You probably remember the horrific story of the girl who was sexually assaulted in a Loudoun County public school bathroom only to have the school board lie about it and transfer the student offender to another school where he raped another student. Evidence that the entire school board knew about the incident (and lied about it) was revealed weeks later but it took more than a year before superintendent Scott Ziegler was fired.

The long overdue firing took place after a grand jury report concluded that Ziegler had lied to cover his own rear end. The grand jury report found lots of evidence that the school board had done its best to obstruct the investigation. Days later Ziegler was indicted on three misdemeanor charges. He has two trials which are set to take place in August and September.

While all of this has been happening, the board has continued to fight all efforts to release an internal investigation about the incident which was completed in January 2022. The board has claimed the report is not subject to FOIA because it is protected by attorney-client privilege. Today, a judge disagreed and gave the board one week to turn documents related to the investigation over to Virginia’s Attorney General Jason Miyares.

A circuit court judge has ordered Loudoun County Public Schools to turn over to the Virginia attorney general the results of an internal investigation into two high-profile sexual assaults that happened in schools in 2021 and that led to criminal charges for two school officials because of their response…

In December, after a separate grand jury report led to the indictment of two school officials, there was a new push from parents and school board members to release the investigation’s findings.

The school board voted in February not to release the report…

On Tuesday, Miyares spokeswoman Victoria LaCivita said the report has to be turned over to the attorney general’s office within seven days. Under the rules of the court, subpoenaed documents must be sealed and only available to the parties of the case, meaning the report will not be made public yet.

So the internal report won’t become public immediately but we may get to see it later once the trials are over. Two board members who had previous voted to release the report in February called it a step torward rebuilding trust.

Tiffany Polifko (Broad Run) said she has always supported releasing the report even as she campaigned for the seat.

“I trusted my gut then, I trust it now and I am truly grateful that the judge, in my opinion, believes in releasing the full truth,” she said.

“I firmly believe the only way to rebuild trust between the community and LCPS is through transparency and communication, and that is why I have consistently advocated for the release of the Blankingship & Keith report,” Denise Corbo (At-Large) stated by email.

Personally, I think rebuilding trust won’t happen until everyone involved in the cover-up has been ousted. Here’s what I wrote about the conclusions of the grand jury report back in December about what happened immediately after the board was notified about the assault.

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.

There was also an indication that someone withheld the critical email showing the board was notified about the assault on the day it happened. The person who sent that email connected the assault to a trans bathroom policy the district was seeking to adopt called policy 8040 (likely because the male student who committed the assault was wearing a skirt). All of the emails were under a subpoena but that specific email wasn’t turned up until months later. In any case, the moment it did turn up, the board members suddenly all came forward with a new story.

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.

Here’s a local news report on the judge’s decision from WUSA 9.