Loudoun County schools chief of staff no longer has job after handling of sexual assault cases



The chief of staff for Loudoun County Public Schools in Virginia no longer has a job following accusations that the school district violated Title IX by failing to conduct a timely investigation of multiple sexual assaults.

LCPS told Fox News in a statement Wednesday that the chief of staff position once held by Mark Smith is now "vacant." It is not immediately clear why Smith, who was also the school district's Title IX coordinator, is no longer in the position, whether he resigned or was fired.

An unnamed school board member told WJLA-TV that Smith "is gone" because he failed to meet certain "obligations" under Title IX, a federal statute that bans discrimination based on sex.

"He had obligations under Title IX and they weren’t met. He was not a Title IX expert, but it was his job,” the school board member reportedly said. "Someone had to pay and it was him."

The school board member said LCPS is looking to hire someone with Title IX experience following two sexual assaults at two different schools in Loudoun County. @7NewsDc
— Nick Minock (@Nick Minock) 1642607139

The school district is being tight-lipped about the situation. WJLA reporter Scott Taylor said that LCPS Public Information Officer Wayde Byard hung up the phone on him twice while he was trying to confirm Smith's departure.

Earlier today I was hung up on twice by Wayde Byard, Public Information Officer at Loudoun County Public Schools. Byard refused to say who is the District\u2019s current Chief of Staff. Last week it was Mark Smith. Byard said no comment if Smith is still employed. @7NewsDCpic.twitter.com/HjWkYIUb9e
— Scott Taylor 7 News I-Team (@Scott Taylor 7 News I-Team) 1642607587

Fox News reported that a LCPS web page previously listing Smith as the chief of staff was removed Wednesday.

WJLA reported that the school district is seeking to hire someone with Title IX experience.

The alleged Title IX violations are related to two sexual assaults of students at LCPS schools that were first reported by the Daily Wire and later confirmed by the Loudoun County Sheriff's Department.

The first assault took place in a bathroom at Stone Bridge High School on May 18, 2021. Police arrested a 14-year-old male suspect on charges of one felony count of forcible sodomy and one felony count of forcible fellatio after an investigation. The same suspect was later charged with crimes related to a second assault at Broad Run High School on Oct. 6.

Last week the suspect, now 15, was found responsible for the crimes and sentenced to a juvenile treatment facility. The court required him to register as a sex offender for life.

The school district did not disclose the sexual assaults to the public before the Daily Wire revealed what happened in its report. At a school board meeting one month after the first incident, Superintendent Scott Ziegler publicly denied that there was any record of sexual assaults taking place in school bathrooms at a contentious school board meeting where he spoke in favor of a policy that would let transgender students use the bathroom of their preference.

Outraged parents accused LCPS of covering up the sexual assaults in schools. Ziegler later apologized and claimed that federal Title IX rules prevented the schools from conducting their own investigation into the incident until police had finished their investigation.

According to the Daily Wire, this claim was contested by the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights, which has said, "Although a school division may need to delay temporarily the fact-finding portion of a Title IX investigation while the police are gathering evidence, once notified that the police department has completed its gathering of evidence (not the ultimate outcome of the investigation or the filing of any charges), the school division must promptly resume and complete its fact-finding for the Title IX investigation." Federal law also requires that a school is "obligated to conclude a grievance process within a reasonably prompt time frame."

Ian Prior, executive director of the parents' advocacy group Fight for Schools, said in a press release that Smith's departure shows LCPS violated Title IX in its handling of the sexual assault.

“We have been saying for months that Loudoun County Public Schools violated Title IX and this report confirms that,” Prior said Wednesday. "While it is a positive development to see that LCPS is taking action, the fact remains that the buck stopped with Superintendent Scott Ziegler and the former leadership of the school board.”

“Ziegler remaining while his subordinates take the fall only further diminishes the trust in LCPS leadership, particularly when there is a publicly funded 'independent' report on the failures of LCPS that Ziegler refuses to release to the public,” he added.

On Tuesday, an independent report on how LCPS handled the sexual assault cases was completed, but officials said the report will not be released to the public.

Byard told WJLA that Virginia law and attorney-client privilege prevent the school district from releasing that information.

"The report is complete. It is being withheld from disclosure in its entirety under Va. Code 2.2-3705.1(2) relating to materials protected under the attorney-client privilege. Furthermore, portions of the record are being withheld from disclosure under. Code 2.2-3705.4(A)(1) relating to scholastic information and Va. Code 2.2-3705.1(1) relating to personnel information concerning identifiable individuals," he said in an email to WJLA.

"Of course, they are not going to release what happened," Scott Smith, the father of the teenage girl who was assaulted at Stone Bridge High School last May, said.

"What happened is horrific," he told WJLA. "There are so many high-up players involved in this cover-up. It’s just unbelievable."

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Email confirms Loudoun County school board knew about alleged sexual assault on day it happened



The Loudoun County Public Schools board was informed of an alleged sexual assault that took place in a high school bathroom on May 28, 2021, an email from Superintendent Scott Ziegler shows.

The email, which was reported by WTOP-TV, alerted the school board that an incident took place at Stone Bridge High School in which a female student alleged she was sexually assaulted by a male student in the restroom.

The May 28 email reads:

Good Afternoon, Board Members, 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 [Sheriff's Office] is investigating the matter. Secondary to the assault investigation, the female student's parent responded to the school and caused a disruption by using threatening and profane language that was overheard by staff and students. Additional law enforcement units responded to the school to assist with the parent. The school's counseling team is providing services for students who witnessed the parent's behavior. The alleged victim is being tended to by LCSO.

According to WTOP-TV, the details of the incident were not disclosed to the school board because the board may be involved in student disciplinary actions, and they are rarely told the specifics of major incidents at schools.

The email demonstrates, however, that the board would have known about the alleged bathroom assault at a June 22 school board meeting, where Ziegler told the public there was no record of any sexual assaults in a bathroom. A proposed policy to accommodate transgender students by letting them use whichever bathroom they wish was the topic of heated debate at the meeting. Parents had raised concerns that letting boys who identify as girls use the girls' restrooms would endanger the safety of their children.

School board member Beth Barts asked the superintendent if there were sexual assaults in restrooms occurring regularly.

"The predator transgender student or person simply does not exist," Ziegler answered at that meeting. "We don't have any record of assaults occurring in our restrooms."

But as the Daily Wire first reported, just three weeks prior a freshman girl said she was sexually assaulted by a boy wearing a skirt in the bathroom. According to an attorney for the girl's father, the suspect has been charged with two counts of forcible sodomy, one count of anal sodomy, and one count of forcible fellatio related to the incident. The same suspect is alleged to have assaulted another girl in a classroom at a different high school earlier this month.

The May 28 victim's father, who was in attendance at the school board meeting, grew visibly angry after the school board would not acknowledge his daughter's alleged assault and was arrested for disorderly conduct.

Last week, Ziegler apologized for making a "misleading" remark, claiming that he thought the question was specifically referring to assaults involving transgender students.

"First, let me say to the families and students involved, my heart aches for you," Ziegler said in an Oct. 15 statement. "And I am sorry that we failed to provide the safe, welcoming and affirming environment that we aspire to provide. We acknowledge and share your pain and we will continue to offer you support to help your families through this trauma."

The victim's family now intends to file a civil lawsuit against the school. Bill Stanley, an attorney representing the family, said in a statement that Ziegler's apology confirmed that the school administration "failed to provide the safe environment" for the victim.

"As evidenced by subsequent events and revelations, Loudoun Public Schools have been failing the parents who entrusted them to provide a safe environment for their children every day," Stanley said. "That trust has (been) irrevocably broken by Loudoun County Public Schools' actions and inactions."

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Loudoun County schools accused of failing to report multiple alleged sexual assaults over several years, in apparent violation of the law



Already under fire for allegedly concealing two sexual assaults from the public, Loudoun County Public Schools in Virginia is now accused of failing to report multiple known incidents of alleged sexual assault in schools despite a state law that requires such reporting.

Virginia law mandates that "Reports shall be made to the division superintendent and to the principal or his designee on all incidents involving … sexual assault."

But according to the Daily Wire, LCPS has in at least three instances failed to report statistics on sexual assaults to a public database administered by the Virginia Department of Education that was set up so that schools can comply with the law.

Earlier this week, the Daily Wire first reported that school officials in Loudoun County never disclosed to the public that a ninth-grade girl was allegedly sexually assaulted by a gender-fluid male student in a school restroom in May. This same male student allegedly assaulted another girl at a different school later in October, the Daily Wire reported.

A 15-year-old male student has been charged in two alleged sexual assaults in Loudoun County schools, one in May and one in October.

Though the school now acknowledges that the incidents occurred, the Daily Wire found that LCPS reported to the state database that Stone Bridge High School had zero sexual assaults for the 2020-21 school year, which includes May 28, 2021, the date of the first alleged assault.

Also, the school failed to report a case from October 2018 in which three football players at Tuscorara High School were arrested and charged with sexual assault. The case, which was widely publicized at the time, involved a younger player who was "held down by teammates who inserted objects into the victim" in a locker room. That year, Tuscorara did not report any instances of sexual offenses against students to Virginia's public database, as required by law.

It is unknown how many other cases of sexual assault have gone unreported by LCPS.

A spokesman for the Virginia Department of Education told the Daily Wire, "VDOE is reviewing the discipline, crime and violence data submissions of Loudoun County Public Schools and is in communication with LCPS to determine whether the division's reporting is accurate and whether the division is in compliance with state and federal law."

It's possible that LSPS Superintendent Scott Ziegler could be held personally responsible if the school district did not follow the law.

Virginia law states: "The division superintendent shall annually report all such incidents to the Department of Education for the purpose of recording the frequency of such incidents on forms that shall be provided by the Department and shall make such information available to the public."

The law also says, "A division superintendent who knowingly fails to comply or secure compliance with the reporting requirements of this subsection shall be subject to the sanctions authorized in § 22.1-65. A principal who knowingly fails to comply or secure compliance with the reporting requirements of this section shall be subject to sanctions prescribed by the local school board, which may include, but need not be limited to, demotion or dismissal."

LCPS denied that school board members had knowledge of the "specific details" of the May 28 incident until it was reported by media outlets this week. But it seems unlikely that the superintendent was unaware of what happened, given that the incident was reported to police and an investigation was opened. Over the summer, during debate on a proposed policy to permit transgender students to use whichever restroom they want, school officials told the public that there was no record of sexual assaults in restrooms at any Loudoun County school.

"To my knowledge, we don't have any record of assaults occurring in our restrooms," Ziegler said during a June 22 school board meeting.

But three weeks earlier, on May 28, Loudoun County resident Scott Smith says his daughter was sexually assaulted in a bathroom at Stone Bridge High School. Both the Loudoun County sheriff's office and a statement from LCPS confirmed that police were contacted after an incident at the school. While the school district has refused to discuss details of the incident since it involved minors, the sheriff's office told Fox News the case "involved sexual assault."

"Loudoun County Sheriff's Office was contacted within minutes of receiving the initial report on May 28. Once a matter has been reported to law enforcement, LCPS does not begin its investigation until law enforcement advises LCPS that it has completed the criminal investigation," LCPS said in a statement on Wednesday, after public outcry against school officials based on the Daily Wire's reporting.

"Furthermore, LCPS is prohibited from disciplining any student without following the Title IX grievance process, which includes investigating complaints of sexual harassment and sexual assault," the district said.