LOUDOUN BACKLASH: Virginia County at Center of Parental Rights Battle Ousts 2021 Leadership

A reckoning has come for Virginia’s Loudoun County, where the school board had a father arrested after he demanded answers regarding the rape of his daughter in a girls’ restroom.

The school board, the superintendent, and even the local prosecutor whom the parents blamed for letting the assailant escape the sex offender list have all been ousted or declined to run for reelection, according to preliminary election results.

Commonwealth’s Attorney Buta Biberaj, a Democratic prosecutor bankrolled by the George Soros-funded Justice and Public Safety PAC, lost her reelection campaign last week. Biberaj conceded to Republican Bob Anderson on Wednesday.

Biberaj’s defeat comes after the county elected an entirely new school board. As The Daily Signal previously reported, only two of the incumbent school board members ran for reelection, and both lost their races.

The prosecutor and school board ousters come after the school board itself previously fired Superintendent Scott Ziegler after a grand jury compiled a report into the sexual assaults and alleged school board cover-up.

The story traces back to May 28, 2021, when a 15-year-old male student forced a girl to commit sex acts at Stone Bridge High School. The same student went on sexually assault another girl in the girls’ restroom at Broad Run High School on Oct. 6. The Loudoun County Juvenile Court had found the perpetrator “not innocent” of charges of forcible sodomy and forcible fellatio. The student also pleaded “no contest” to charges of abduction and sexual battery on Oct. 6.

Then-Superintendent Zielger said in a June 22, 2021, school board meeting that “the predator transgender student or person simply does not exist.” After that statement, Scott Smith, the May 28 victim’s father, spoke out and was arrested and eventually convicted on charges of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. (Virginia’s Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, would go on to issue a complete pardon to Smith after he won election campaigning on parental rights.)

The assailant avoided the sex offender registry and Smith blamed Biberaj for allowing it to happen.

“We were always concerned that Ms. Biberaj would not vigorously protect our daughter and seek justice for her and the other victims throughout the court proceeding,” Smith said in January 2022. “And, it now appears that our fears have been proven true by her utter failure to follow even the most basic statutory procedures required to ensure that our daughter’s predator would be placed on the Virginia Sex Offender Registry list.”

In December 2022, a special grand jury released a separate report on Loudoun County Public Schools’ handling of the 15-year-old “gender-fluid” student’s multiple alleged sexual assaults.

Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares, a Republican, requested the grand jury in April. Loudoun County residents on the grand jury panel heard from over 40 witnesses and examined over 100 pieces of evidence. 

The grand jury’s report states that Loudoun County Public Schools “failed at every juncture” and that the school system “as an organization tends to avoid managing difficult situations by not addressing them fully.”

The panel also suggested unsuccessfully that the report be released to the public, to provide as much information as possible. 

Ian Prior, a Loudoun County father and parental rights advocate, celebrated the apparent ouster of Biberaj, Ziegler, and the entire 2021 school board on Tuesday. He also noted that Ziegler had been convicted of retaliation in a special education teacher’s firing, and that Scott Smith and his wife filed a $30 million Title IX lawsuit against Loudoun County Public Schools.

“Thanks for playing,” Prior quipped.

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