I'm just now reading about the case in Loudoun County Virginia that
@Archy1221 and
@RedDenver are bickering about. It seems to me like some people on the right are going through efforts to conflate a sexual assault case with transgender rights issues. Even the tweet that Archy originally posted from the Daily Mail referred to the setting as a
"woke school board meeting." Other right-wing reports of this incident such as
this NY Post article give on obviously biased slant to the story that the dad is being unfairly vilified, refers to speakers at the board meeting as "anti-Jesus," and so on.
But the sexual assault case, and the dad's arrest, has nothing to do with transgender policies or being "woke" or any of the other right-wing crap being tied to this situation.
First of all, sexual assault is horrific and should be taken very seriously. It looks like the daughter's assault was reported and investigated:
https://www.dailydot.com/debug/conservatives-cover-up-loudoun-county-transgender-student-rape/
Police confirmed that a sexual assault was reported in May as Smith alleges, the local ABC News affiliate
reports.
...
It is true that the school hasn’t released details about the incident, but the school says this is because student privacy rules prohibit it from doing so. It also says that school board members didn’t know about the allegation until recently.
On Wednesday, the school said that due to students’ privacy rights, it cannot reveal details about individual student’s actions, the ABC outlet reports. It also said that board members aren’t typically informed of disciplinary matters.
also
https://dutytoamericanews.com/2021/10/12/man-arrested-at-loudoun-county-school-board-meeting-says-officials-covered-up-his-daughters-rape/
After the alleged attack, the administration called Smith to come to the school and told him it would handle the incident “in-house.” When he began to make a scene, as any outraged parent would, he says the school called police officers on him and it was only after he managed to avoid getting arrested that he convinced police to escort his daughter to the hospital to have a rape kit administered.
So to say, as the Daily Mail article did, that the staff did nothing, is false. As Archy and Denver have argued about, we don't know a lot of other facts. It makes sense why details of the case would not be released publicly and that the school board would not be aware. As far as the superintendent being aware? I would honestly expect that he would have been informed to some extent. But even if he was, he would not be at liberty to talk about it and would certainly not be intimately involved in the investigation.
Now, I still don't understand what any of the above has to do with transgender rights and bathroom policies. Sexual assault are obvious legal and policy violations regardless of which bathroom you use or what clothes you wear, and there is no evidence that gender-neutral bathrooms lead to increases in assaults. Conflating sexual assault concerns with transgender issues is a tired and often-used right wing boogyman. Using gender inclusive pronouns has no bearing on this issue whatsoever, either.
So why did dad get arrested?
Watch the video: he gets into some sort of argument with a woman (audio can't be heard), and the police try to calm him down. Dad is the one who starts fighting with police, who then take him down. Then he "
continued struggling and arguing with them, threatening to kick their teeth out." He was ultimately convicted of resisting arrest and disturbing the peace. So are the police and judge now part of the woke mob as well?
A parent's anger about their daughter being assaulted is justified. Horrible. However, the dad's actions certainly did not do her case any favors, and based on the facts that we know, I'm not sure I can identify something that should have been done differently, other than the dad conducting himself appropriately at the school board meeting, or just staying home. If this whole issue is actually about sexual assault and protecting students, based on the facts that we actually know, what should be done differently here?
On a side note, since political divisions are at the heart of this discussion, I am guessing that the Blue Lives Matter crowd and Trump supporters (since those are the folks who have tended to protest at school board meetings this year) are ironically on the side of the dad who fought with and threatened police officers. Also, since we were discussing Title IX policies the other day, it was the Trump Administration that actually made it more difficult to investigate and reach a finding in sexual assault and sexual harassment cases, as a result of the new Title IX regulations last year (that is a general statement, as I admittedly don't see how that would have actually impacted this particular case).
But I still like ya. :cheers 