FAIRFAX, Virginia — Republican Glenn Youngkin on Tuesday called for an “immediate” investigation into Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) after news surfaced last week that a male student allegedly committed two separate sexual assault crimes at two different Loudoun schools.
Youngkin spoke to an overflowing crowd of several hundred at the Burke Volunteer Fire and Rescue Department about the incidents, declaring that school administrators “failed to protect” the victims.
The first incident involved a 14-year-old male, who the victim’s father says was wearing a skirt when he entered a Stone Bridge High School bathroom and sexually assaulted his daughter in May. The 14-year-old was arrested in July and charged with two counts of forcible sodomy, according to police. The second incident involved the same 14-year-old, who police arrested again in October — this time at Broad Run High School — for groping a different female student.
The first victim’s father, Scott Smith, was arrested at an LCPS school board meeting in June for an outburst he had over what happened to his daughter. The school board at the time — which had been holding discussions over Critical Race Theory and transgender policies — dismissed Smith’s outrage, and he was eventually detained for disorderly conduct and obstruction of justice.
That the enraged father’s daughter had allegedly been raped and that an arrest had in fact been made only came to light after the Daily Wire revealed this month that evidence indicated LCPS may have attempted to hide the case.
Youngkin said Tuesday night he believed the LCPS school board’s actions amounted to a cover-up. “A young girl was sexually assaulted in her school, and the administrators, those who were entrusted with not only her education but her safety, tried to cover it up.”
He added, “They quietly moved the offender, an offender being prosecuted for sexual assault, to another school, where he was able to do it again. Two young girls have been sexually assaulted because our system failed to protect them.”
Many attendees at the event — located in Fairfax County, which is adjacent to Loudoun — cheered on the Republican candidate with signs reading “Parents for Youngkin.”
Glenn Youngkin speaks to supporters at a rally on October 19, 2021, in Fairfax County, Virginia. (Breitbart News)
Breitbart News spoke to one couple, Anthony and Rachel, who said they are independents who typically vote Democrat but that they have children who are both past and current students in the LCPS system and that education policy has driven them to back Youngkin.
Rachel said she would have been open to voting Democrat had former Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) not been the party’s candidate. “All these wonderful Democrats are out there. I see those wonderful Democrats. I’m like, ‘Out of all of them, you picked this guy,’” she said.
She added that her son went to an LCPS high school where the number of students describing themselves as transgender seems to have “exploded” and that even her son thought the increase seemed “not statistically likely.” Rachel said of the LCPS administrators, “It just seems like they’re championing it without actually sitting down with these kids and saying, ‘Okay, let’s untangle what you’re going through.’”
On covering up charges of sexual assault, Anthony noted that LCPS’s process for school board meetings feels “dystopian.” He said, “This is a prime example of what happens when you leave the parents out of the process. … It’s very dystopian the way that they’re doing this.”
Rachel added of the Smith incident, “I could not feel worse about that because I believed the Trevor Noah narrative on that.” Leftists, including Noah, have maligned angry parents, falling in line with the National School Boards Association’s (NSBA) charge that some of those parents present a “domestic terrorism” threat. President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice responded to the NSBA by mobilizing the FBI to fight those parents.
During his speech, Youngkin said, “Instead of investigating parents, the Department of Justice should be investigating those who covered up a heinous crime in our school.”
“The time for closed-door conversation and silencing parents is over. We must fix this now,” Youngkin continued, adding that those involved in the latest scandal should be fired or resign.
Youngkin has spent the weeks since the last gubernatorial debate in September hyper-focused on education policy after McAuliffe was hit with massive backlash for saying at the debate, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”
Another attendee of the Youngkin event, a Reston resident named Julian, opined that McAuliffe’s controversial debate remark does not resonate well with parents in deeply blue Northern Virginia. “Don’t tell wealthy, engaged parents that you can’t guide your kid’s education. That’s the one thing that’s going to get them out,” Julian told Breitbart News.
The McAuliffe campaign is circulating a new ad this week featuring McAuliffe claiming he “has always valued the concerns of parents” in an apparent attempt to course correct after processing the reactions to his debate message.
Youngkin’s campaign said in response to the ad that McAuliffe is “struggling to save his campaign” with Election Day just two weeks away and polls indicating the race is virtually tied.
Write to Ashley Oliver at aoliver@breitbart.com.
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