Former Loudoun County school officials indicted over mishandling of sexual assaults

The former superintendent of Virginia's Loudoun County Public Schools, as well as the district's public information officer, were indicted by a special grand jury during an investigation into the mishandling of two sexual assault cases, WTOP reports.

Former superintendent Scott Ziegler was charged with one count of false publication, one count of prohibited conduct, and one count of penalizing an employee for a court appearance. Former public information officer Wayde Byard was charged with one count of felony perjury.

Ziegler was fired in a closed-door meeting last week after a special grand jury released its report that said district officials pursued their own interests above the interests of students in handling cases in 2021 where a male high-school student allegedly sexually assaulted two female students.

The male student, who was described as "gender fluid," allegedly sodomized a ninth-grade girl in the girl’s bathroom at Stone Bridge High School. The student was then transferred to another school within the district where he sexually assaulted another female student -- he allegedly "abducted" a girl from a hallway and forced her into an empty classroom where he sexually assaulted her and nearly suffocated her. The 15-year-old suspect was subsequently convicted of both assaults and sentenced to complete a “residential program in a locked-down facility.”

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“There were several decision points for senior LCPS administrators, up to and including the superintendent, to be transparent and step in and alter the sequence of events leading up to the October 6, 2021 BRHS sexual assault. They failed at every juncture," the grand jury report reads, adding that the second assault “could have, and should have, been prevented.”

The sexual assault in the girls bathroom bolstered critics of the district’s policy of allowing transgender students to access bathrooms and locker rooms that align with “their consistently asserted gender identity.” As the National Review points out, the initial victims father spoke out against the policy at a school board meeting and was told there was no record of a sexual assault occurring in the bathroom. He was forcibly escorted out of the meeting by police.

The first indictment against Ziegler says he “did knowingly and willfully state, deliver or transmit by any means whatever to any publisher, or employee of a publisher, of any newspaper, magazine, or other publication or to any owner, or employee of an owner, of any radio station, television station, news service or cable service, any false and untrue statement, knowing the same to be false or untrue, concerning any person or corporation, with intent that the same shall be published, broadcast or otherwise disseminated.”

A witness reportedly testified that Ziegler told “a bald-faced lie” when he said at the meeting “to my knowledge we don’t have any record of assaults happening in our bathrooms” a month after the assault took place.

The second and third indictments against Ziegler allege that he retaliated against Erin Brooks “for expressing views on matters of public concern” and for making a court appearance. As WTOP points out, Brooks was one of two special education teachers who sued the school board in June, claiming her contract wasn’t renewed after she complained that a student had repeatedly sexually assaulted her, which she says was an act of retaliation for speaking out.