Students Walk Out in Loudoun County: District ‘Protects Rapists’

Students at Broad Run High School in Loudoun County, Virginia, walked out of school Tuesday morning in support of sex assault victims in the school district and to demand safety.

The walkout was organized, according to WUSA9 News, with leaders asking students and teachers to leave their classes for ten minutes on Tuesday.

According to the report, the walkouts were scheduled throughout multiple schools in the Loudoun County district.

During the demonstration, students were heard chanting, “Loudoun County protects rapists.”

A Loudoun County judge found a boy guilty of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl, reported the Daily Mail on Tuesday. The boy was wearing a skirt and entered the girls’ bathroom at Stone Bridge High School.

On Monday, Juvenile Court Judge Pamela Brooks found the boy guilty of forcible sodomy and forcible fellatio.

The boy, who is also a minor and therefore not identified, will return to court November 15 for sentencing.

He has also been charged with a more recent sexual assault this month of another girl at Broad Run High School.

Former President Barack Obama, who was in Virginia over the weekend campaigning for former Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), dismissed the issues parents have raised as “fake outrage,” and “trumped-up culture wars,” as Breitbart News reported.

Scott Smith, whose daughter was assaulted during the first incident in May, had been dragged out of a school board meeting on June 22 after hearing school officials supportive of transgender bathrooms deny there had been reports of sexual assaults in these spaces.

Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) Superintendent Scott Ziegler also stated he was unaware of any assaults happening in the bathrooms.

As Breitbart News reported last week, Ziegler later acknowledged, following parents’ outrage, the school district has “failed” to provide safety for its students.

Smith and his wife are demanding an apology from the National School Boards Association for characterizing parents who are outraged about actions taken by their local school boards and school officials as “domestic terrorists.”

The NSBA letter was crafted by Chip Slaven, NSBA’s interim executive director and CEO, and Viola Garcia, the association’s president, who, emails obtained later revealed, informed the association’s board of directors they had worked with the White House prior to sending their September 29 letter to President Joe Biden, requesting federal law enforcement use the PATRIOT Act to target parents voicing concerns at school board meetings as “domestic terrorists.”

The Biden Education Department announced October 13 it had appointed Garcia to the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees which subjects are assessed by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the Nation’s Report Card.

Attorney General Merrick Garland testified Thursday at a House Judiciary Committee hearing that he took the word of the NSBA that parents voicing their concerns at local school board meetings should be investigated as possible “domestic terrorists.”

The board of directors of the NSBA released a general apology letter last week, after which Smith said:

I am a father who cares deeply for his daughter, who would go to the ends of the earth to protect both her and other students who attend public school in Loudoun County from suffering what she has suffered due to the misguided social policies adopted by the school board.

“I am not a ‘domestic terrorist,’” he asserted.

Michelle Luttrell, principal at Loudoun County High School, said school officials became aware of the walkout’s organization on social media and arranged for a supervised area, with security and school resource officers, on the front lawn of the school for the protest.

“Students who choose to participate will not be penalized for their participation,” Luttrell said. “However, we do ask that students who participate do so peacefully, without signage, and in accordance with the Students Rights and Responsibilities we all reviewed and signed at the beginning of the year.”

“The top priority of Loudoun County Public Schools is the safety and security of students and staff,” she added, according to WUSA9. “Keeping this in mind, Loudoun County High School will provide a designated, safe space for students to exercise their freedom of expression.