A member of the Loudon County School Board announced her resignation on Friday amid backlash over a reported sexual assault. On May 28, a boy allegedly wearing a skirt entered a girls’ bathroom at nearby Stone Bridge High School, where he sexually assaulted a ninth-grade girl.
“Please accept this letter as my formal resignation from the Loudon County School Board effective November 2, 2021,” board member Beth Barts wrote in a Facebook post.
The sexual assault allegations were revealed when Loudoun County resident Scott Smith sat down for an interview with the Daily Wire. Smith was one of two residents who were arrested in June when a Loudoun County School Board meeting was declared an unlawful assembly.
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Videos from the meeting, at which parents showed up in opposition of critical race theory, as well as proposed transgender policies, went viral. Smith was used as an example of imagined threats of violence at school board meetings, which the National School Boards Association recently referred to as “domestic terrorism.”
“If someone would have sat and listened for thirty seconds to what Scott had to say, they would have been mortified and heartbroken,” said Smith’s attorney, Elizabeth Lancaster. Smith said that he attempted to speak about the assault at the meeting but was arrested before he could.
Smith also told the Daily Wire that left wing activists refused to believe his ninth-grade daughter about the assault. According to Lancaster, the boy was charged with four counts relating to sexual assault, though juvenile records are sealed.
The arrest was later confirmed by the Loudoun County Sheriff’s office, though not initially. “On May 28, 2021, an LCSO School Resource Officer was notified by Stone Bridge High School staff of a possible sexual assault,” the Sheriff’s Office stated. “A thorough investigation and evidentiary analysis was conducted over the course of several week,” leading to the July 8 arrest of a 14-year-old suspect.”
At the June meeting, Loudoun County Superintendent Scott Ziegler denied that any sexual assault had occurred. He also lectured the crowd on their “misguided” anger towards proposed transgender policies, which were eventually adopted. “The predator transgender student or person simply does not exist,” Ziegler said. He added that “we don’t have any record of assaults occurring in our restrooms.”
The school board voted in August to allow transgender students to use school bathrooms matching their gender identity.
