Loudoun County; government officials and special interests taking over our schools at the expense of students and their parents," Prior writes. "The brave parents that have taken abuse from the corrupt system in Loudoun County come from every race, ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation. Ms. Thomas does not speak for them and should apologize to the thousands of parents around Loudoun County for equating their attempts to hold their elected officials accountable to a 'Jim Crow effort.'" He adds, "media should reach out to @LoudounNaacp and ask why parents concerned about elected official malfeasance and sexual assaults in schools 'support Jim Crow.'" I'm sure the journalist class will get right on that.
I'll leave you with a reminder that school board confrontations were conjured into a federal law enforcement issue via Biden administration manipulations that look even more cynical and manufactured by the day. Hostility to parental sovereignty over their own children is a growing, radical problem within an increasingly radicalized Democratic Party:
The Martha MacCallum show on Fox reported on their scoop that Education Secretary Miguel Cardona encouraged the National School Boards Association to write a letter to the White House -- the one that suggested protesting parents could be like domestic terrorists. pic.twitter.com/W0Erla1wKo
— Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) January 11, 2022
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