Student Reaches Plea Deal in Second Loudoun County Sex Assault Case

Teen assaulted another classmate after he was transferred

Alex Nester • November 15, 2021 3:21 pm

The 15-year-old high schooler found guilty last month of raping a classmate in a high school bathroom pled no contest to charges of abduction and sexual battery in a second assault case.

A local ABC News affiliate reported that the teen reached a plea deal on Monday in which he accepted the facts of the case but did not admit guilt. This is the teen’s second conviction.

The student was arrested in July and charged with forcible sodomy stemming from allegations that he raped a female peer in May. Loudoun County Public Schools transferred the teen to another high school while investigators processed DNA evidence in the May case. It was there that the teen forced another female student into a classroom and assaulted her on Oct. 6. He was again arrested and charged the following day.

A judge at the end of October found the student guilty of the charges related to the May case.

Initial reports claimed the teenager identified as “gender-fluid” and, according to school policy, was allowed access to the women’s restroom, where he assaulted his first victim. District officials passed similar policies across county schools in August.

In a Daily Mail interview, the mother acknowledged that her son often got in trouble for misbehaving at school—including one incident in the fifth grade, where he sent nude photos to a female peer. The girl’s parents decided against pressing charges, as long as the district separated their daughter from the boy.

The double assault case roiled parents in Loudoun County after the Daily Wire reported the allegations last month. While Loudoun County Public Schools superintendent Scott Ziegler said during a June school board meeting that he was unaware of any cases of sexual assault in the district, internal emails obtained by a local radio station show that he notified other district officials that police were investigating the incident the day it occurred.

Additional sex crime cases have rocked Loudoun County Public Schools in recent weeks. Police are investigating a boy at Harmony Middle School who allegedly groped peers in the hallway, the Washington Post reported Oct. 28. And on Nov. 4, police charged high school counselor Ann Barrett for having an inappropriate relationship with a student from 2013 to 2015.

More than 2,500 students from at least 20 district high schools staged a walkout earlier this month to protest the district’s negligence in handling sexual assault cases.