JasonNecks

https://www.dailywire.com/news/loudoun-county-schools-tried-to-conceal-sexual-assault-against-daughter-in-bathroom-father-says

"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 Scott’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.

As a result of the viral video showing his arrest, Smith became the poster child for what the National School Boards Association has since suggested could be a form of “domestic terrorism”: a white blue-collar male who showed up to harangue obscure public servants on his local school board.

“If someone would have sat and listened for thirty seconds to what Scott had to say, they would have been mortified and heartbroken,” Lancaster said.

Minutes before Smith’s arrest at the school board meeting, the Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) superintendent lectured the public that concerns about the transgender policy were misplaced because the school system had no record of any assault occurring in any school bathroom.

Then a woman wearing a rainbow heart shirt – a left-wing community activist – told Smith she did not believe his daughter, he says. His rage reached a boil and he had a heated exchange of words with the woman. A police officer, there to keep the peace in the meeting, pulled on his arm. Smith yanked it away. Before he knew it, Smith says, he was hit in the face, handcuffed and dragged across the floor, with his pants pulled down. Images of the incident were splashed on televisions and newspapers across the world.

Buta Biberaj, the county’s progressive, top elected prosecutor, who has close ties to the school board’s most liberal members, appeared in court to personally prosecute Smith for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. Biberaj ran on a platform of ending “mass incarceration,” but she wanted to put Smith in jail for the misdemeanors.

As prosecutor, Biberaj would have known about the case involving Smith’s daughter. The suspect, juvenile court prosecutors assured Smith, was being held responsible: He was on house arrest, confined to his mother’s townhouse. According to Lancaster, a conviction was expected on October 14, likely in the form of a guilty plea to a lesser sexual assault charge.

But on October 6, according to the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office, a 15-year-old was charged with sexual battery and abduction after police said he forced a girl into an empty classroom, held her against her will, and touched her inappropriately.

Lancaster says the suspect is the same boy that allegedly attacked Smith’s daughter.

On May 28, Stone Bridge High School called Smith to come to the school, where they told him that his 15-year-old daughter had just been in a physical altercation in a bathroom with a male, Smith says. When he arrived, he determined that what had happened was not a case of his daughter being beaten up – it was far more serious.

The school said it was handling the incident in-house. Smith was dumbfounded.

Deputies from the sheriff’s office ultimately responded to the school – not to investigate the alleged rape of a child – Smith said, but because school administrators called them on him for making a scene about it.

Smith acknowledges he did make a scene and says any father would have done the same in the situation. “I went nuts. I called the principal a p—-,” he said. “Six cop cars showed up like a f—ing SWAT team” to respond to the school’s complaint about an assertive parent, he said.

The police department declined to provide records from that day to The Daily Wire.

“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,” Smith said. A SANE exam and buccal swab, his lawyer said, later came back favorable to the prosecution’s case.

At 4:48 pm on the day of the incident, the principal sent out an email to the community that claimed nothing jeopardizing student safety had occurred, painting Smith as the villain, and offering counseling services for witnesses of Smith’s blowup:

Good evening Stone Bridge families this [sic] is Stone Bridge Principal Tim Flynn. 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.

All juvenile court records are sealed. The sheriff’s office declined to release records relating to Smith to The Daily Wire but, in response to a public records request, confirmed that a report with “Offense: Forcible Sodomy [and] Sexual Battery” matching that date and location exists.

LCPS Director of Communications Joan Sahlgren said only that “Any information related to student information is confidential under state and federal laws regarding student privacy.”

Lancaster told The Daily Wire that she accompanied Smith’s daughter to meetings with prosecutors, that the suspect made self-incriminating statements in an interview, that prosecutors brought the charges, and that a conviction was expected imminently, likely in the form of a plea deal to a charge of felony aggravated sexual battery."

Thoughts:

I hope the victim will recover from this, and that she will have a good life despite the trauma.

It doesn't seem to me like this article will turn out to be misleading, at least not mostly. The police did confirm that a rape did take place at that time and date, and there's a lawyer quoted. I wouldn't expect to find those details in a fabricated piece. I could be wrong though.

They don't say whether the rapist in question actually identifies as trans, just that he wore a dress. If the part about the school doing nothing is true than presumably he is.

If the description of the school's behavior is accurate and everything in the article is as they've said, it's pretty surprising that the school expected they could cover something like this up, even if they knew the police would take their side. I mean, the school officials may be self-indoctrinated to the point where they are able to successfully delude themselves that a rape is not a rape, but even so. There's a common failure mode at play here where people don't realize they're defending an undefensible piece of territory and need to cede ground. I guess you could call it the "never give an inch" cognitive bias.

I hope we hear more about this story, to the extent that such a thing is possible without breaking juvenile privacy laws, which do exist for a reason I suppose.