You probably remember this case from last year where a boy wearing a skirt had sex with a girl in the girl’s bathroom of a high school in Loudoun County, Virginia. That student then told authorities she’d been assaulted and the assailant was eventually moved to another school where he subsequently kidnapped and raped a girl.

For many of us this first came to our attention when a man was arrested at a public school board meeting during a protest of the school board’s new bathroom use policy. The man who was arrested was the father of the first girl assaulted.

This week, Superintendent Ziegler was finally fired after a grand jury report concluded he had intentionally lied to the public to protect his own interests.

Following a two-hour closed session to discuss the special grand jury’s report on Loudoun County Public Schools administration’s handling of two sexual assaults by the same student, the School Board voted unanimously and without public discussion Tuesday to fire Superintendent Scott Ziegler immediately and without cause…

“It’s unfortunate that it took a special grand jury report for anyone to take any action,” stated Jessica Smith, the mother of the first victim. “The firing of Ziegler was way overdue and we hope this is the first of many firings of all those who failed these young women who now have to deal with what happened to them for the rest of their lives.”

Shortly before that vote, in a Board of Supervisors meeting happening at the same time, Loudoun County Chair Phyllis Randall (D-At Large) had called on the School Board to fire Ziegler.

“Let me say this as clearly as possible: Dr. Scott Ziegler needs to be fired,” she said during the Dec. 6 Board of Supervisors meeting. “I’m not dancing around this. We had a young woman violently raped and another one assaulted, and this was for all intents and purposes, on his part, a coverup.”

The Washington Post has more on the specific lie Ziegler told but the way the Post reports this leaves out some important details:

The student assailant was wearing women’s clothing during the first assault, which initially began as a consensual encounter in a bathroom. That May assault came a few months before the Loudoun system adopted a policy allowing transgender students to use bathrooms that match their gender identities. The policy was not in effect at the time of the assault, and there is no evidence to suggest the male student is transgender…

The grand jury report had concluded that Ziegler was informed about the May assault on the day it happened but that he later lied about his knowledge of the event during a board meeting the following month. When asked by a board member whether Loudoun had records of “assaults in our bathrooms or in our locker rooms regularly,” Ziegler replied with a falsehood, the report states.

Ziegler said, “To my knowledge we don’t have any record of assaults occurring in our restrooms.” A witness told the grand jury that this statement was a “baldfaced lie.”

Ziegler has said he misunderstood the question at the meeting. He said he believed the board member was asking whether the school had records of sexual assaults committed in bathrooms by transgender or gender-fluid students.

There are several layers to this which I want to point out individually. First, we know from the grand jury report that Ziegler did know about the assault because he was emailed the day it happened. And here’s where the Post’s description falls a bit short. There’s no evidence the male assailant is trans, however when the chief operating officer for the school system discussed the assault with the school’s principal, he learned the assailant had been wearing a skirt. He then sent an email to superintendent Ziegler and others which specifically connected the incident to the district’s new bathroom policy: “The incident at SBHS is related to policy 8040.” As the report explains, policy 8040 addressed the rights of transgender students to use bathrooms of their choice. It’s odd that the Post leaves that out of the story because it’s obviously relevant.

The assailant may not have been trans and the new policy was not in effect at the time, nevertheless, superintendent Ziegler was told the assault was connected to the policy. Was the assailant gender fluid?

Second, notice that superintendent Ziegler not only lied when he said he wasn’t aware of any assault, he also lied when he claimed he’d misunderstood the question to mean assaults by trans or gender fluid students. In fact he’d been told the assault may have involved a trans or gender fluid student (hence the connection to policy 8040).

As soon as the email went out, superintendent Ziegler and his deputy superintendent and director of communications all joined a zoom call to discuss what had happened directly with the principal. The grand jury report notes that this meeting of all the top brass on the day of the assault was obviously “critical” to an understanding of what happened next. The principal told the grand jury that everyone wanted to know what had happened but everyone else on the call that day claimed not to be able to remember what they spoke about. The report states, “We believe there was intentional institutional amnesia regarding this meeting.” After that meeting the principal sent out a message to parents which mentioned a disruption at the school (by the victim’s father) but it made no mention of the sexual assault. It sort of looks like that call was the one where they planned to cover up the assault.

So the good news is that Ziegler was finally fired. This would never have happened if Glenn Youngkin hadn’t been elected governor. The bad news is that Ziegler was fired without cause.

Under the terms of his contract, since he was fired without cause, Ziegler will be paid his full $323,000 annual salary and compensation for the next year in monthly installments. On top of his salary, his compensation includes perks such as a $12,000 annual vehicle allowance, health insurance and retirement benefits. The School Board had approved a $28,000 raise for Ziegler in July.

That really is a shame. The man lied about an assault and then put the assailant in another school where he went on to rape another high school student. He doesn’t deserve a golden parachute.

Update: I’m finally getting to the end of the grand jury report and there’s lots of evidence of obstruction of the investigation. “From the outset the LCSB put up roadblocks to obstruct our investigation,” the report states. Lawyers for the witnesses repeatedly tried to squash subpoenas. Those efforts failed but the school board also filed a complaint in civil court seeking an injunction against the grand jury. The court denied that motion too.

Two school board members were subpoenaed to testify in June. The school board again tried and failed to quash the subpoenas. But when the appointed time for their testimony came, neither member showed up. “The court gave them two hours to arrive at the courthouse otherwise the court would issue a capias warrant for their arrest.” The two board members did finally show and said they’d been told by counsel not to show up.

There was also some monkey business with the documents in the case. The email connecting the assault to policy 8040 (which I quoted above) was not initially turned over despite a subpoena in April of this year. Instead, it finally turned up in September because of a separate subpoena that went to an administrator who had their own lawyer, i.e. not the LCPS division counsel. Once division counsel learned the grand jury had this email something very curious happened.

Several school board members then testified to the exact same story: the chief operating officers said the incident at SBHS [the high school where the first assault happened] had to do with policy 8040 because the father of the victim who showed up at the school that day was shouting about policy 8040.

There is absolutely no evidence the father said anything about policy 8040 that day, or that he even knew what policy 8040 was on that day. No school board member could provide any evidence that what they claimed happened had in fact happened — even though they all parroted the same story. Interestingly, multiple school board members also corrected special counsel to the special grand jury when asked about the individual wearing a skirt in the female bathroom that day; these board members were quick to claim he was instead wearing a kilt.

We strongly believe these stories coming from the board members is an effort by division counsel to get everybody on the same page to thwart, discredit and push back against this investigation and this report, and to promote their own narrative.

So to sum up, on the day of the first assault the principal and the chief operating officer connected it to the new trans bathroom policy. But during the investigation the school board failed to turn over the email saying as much. Also, individuals who were present on the zoom call immediately after that email went out claimed not to remember what was said. They later concocted a bogus cover story about where the mention of 8040 had come from (from the girl’s father) and made up another claim about the assailant wearing a kilt instead of a skirt.

The grand jury report says they considered bringing some kind of witness tampering indictment against the school board’s counsel but there was no Virginia law which seemed to fit.

You definitely get the impression the school board was desperate to hide the fact that they themselves had connected this to policy 8040 from the very start.