Loudoun County Public Schools reportedly threatened to shut down the public comment period at a heated school board meeting Tuesday night when hundreds of parents pushed back against the school district’s Title IX investigation into three boys who were secretly recorded in a school locker room by a transgender student.
That video, which depicts the 15-year-old male students privately expressing discomfort with the biologically female classmate’s presence, was used as evidence by the school to initiate a Title IX complaint against the sophomore boys.
During the packed LCPS meeting, school board members Melinda Mansfield and Anne Donohue interrupted parents multiple times when they voiced support for the boys under Title IX investigation, according to WJLA-TV’s Nick Minock.
Mansfield and Donohue claimed that the concerned community members were violating public comment procedures and even warned they would cease all public commentary if these “violations” continued, Minock reported. At one point, school officials recessed the meeting.
Parents pushing back against the Title IX probe said the three Stone Bridge High School boys are being wrongly investigated as the perpetrators, not the victims, of sexual harassment when they were the ones illicitly videotaped in violation of the school’s rules.
LOUDOUN COUNTY PUNISHES STUDENTS FOR BEING SEXUALLY HARASSED
LCPS policy explicitly prohibits students from filming inside school locker rooms, and student use of personal devices is generally banned unless authorized. It is unclear if the female student will face any disciplinary action for violating the student code of conduct.
The locker room recording, shot on a cellphone unbeknownst to the boys, captures some of the male students changing clothes and questioning, amongst themselves, why a girl was in there with them.
“There’s a girl in here? There’s a girl?” one boy can be heard asking in the video.
“Why is there a girl? I’m so uncomfortable there is a girl,” another boy is heard saying.
“A female, bro, get out of here,” another boy responds.
“What happened to my son and to the others involved could happen to yours,” Renae Smith, the mother of one of the boys facing Title IX allegations, told the Loudoun County parents assembled before the school board Tuesday evening.
Many of the parents who attended not only demanded an end to the Title IX investigation but also called for the repeal of Policy 8040, which allows students to access school restrooms and locker rooms corresponding to their “consistently asserted gender identity,” regardless of biological sex.
This school board policy is what permitted the female student to be in the boys’ locker room in the first place, despite President Donald Trump’s directives protecting single-sex spaces. The girl in question, who identifies as male, has allegedly been using the boys’ facilities for some time now.
Smith urged every parent to “speak up, demand transparency, and insist that Policy 8040 be repealed immediately.” Accusing the school system of focusing “more on managing optics than protecting any of our kids,” Smith said, “We cannot stand by while our children’s safety and dignity are sacrificed for politics and appearances.”
Seth Wolfe, the father of another one of the accused boys, said the school’s transgender policies are infringing on students’ privacy rights.
“I’m hoping the school board will see that the community wants change and then that will drive some action towards change,” Wolfe told FOX 5 DC.
More than 130 people signed up to speak at the meeting and the attendance line went out the door, according to WJLA-TV. Once the meeting room began to fill up, LCPS would not let more people in, per WJLA-TV, although there were empty seats available and the venue had not yet reached full capacity.
According to the families of the accused, LCPS refused to provide a copy of the video to the three boys.
The families said the only way they were able to receive a copy of the recording was by submitting a public records request to the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office, whose deputies were reviewing the footage to determine whether the female student committed a crime.
Under state law in Virginia, it is illegal to videotape any non-consenting person if the subject is in a state of undress in a restroom, locker room, or other location where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy. This offense is considered a Class 6 felony when the victim is a minor.
However, in an email to Wolfe, one of the boys’ fathers, an LCPS official insisted that the video does not show his son in a compromising situation or “violate[s] his privacy in anyway.”
Wolfe told WJLA-TV that LCPS refused to show him the video at the beginning of his son’s Title IX proceedings.
According to Wolfe, an LCPS investigator bombarded his child with leading questions, ones the father believes were intended to bully him into admitting to something he didn’t do.
“They didn’t show us the video until after they had tried to get my son to say who said what and all this kind of stuff,” said Wolfe, noting that the Title IX complaint itself makes no mention of the boys’ audible concerns heard on camera. “But then once we saw the video, then we started asking about those context questions and how that can be left out. And they didn’t really have a good answer for that.”
In a statement sent to the Washington Examiner addressing “disinformation” surrounding the Title IX case, the school admitted that LCPS refused at first to release the video.
“[T]hat is partially true,” the LCPS statement said. “It is the school division’s practice not to release evidence in an ongoing investigation before it is appropriate to do so. However, the subjects of any Title IX investigation are provided all evidence during the process, including any related recordings.
The school also said it is “untrue” that LCPS is punishing students for simply expressing their feelings.
LCPS does not discipline students based on personal opinions, thoughts, or beliefs, the statement said, “provided those expressions do not violate policies prohibiting hate speech, discriminatory language, threats, or other forms of harmful or disruptive conduct.”
One of the boys is now thinking about dropping out of school, and his father, an immigrant, told WJLA that they’re considering moving out of the county because of how LCPS has handled the investigation.
Smith said she fears for her son’s future, especially for how the situation could affect his chances while applying to colleges.
“They don’t look at the context of the situation,” Smith said of college admissions officers. “They look at the disposition: sexual harassment. And it’s over for him.”
The Family Foundation of Virginia’s Founding Freedoms Law Center, a conservative legal group, is defending the three boys against the Title IX accusations.
Mansfield, chair of the Loudoun County School Board, said in a statement shared with the Washington Examiner that the school system prioritizes providing “safe and equal access to education for all students.”
“Unfortunately, some individuals, media outlets and political groups seem to be exploiting this situation without full knowledge of, or knowingly misrepresenting the facts, using it to advance their own agendas,” Mansfield said. “I strongly condemn the politicization of student safety.”
Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares, a Republican, is now investigating the school division’s conduct at the request of Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA).
“It’s deeply concerning to read reports of yet another incident in Loudoun County schools where members of the opposite sex are violating the privacy of students in locker rooms,” Youngkin said in a press release announcing the state investigation. “Even more alarming, the victims of this violation are the ones being investigated—this is beyond belief.”Stone Bridge High School was previously the site of a high-profile assault involving a serial student sex offender that sparked controversy over Policy 8040’s implementation. In 2021, a biological boy had sexually assaulted a female classmate in one of the girls’ bathrooms.
In a lawsuit later lodged against LCPS, the victim claimed the school system covered up her sexual assault to push the passage of Policy 8040, which was approved by the school board a few months following the attack. The assailant, while awaiting trial for the first assault, was transferred to another LCPS school and subsequently sexually abused a second victim. There was a third incident, according to statements in criminal court, though charges were not pressed at the time.
LCPS is also under federal investigation for its gender identity policies concerning student usage of sex-separated facilities and whether they violate Title IX, according to documents from America First Legal Foundation.
