A northern Virginia school district was hit with a Title IX civil rights complaint after a man who claimed to identify as transgender exposed his genitals to underage girls multiple times between September and October 2024.
According to the complaint brought by the Defense of Freedom Institute, or DFI, on Wednesday, Arlington Public Schools did not sufficiently address the problem, enabling the conduct to continue until police arrested the suspect, who turned out to be a known sex offender.
“As an Arlington parent, I’m furious that Arlington Public Schools trapped women and girls in an unsafe environment with a known sexual predator,” Virginia Gentles, director of DFI’s Education Freedom and Parental Rights Initiative, told the Washington Examiner. She said her daughters have used this pool for swimming lessons.
APS started to receive complaints about a man loitering in the girls’ locker room of the Washington-Liberty Aquatics Center, located inside Washington-Liberty High School, in September. However, Gentles said the conduct may have started as early as June or July. The complaint states that the man’s “penis, testicles and legs were fully exposed to anyone walking through the entrance.”
After the man had exposed himself to pool visitors for over an hour, one regular visitor who complained was allegedly told that there was nothing that could be done because the man identified as transgender.
The district received numerous other complaints, including at a school board meeting, but allegedly took no action. One employee allegedly suggested that women who were uncomfortable with the man “taking his time being naked” in front of “little girls and teens” use the family changing room.
In October, after the man exposed himself to another young victim, the conduct was reported to the police and not just the school. Within two hours, the man was arrested. He is a tier three registered sex offender who was on the Virginia Department of Corrections Most Wanted list in 2020 and has a long history of sexual misconduct, particularly with children.
He had been charged with exposing his genitals to a minor in 1992 after masturbating in front of children. He admitted to a judge that he experienced “compulsions to expose myself in public places.” In addition, he was convicted of burglary, possessing obscene materials with a minor, failing to register as a sex offender, and indecent exposure in a Planet Fitness women’s locker room.
“Despite being informed of the Suspect’s sexual harassment of girls and women by multiple parents and pool patrons, and the Suspect’s own local notoriety, it appears that APS and its employees did nothing to protect the children in their care or, for that matter, any girls or women using its pool facilities from being exposed to the Suspect’s genitals in private spaces reserved for females,” the complaint states.
The school’s response, which DFI slammed as “too little, too late,” was to encourage “respect for privacy” and to request that visitors “please cover intimate body areas while using shared spaces.”
The complaint alleges that the school district engaged in discrimination against women under Title IX by denying them equal access to a sex-segregated locker room. It requests that the Office for Civil Rights consider the complaint operating under President Donald Trump’s “2020 rule” as opposed to former President Joe Biden’s “2024 rule.”
Trump’s 2020 rule recognized the Department of Education’s responsibility to enforce Title IX in matters related to sexual harassment. Biden’s 2024 rule required schools to allow people to use whatever restroom or locker room that corresponded with their gender identity. The 2024 rule was ruled unlawful by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky.
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On Friday, the Trump administration announced it would be enforcing Title IX under the 2020 rule, which implemented protections on the basis of biological sex.
The Washington Examiner reached out to Arlington Public Schools for comment.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
