A judge in Loudoun County released an independent report Thursday into two high-profile sexual assaults at two high schools in 2021, the latest chapter in a saga that has dominated county politics for almost two years.

The report lands at a key political moment for Loudoun County, just a week before early voting begins in the state’s legislative elections, which will determine control of the General Assembly in Richmond and could hand Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin a Republican-controlled legislature for the remainder of his term. Loudoun could be an important part of that quest for Republican unified government: the county is home to what is expected to be one of the tightest and most expensive senate races in the commonwealth.

The newly-released report reinforces a damning picture of the LCPS administration’s confused and inadequate response to the sexual assaults laid out in a grand jury investigation released last year. That investigation documented a months-long delay in school administrators’ opening of a Title IX investigation into the first assault, and found that the second assault could have been averted if administrators had taken the safety issue posed by the student more seriously.

The report itself became a major flashpoint, with critics of the schools calling for its release for more than a year. The school board maintained the report should be shielded from the public under attorney-client privilege. The body voted in February not to release it publicly, but was challenged in court by Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares.

The same student perpetrated both assaults, the first at Stone Bridge High School in May 2021, and the second at Broad Run High School in October 2021. The two assaults quickly became a centerpiece of political debate over the schools, which were already embroiled in community arguments over school masking, antiracism and equity policies, and transgender-inclusive bathroom policies — all issues that became talking points in Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s successful run for the governor’s mansion in the fall. One of Youngkin’s first acts in office was signing an executive order directing Miyares to investigate LCPS for wrongdoing in its handling of the assaults.

New details into LCPS response

The law firm’s report adds some new details to the timeline and issues discussed in the grand jury assessment, particularly what was behind the delay in opening a federally-mandated Title IX investigation promptly after the first assault in May 2021 at Stone Bridge High School. (That didn’t happen until October, after the student had assaulted another student at Broad Run High School.)

It also refutes the idea — advanced by national conservative media in the wake of the assaults — that the perpetrator was transgender and was dressing in skirts with the goal of entering the girls’ bathroom. Previous media reports have noted that the student’s mother asserts her son identifies as male; the law firm notes that the student identified as pansexual and includes perspectives from his teachers and mother suggesting that he wore kilts and skirts to seek attention or experiment.

Anti-transgender advocates have long suggested that allowing transgender people to use the bathrooms that match their gender identity opens up women and girls to sexual assault, a widely–debunked claim.

The report also suggests the student perpetrator assaulted at least one other student at Stone Bridge High School, an assault that went unreported. The report cites messages between the Stone Bridge victim and a friend, who admitted that the same student had assaulted them but declined to tell school authorities.

The law firm’s investigation sheds more light on the broken Title IX response at LCPS. Once the first victim reported her assault in May, the report says, LCPS was required by law to open a Title IX investigation into the matter and offer support and accommodations to the victim and her family, neither of which it did. But school officials didn’t consider whether they should conduct a Title IX inquiry until August, and when they did, the discussion “appears to have bordered on the theoretical and was undertaken without the benefit of any information about what happened,” the report documents.

School officials mistakenly believed that they were prevented from performing a Title IX investigation into the matter while the sheriff’s criminal investigation was ongoing, a misconception reinforced by some members of the sheriff’s office, who threatened to arrest school personnel who opened their own investigation into the matter, the report says.

In a statement to DCist/WAMU after the release of the law firm’s report, the Loudoun school board noted the steps LCPS has taken since 2021 to improve its Title IX processes. They include firing the former superintendent, replacing the Title IX coordinator, creating and staffing a Title IX office to respond to complaints, and updating school policies and LCPS’s agreement with the sheriff’s office.

“The Board is dedicated to continuing to work with families and the larger LCPS community to address concerns, continuously improve, and rebuild trust,” stated School Board Chair Ian Serotkin, in the statement.

That work is likely to be an uphill battle. Current students and alumni of LCPS say the schools’ mishandling of sexual assaults is pervasive and not limited to the 2021 cases that have received tremendous attention.

A political football

Youngkin and Miyares both characterized the release of the law firm report as a win for transparency and accountability for LCPS.

“It’s deeply disappointing for parents across Virginia to see the Loudoun county school system repeatedly refuse to give parents the transparency they deserve on this horrifying series of events,” said Youngkin spokeswoman Macaulay Porter. “The children in this school system deserve better.”

“The root of my investigation into Loudoun County Public Schools was to uncover the truth and provide answers to millions of concerned Virginians. This ‘independent report’ was paid for by taxpayers. Virginians wanted it released. The Loudoun County Board of Supervisors wanted it released. Only the investigated entity – the Loudoun County School Board – did not,” said Attorney General Miyares.

“The biggest takeaway is that LCPS had no clue what Title IX required,” commented Ian Prior, a conservative activist, in a social media post. His organization, Fight For Schools, touted the release as a victory in a string of successes since the group’s Oct. 2021 vow to remove the current school board from office, seek the release of the report, and get the superintendent fired.

Loudoun4All, a progressive advocacy group formed to oppose conservative attacks on public schools, pointed to the report’s details about the problematic communications between the sheriff’s office and the schools.

“The redacted internal report highlights the same failures from LCPS that we saw on the grand jury report — that LCPS failed to understand their responsibilities under title IX. But what is new is that we see how directly that ties to threats from LCSO,” the group said in a statement.

Ramifications at the ballot box

Revelations around the two assaults stoked community anger and political fervor as the campaign for Virginia governor heated up in the fall of 2021. Some political analysts believe Youngkin’s emphasis on “parental rights” as his closing message energized the Republican base in rural areas and could have contributed to narrowing Republican losses in suburban and exurban areas across the state. In Loudoun County in 2021, the final vote tally had Youngkin trailing Democratic opponent Terry McAuliffe by 11 points — an improvement on Republicans’ more than 20-point losses there in the 2020 presidential race and the 2017 gubernatorial race.

Now, with the release of the law firm report just days before early voting begins in state legislative races, the issue once again appears poised to have a political impact.

Western Loudoun County makes up the majority of Senate District 31, a hotly-contested battleground in the competition for control of the narrowly-divided state Senate. Two first-time candidates are running there: Russet Perry, a former prosecutor, is the Democratic nominee, and Juan Pablo Segura, an entrepreneur and the son of a major conservative donor, is the Republican in the race.

Youngkin and Virginia Republicans hope to flip control of the chamber in November, allowing the governor greater latitude in passing conservative priorities like a 15-week ban on abortions and tax cuts (Democrats currently control the Senate, and have used that position to block many of those priorities). Some speculate that a Republican sweep of the legislature could catapult Youngkin to national prominence, perhaps stoking a late-breaking entry into the Republican presidential primary or making him an attractive vice presidential pick.

Segura, who identifies himself as a “parental rights advocate” on his website, called the release of the report “an important victory in the fight to improve our schools” in a statement.

Segura has made the release of the report a significant campaign issue. He filed a civil lawsuit to compel LCPS to make it public. And his message has frequently featured conservative talking points about public schools. Earlier in the week, Segura appeared alongside Youngkin at a town hall event focused on parents’ rights in Leesburg, part of a series of campaign events Youngkin is hosting across the commonwealth.

“The number one issue is parents and parental rights in the school system in Loudoun County,” Segura said. “Parents are incredibly disappointed in this Loudoun County school board. At every stop they do the wrong thing.”

Russet Perry, Segura’s opponent in the race, highlighted her background as a prosecutor with experience fighting for victims of child abuse and sexual assault.

“This should never have happened, and I hope this will allow the victims and their families some measure of closure,” Perry said in a statement. “As leaders, we should always work to make our government open and transparent so Virginians can have faith in our institutions and this tragedy is not repeated again.”

In addition to the General Assembly races, all nine seats on the Loudoun County School Board are up for grabs in November, with several well-funded conservative challengers on the ballot. Some are receiving notable sums from Segura’s Renew Virginia PAC, which his campaign website describes as “committed to finding and elevating qualified candidates of any party to renew the Loudoun County School Board.” Some candidates are running against three current members of the school board who have been inconsistent in their positions with respect to the law firm report, initially signaling support for making it public and then voting against releasing it.

Leesburg District school board representative Erika Ogedegbe, who has drawn those criticisms, said in a statement that she opposed the release of the report out of concern for the privacy and healing of the minor student victims.

At the Leesburg town hall, Youngkin announced his decision to pardon Scott Smith, the father of the Stone Bridge High School student survivor. Smith was convicted of disorderly conduct and obstruction of justice at a chaotic school board meeting in June 2021, where witnesses said he was physically threatening another meeting attendee and then engaged in a physical altercation with a sheriff’s deputy. Smith blamed his daughter’s assault on LCPS’ “radical gender policies,” according to The Post.

In 2021, conservative media connected the assault at Stone Bridge High School to the schools’ new, not-yet-implemented policy that would allow transgender and nonbinary students to use bathrooms reflecting their gender identity — a policy Youngkin opposed on the campaign trail and as governor. At that time, Fox News aired 88 segments on the subject between October and mid-November, according to Media Matters, a left-leaning media watchdog.

That pattern of media attention appears to be repeating, too. Youngkin joined Fox News on Sunday to highlight Smith’s pardon. Fox News also interviewed Smith and a former Loudoun County prosecutor who is the Republican nominee for commonwealth’s attorney.

This story has been updated to include a statement from Russet Perry.