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The political peril inflicted by Virginia Democratic gubernatorial
nominee Terry McAuliffe’s education stances deepened this week when
a father accused the Loudoun County School Board of covering up the
rape of his teenage daughter in a high school bathroom.

The father was dragged out of a school board meeting and arrested
when he attempted to confront the members about the assault of his
daughter by a boy wearing a skirt in the girls’ bathroom.

The episode in Loudoun County, Virginia, hit on hot-button positions
Mr. McAuliffe has taken in backing permissive transgender policies
and questioning parental rights in school decisions.

Mr. McAuliffe was lying low Wednesday and ducked questions from The
Washington Times as the rape story exploded on the Virginia
political scene.

Republicans seeking to push the party’s gubernatorial nominee,
businessman Glenn Youngkin, over the finish line in the Nov. 2
election seized on the rape story to hammer Mr. McAuliffe and the
state’s Democratic leaders.

“The Loudoun County cover-up is another indicator that Democrats and
school administrators are absolutely out of touch with issues of
importance to parents, students and families. It will most certainly
have a deep impact on the gubernatorial and other elections,” Rich
Anderson, chairman of the Virginia Republican Party, said in an
interview.

Indeed, the episode added fuel to Virginia conservatives’ worries
about culture wars inside schools and COVID-19 mandates for
students.

Mr. McAuliffe, a former Virginia governor running for a second
nonconsecutive term, was already under fire from parental rights
advocates for seemingly siding with school officials and against
parents when the two collide.

“I’m not going to let parents come into schools and actually take
books out and make their own decisions,” Mr. McAuliffe said in the
last debate against Mr. Youngkin when pressed about a mother’s
attempt to remove pornography from a school library. “I don’t think
parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”

The former governor was trying to walk back that remark before the
bathroom rape emerged this week.

The shocking account of the sexual assault of the ninth-grade girl
was first reported by The Daily Wire. The report included
accusations that school board officials tried to squelch the story
because it threatened to undercut support for a new policy to treat
transgender students according to their chosen sex.

Scott Smith, the girl’s father, reacted angrily at a June 22 school
board meeting when board members claimed to have no records of any
assaults in school bathrooms. Law enforcement officials physically
dragged Mr. Smith out of the room before he made any public
statements to the board.

The National School Boards Association and its supporters circulated
a video of Mr. Smith’s raucous arrest to show that parents speaking
out against public school curriculum are dangerous and “domestic terrorists.”

The boy accused of assaulting Mr. Smith’s daughter was later charged
with sexually assaulting another girl at a different school in the
county, the father later told Fox News Channel.

The Washington Times could not independently verify his claims.

Loudoun County Public Schools spokesman Wayde Byard said the school
followed federal law in dealing with the situation.

“LCPS is prohibited from disciplining any student without following
the Title IX grievance process, which includes investigating
complaints of sexual harassment and sexual assault. LCPS does impose
interim measures to protect the safety of students involved in the
original incident, deter retaliation, and preserve the integrity of
the investigation and resolution process. LCPS has complied and
continues to comply with its obligations under Title IX,” he said.

Mr. Byard said School Board members are typically not given details
of disciplinary matters. “Consequently, members of the Loudoun
County School Board were not aware of the specific details of this
incident until it was reported in media outlets earlier this week.
We are unable to locate any records that indicate that Scott Smith
had registered in advance to speak at the June 22, 2021, board
meeting,” he said.

The accusation that the rapist was a boy wearing a skirt in the
girl’s bathroom also threatens to rekindle Virginia’s fight over transgender school bathrooms. Mr. McAuliffe has sided firmly on the
side of school boards to have the last word on the issue.

“I’ve always felt that school boards have the pulse of the local
community. They should be making their decisions,” the Democrat said
last month at the final debate. “I hate all of this divisiveness
that is going on today. I hate to see our children being demonized
today. I just really dislike it.”

Mr. McAuliffe also vowed as governor in 2017 to veto any legislation
similar to North Carolina’s “bathroom bill.”

A Republican state legislator at the time submitted a bill mandating
that people use the restroom, locker room or changing room that
aligns with their biological gender.

“Stay away from the socially divisive issues,” Mr. McAuliffe told legislators. “We are not going to put a wall up around Virginia.”

An Emerson College poll released this month showed that voters
believe parents should have more influence in deciding a school’s
curriculum by a 51.5% to 32.5 % margin. The rest of the respondents
were on the fence. A YouGov poll released this week found that 62%
of registered voters said Virginia’s school curriculum on race in
history was a significant factor in how they vote, including 73% of Republicans, 61% of independents and 52% of Democrats.

• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.

• Kerry Picket can be reached at kpicket@washingtontimes.com.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/oct/13/alleged-rape-teen- girl-school-bathroom-tests-mcaul/

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