WaPo: Say, have any of you heard about these Loudoun County school-bathroom rapes?

Give one cheer to the Washington Post for reporting on this outrage, even if they’re late to the story in their own backyard. Had the Daily Wire’s Luke Rosiak not reported on the cover-up of two in-school rapes by the Loudoun County Public Schools board, it seems doubtful that it would have gotten any attention. Now that parents are demanding that the LCPS board and superintendent resign over the scandal, though, they have finally picked up the thread.

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Well, some of it, anyway:

A teen accused of sexually assaulting a fellow student at a Loudoun County high school in May is also accused in a second sexual assault less than five months later at another county high school, according to the Loudoun County commonwealth’s attorney.

The dual allegations sparked anger from parents who showed up at a school board meeting Tuesday night and blasted school officials for their handling of the incidents and the student’s enrollment in a new school after the first allegation.

Some parents who spoke at the meeting grew emotional, saying they feared for the safety of their children in Loudoun County Public Schools. Still others called for the resignation of Superintendent Scott A. Ziegler and of the school board. …

The first alleged assault occurred May 28 at Stone Bridge High School in Ashburn, according to the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office. In a Wednesday statement that followed growing focus on the incident on social media and news reports, the sheriff’s office said one of its school resource officers was notified of the alleged assault the same day and an investigation was quickly started. Officials said it was conducted over several weeks by the sheriff’s office Special Victims Unit.

Oddly enough, however, the Post never gets around to mentioning the cover-up. They quote the PIO of the law-enforcement agency explaining why they didn’t release more information on the assaults and investigation, but that’s not where the cover-up took place. The LCPS board wanted to enact free-access rules to bathrooms, and parents had safety concerns about boys accessing restrooms set aside for girls. It was only when the board insisted that there was no record of bathroom assaults that Scott Smith, the father of a girl who had been violently raped in a girl’s bathroom in an LCPS school, spoke up.

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And what happened to Scott Smith? He got bullied at the meeting, got angry, and police arrested him. The school board painted Smith as some sort of domestic terrorist, the media reported the incident as such rather than ask even a few basic questions about what had happened, and even Merrick Garland and the Department of Justice made Smith into a poster child for right-wing radicalism. Only when Rosiak uncovered the truth about the LCPS cover-up of the rapes did the truth come out, and the Post article mentions exactly none of that context.

That’s why the Post deserves one cheer and one cheer only, but as the Free Beacon points out, that’s one more than all of the rest of the mainstream national media put together:

Mainstream broadcast networks failed to cover a Tuesday night report that alleged a Virginia school board covered up a rape allegation against a boy who wore a skirt in the girls’ bathroom, according to a media analysis.

The Loudoun County School Board kept the rape allegations quiet as it successfully pushed to adopt a policy that allows students to choose which bathroom to use based on their preferred gender, according to the Daily Wire. The alleged rapist was reportedly transferred to another school where he was later charged with sexual battery and abduction of another student. Neither ABC, CBS, nor NBC dedicated primetime coverage to the report, according to the Media Research Center. Networks focused coverage on Texas governor Greg Abbott (R.) as he signed an executive order that bans vaccine mandates.

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Why aren’t media outlets covering this story? One has to suspect that they don’t want to admit, explicitly or tacitly, that they pilloried Smith unjustly. You’d think that these national outlets would have learned a lesson from the Covington Catholic story after paying Nick Sandmann millions of dollars to settle defamation suits, but apparently not.

Fortunately, Rosiak and the Daily Wire set the record straight and rescued Smith from the mainstream media’s demonization. I spoke with Rosiak this morning on the Hugh Hewitt show about the case and what may be coming next. Stay tuned.

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David Strom 3:30 PM | December 05, 2024
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