Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) Superintendent Scott Ziegler has no plans to resign after new details emerged in the school’s alleged rape coverup Thursday.
“At this time the superintendent has not indicated that he will be resigning,” Calvin Parson Jr., a member of the LCPS Media Relations team told The Virginia Star by email.
WTOP reported Thursday that Ziegler sent an email to the Loudoun County School Board (LCSB) on May 28, the day when a male student in a skirt allegedly raped a ninth-grade girl in the bathroom at Stone Bridge High School.
“The purpose of this email is to provide you with information regarding an incident that occurred at Stone Bridge HS. This afternoon a female student alleged that a male student sexually assaulted her in the restroom. The LCSO is investigating the matter,” Ziegler said in the email.
At a now-infamous LCSB meeting weeks later on June 22, Scott Smith was arrested after he and other parents caused a scene over the LCPS’ transgender bathroom policies. Smith’s daughter was the victim of the alleged transgender rapist.
“The Loudoun County Sheriff’s office took over the scene after the unrest at the June 22 School Board meeting and made the decision to arrest Mr. Smith on June 22,” LCPS told The Star Friday. “This arrest involved an assault on another person attending the meeting. You may find the disposition of this case in the records of the Loudoun County General District Court.”
Smith was not charged with assault, but rather disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, both misdemeanors, after the meeting was declared an “unlawful assembly.”
During that meeting, Ziegler insisted that “the predator transgender student or person simply does not exist,” and that as far as he knew, “We don’t have any record of assaults occurring in our restrooms.”
LCPS said Ziegler was unaware during the June 22 LCSB meeting that the alleged rapist was transgender, because “information regarding the students [sic] identity cannot be disclosed, as it would be in a direct violation of state and federal laws regarding student confidentiality and privacy.”
Addressing the latter half of his comments at the June 22 meeting, wherein he said that LCPS did not “have any records of assaults occurring in our restrooms,” Ziegler said he misinterpreted the question asked by a School Board member.
“Board Member Barts asked a question about discipline incidents in the bathrooms that I wrongly interpreted as incidents involving transgender and gender-fluid students,” he said in an apologetic October 15 statement.
He also said he regrets “that my comments were misleading and I apologize for the distress that error caused families.”
Later, the alleged rapist was enrolled at a different Loudoun County high school, Broad Run High School, where he was charged for allegedly groping another girl.
He is now in the custody of Virginia’s juvenile criminal justice system.
In Ziegler’s May 28 email, he also said Smith went to Stone Bridge High School and said he “caused a disruption by using threatening and profane language that was overheard by staff and students.”
“The school’s counseling team is providing services for students who witnessed the parent’s behavior,” Ziegler’s email said.
The email made no mention of counseling services for students who may have been affected by the alleged rape.
Parents in the county have been calling for Ziegler’s since the alleged rape coverup saga began.
Read the full statement from LCPS below:
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Pete D’Abrosca is a contributor at The Virginia Star and The Star News Network. Follow Pete on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Scott Ziegler” by Loudoun County Public Schools. Background Photo “Loudoun Public Schools Building” by Loudoun County Schools.
Do not believe this person has an oz. of regret. Parents of LCPS: There is a far more twisted root at the base of this problem. Finding it and rooting it out has to be the key objective in order to save our selves and our children from what promises to be grave negative risk to individuality of the human being. But in the meantime, cleave every messenger armed with inclusive, restrictive and convuluted rhetoric to entrap the freedoms germinating in one’s youth. You must understand this push remains inexorable, albeit obscured until the focus subsides. Don’t wait for the next storm to hit.
Seems to me that the situation is not quite as complex as it sounds according to this article. Was a student assaulted or not? If yes, that is a crime. Was a criminal charge made? If so, I doubt that the parent would have been so upset. If schools protect their students, if they are safe, parents are pleased. If a student is put at riskm such as this daughter, by bathroom policies which do not protect them, the school is to blame. I would sue and take my student out of such a school. Any super or school board member sitting in a place of authority making stupid and unsafe restroom policies deserves to be fired. Students who consider themselves transgender are the realm of psychiatrists and counselors, perhaps medical doctors. But preserving safty for all students is the realm of the school. Never should have happened. This sad and sorry school earned its shame, my opinion.