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I read the Grand Jury report titled, “Report of the Grand Jury on the Investigation of the Loudoun County Public Schools.” It’s titled as a report on public school policy and broadly, that much is true. But it is also an investigation of monumental lapses of judgment, ass-covering, and incompetence concerning two brutal sexual assaults by one, clearly disturbed boy, committed at two different schools.
The report runs 24 pages long, with 67 pages of exhibits. My review gave me a slightly different opinion from the grand jury foreperson, and also my RedState colleagues. My analysis will be as a lawyer, an opinion based on 30 years as a practicing litigator. (If you wish to read articles by other RedState authors on the subject, you can find them here and here.)
In his first week in office, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin signed executive order #4, which authorized the Attorney General to impanel a grand jury to investigate LCSD. The District’s response was to file a lawsuit to stop it. The District’s attorney pleaded for an injunction claiming, incredibly, that:
“local school boards are vested with the exclusive power over ‘the supervision of schools in each school division.’”
It’s a facially absurd argument. The Grand Jury wasn’t empaneled to supervise the district but rather, to investigate its failings. The District lost at trial and lost on appeal.
Warning: this article contains graphic descriptions of sex acts.
Before I get into the District’s obstruction and obfuscations, I need to review what happened at the schools. The first anal rape occurred because both the girl and the skirt-wearing rapist were allowed to leave class. This, apparently, happens “all the time.” All a student needs to do is ask for a pass. According to the teaching assistant who happened to go into the bathroom, seeing “two feet” in a stall isn’t unusual.
“They might need a tampon or somebody had a boyfriend they had a fight with.”
The rapist later said that adults usually “don’t do anything” regarding two pairs of feet in a stall. Although that is a shocking indictment by itself, “two pairs of feet” are not what the teacher’s assistant walked in on. The rapist had the girl on the ground and was anally raping her. He “stood up quickly.” She did not because she was in pain. Unless the teacher’s assistant was blind, there is zero chance that the adult didn’t know or have an idea of what she walked in on. It wasn’t a discussion about boyfriends. It wasn’t an exchange of tampons. The assistant did nothing but walk out. After the TA walked out, the rapist then pushed his penis into the girl’s mouth.
The victim, bruised and in pain, went to the nurse. An administrator, who emailed others, clearly didn’t believe her. So much for believing “all women.” The girl’s mother was already at the school when the father arrived. Although it was abundantly clear that the dad was upset because a boy had sodomized his daughter, he was escorted out of the school. By the time the father had been forcefully removed from the school, the principal was preparing a “No Trespass” letter for the father–not the rapist. In fact, by that time, the rapist had been missing for two-and-a-half hours.
A meeting to discuss what had happened was convened with six administrators. It lasted 30 minutes. Only the principal remembered anything about the meeting. Unless anal rapes happen on a daily basis, that collective amnesia is clearly a coordinated lie.
An email went out to parents. It wasn’t about the rape, it was about the dad. It discussed, at length, that the parent was disruptive, and that counselors “would be made available to students.” There was also a counselor for an angry dad whose daughter was raped. No counselor concerning rape in the school.
A separate email was sent by the superintendent to the LCSB. It did alert the board of an alleged sexual assault in a bathroom, and also about the dad being disruptive at school.
The rapist was back in school the next school day. The only thing the administration did was “separate” him from his victim. At school, the rapist was busy deleting evidence from his school-provided computer.
Twenty-five days after the rape, the world saw a replay of the infamous school board meeting where the girl’s father was arrested. That public meeting was also attended by the Superintendent. He was asked by a board member if assaults had occurred in locker rooms or bathrooms. He responded:
“To my knowledge, we don’t have any record of assaults occurring in our restrooms.”
Note that he responded just to “restrooms.” The Superintendent had attended the post-rape meeting at school and emailed the board about the sexual assault within hours. He should have been fired on the spot for being incompetent and a bad liar.
A criminal complaint was filed, and the assaulter spent time in juvenile lockup. More administrative missteps occurred while the assaulter was in lockup. At one point, he was released to his grandmother. Why the grandmother? Because his mother had gone on a two-week vacation. The grandmother held nothing back. She called the boy a psychopath.
But instead of going to a jail cell, he was transferred to another school. He quickly resumed his assaultive behavior. Two female students begged to be transferred out of the same class he was in. He repeatedly tapped a pencil against a girl’s head and asked if she had nude photos. He ask a male student if he had nude photos of his grandmother posted online. Although he had an ankle monitor on and he was a clear and present danger, teachers were left in the dark about his past.
Administrators were told and determined that his behavior did not reach Title IX abuse. That claim is objectively false. The school’s administrators did nothing but warn the abuser. He stayed in school.
On October 7, 2021, he raped another girl in a classroom. He grabbed her around the neck, pulled her into an empty classroom, and choked to near unconsciousness, then raped her. The principal never spoke to the victim. He did call the school administrator and said
“the placement didn’t work, yeah, so…”
According to the report, the District’s Superintendent consistently showed incompetence. He claimed the District had complied with Title IX. It had not. He claimed policy failures were the result of past administrators. Failings were, in fact, almost all under his watch.
Although the School Board commissioned the investigation re: policy failings, the report, authored by a law firm, was only shown to board members. They had 30 minutes to read it, and they were instructed to “hand it back.” An attorney has no right to hold back work-product from the client. This is an ethical breach, and malpractice, in my opinion. The one administrator who had anything to do with implementing school discipline said she had “no interest” in reading it.
Like a pair of disaffected teenagers, the District’s Superintendent and the Sheriff were not on “speaking terms,” so they didn’t share information.
Although LCPS publicly declared that it would cooperate with the Grand Jury, it did just the opposite.
After the injunction was denied, the District counsel’s second act of obstruction was to file a motion to quash testimonial subpoenas, citing two specious arguments. The court rejected the arguments. Nonetheless, the same attorney filed the same motion, using the same specious arguments for different witnesses. If an attorney in California did that, he/she would be met with sanctions pursuant to a CCP sec 128 motion.
That attorney filed the motion in the name of one witness, who later said that she was not, and never was, represented by that attorney. That act, again, is sanctionable against the attorney. That attorney, although he didn’t represent her, told her to “shut up,” and that her testimony would not “work well” for the District. That, in my opinion, is also an ethics violation and is sanctionable; it is witness intimidation and witness tampering.
The same law firm filed another Complaint and recycled the same specious arguments. Again, in California, if an attorney files a Complaint with the same rejected arguments, that law firm will be hit with a 128 sanctions motion for wasting the court’s time and abusing the system.
Two subpoenas were ignored by board members on the advice of the same attorney. The court ordered them to appear or be arrested. They appeared.
Per the report, counsel improperly instructed witnesses during testimony and “used” hand signals during testimony to instruct them. That, in my opinion, is also sanctionable.
Most egregious is the act of hiding evidence. The Grand Jury had subpoenaed documents from the Superintendent. A May 28, 2021, email was not produced. That same email was later produced by a different witness represented by private counsel. Either the Superintendent or the attorney didn’t produce that document. The most likely person is the attorney, who had a habit of obstructing the Grand Jury. If that is the case, that is an ethics violation.
Board members testified almost verbatim to a false narrative that the father of the first victim was yelling about “8040.” 8040 is the LCDS policy allowing students to use their “preferred” pronouns. There is zero evidence that the father knew that the rapist was claiming to be transgender or that the father even knew what “8040” meant. Also, each board member corrected the grand jury’s special counsel when he referred to the boy wearing a “dress.” They all said the same thing – that he was wearing a “kilt,” not a dress. There is no evidence that the boy was wearing a kilt. There is no document that refers to his dress as a kilt. This is an act of improper coaching by counsel. An attorney cannot tell a witness what to say, what words to use, and these witnesses seem to have been told what to say “kilt.”
The Virginia state bar should investigate what I see as ethical abuses by counsel. It appears that documents were, with little doubt, hidden, and witnesses instructed what to say and how to say it.
As far as the Grand Jury’s report that claims there is no clear violation of the Virginia statute on witness intimidation and tampering, I firmly disagree. Here is the statute. Make your own determination.
I think the state’s Attorney General should take action. He should investigate under the surface where I see massive ethical and potential criminal abuses by several individuals. Additionally, there are clear and unconscionable abuses under federal law pursuant to Title IX.
Unfortunately, the chances of the present Attorney General, Merrick Garland, ordering a federal investigation are slim to none, because the sexual abuser claims to be “transgender.”
Related cartoon is here.
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