The former Northern Virginia schools superintendent charged with covering up a rape by a gender-bending student showed up to court Thursday wearing earrings and painted nails, in the latest twist in a saga that has captivated the nation.
In December, Scott Ziegler was criminally indicted for three misdemeanors based on the work of a grand jury investigating how Ziegler lied about a rape by a skirt-wearing boy while the Loudoun County school board was seeking to pass a transgender policy. The boy remained in Loudoun schools and went on to violently assault a second girl in a classroom. Ziegler’s spokesman, Wayde Byard, was also indicted on a felony count.
On Thursday, however, the formerly businessman-like superintendent showed up for a court date sporting earrings and fingernails painted black.
Nick Minock, a reporter for local ABC affiliate WJLA, captured a photo of the superintendent entering the Loudoun County courthouse, the same one where the rapist was found guilty.
Loudoun County’s fired Superintendent appeared in court today with his ears pierced and nails painted black.
Story: https://t.co/3C2m6trjiZ @7NewsDC pic.twitter.com/YvkL93FFIg
— Nick Minock (@NickMinock) April 7, 2023
“It’s absolutely infuriating how Scott Ziegler dared to show up in court like that,” said Scott Mineo, a parent who has sounded the alarm about ideology in the Loudoun schools. “It just drives home the point parents have been furiously shouting about for three damn years.”
Even though the school board fired Ziegler the same month he was indicted, it has refused to release an internal report it paid a law firm to write analyzing how the school system responded to the assaults. It has even gone so far as to resist a subpoena from state Attorney General Jason Miyares.
Thursday’s hearing was to help a judge adjudicate whether Loudoun County Public Schools can continue to conceal the document or will be forced to turn it over. Several school board members were in court and planned to testify at a later court date, Minock reported.
In a court filing this week, the attorney general wrote that, “In opposing the Commonwealth’s motion for a subpoena duces tecum for the Report, Loudoun County Public Schools (‘LCPS’) and LCSB [Loudoun County School Board] have chosen the side of Defendant Scott Ziegler over transparency and accountability.”
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“Over a year after an assailant was found criminally responsible beyond a reasonable doubt for committing forcible sodomy, abduction, and sexual battery at school, LCSB inexplicably continues to refer to these incidents as ‘two alleged sexual assaults at LCPS.’ LCSB’s basic failure to acknowledge the fully-adjudicated nature of these cases, the equivalent of violent felony convictions if committed by an adult, raises significant questions about what LCSB is trying to keep a secret from the prosecution and the public in the Report,” the document said, according to WJLA.
The school district is claiming attorney-client privilege, but the attorney general said that doesn’t apply to government agencies against other government agencies. And it reminded the court that school board members had previously told the public that they planned for the report, which was sold to the public as an accountability measure, to become public.
The grand jury’s report spent much of its time faulting LCPS Division Counsel Robert Falconi, saying it likely would have indicted him for witness tampering, except that such a statute did not exist in Virginia. Falconi testified on Thursday.
After the skirt-wearing boy was charged with rape, LCPS did not discipline him, falsely claiming that federal Title IX rules prevented it from doing so. It transferred him to another school, where Ziegler personally knew the boy had continued to harass girls, but the only discipline that was meted out was having him write a promise that he would stop. He then went on to violently attack another girl in an empty classroom. In court, the judge said there was also a third victim.
The bizarre series of events has been unfolding since The Daily Wire broke the story in October 2021. The grand jury report found that school spokespeople sought to stonewall The Daily Wire and that even school board members learned details of the apparent coverup only from this news site.
The story reported how weeks after the rape, the school board held a contentious meeting to advance a transgender bathroom policy and dismiss concerns by parents who thought there could be safety implications.
Ziegler said, “To my knowledge, we don’t have any record of assaults occurring in our restrooms.”
“We’ve heard it several times tonight from our public speakers but the predator transgender student or person simply does not exist,” he said.