Loudoun Honchos, In Perjury Trial, Testify They Can’t Remember Almost Anything About Rape Scandal

LOUDOUN COUNTY, VIRGINIA — Loudoun County Public Schools’ top officials, testifying Wednesday in the felony perjury trial of a colleague, made potentially hard-to-believe statements of their own as they said, over and over again, that they had little familiarity with, or couldn’t remember details of, the scandal that captured the nation’s attention and has defined local politics for two years.

The attorney for now-suspended Public Information Officer Wayde Byard said while Principal Tim Flynn testified that he told Byard clearly in a phone call that a girl alleged she was raped in the bathroom — contradicting the sworn statement Byard made to a grand jury that he didn’t know about it until months later — one witness wasn’t enough for a conviction.

Byard’s boss, Communications Director Joan Salgren, and Deputy Superintendent Ashley Ellis might have been in a position to serve as corroborating witnesses; prosecutors said Salgren told a grand jury earlier this year that she believes Byard told her about the rape that day. But on Wednesday, she backtracked, saying she wasn’t so sure. In all, both women claimed to have virtually no recollection of anything beyond what prosecutors already could prove from subpoenaed emails and other papers.

An October 2021 Daily Wire story led to the indictment of both Salgren’s boss (Superintendent Scott Ziegler) and subordinate and, lawyers from both sides said, “propelled your school system into the hot white light of public concern.” Despite Salgren’s job being managing news about the school system, on Wednesday she contended to the jury that she didn’t remember receiving The Daily Wire’s email explaining the story it was about to break and asking for information, and claimed she did not know or could not recall what the story, which captured the nation’s attention for weeks, ultimately said. (Emails obtained through a subpoena show that the request for comment sent her into high alert, ordering Byard to “TAKE NO ACTION.”)

Ellis, the school system’s second-highest ranking official, told jurors she only “vaguely” recalled May 28, 2021 — the day of the rape — and some sort of “situation,” despite her own notes from the day showing she wrote down “anal penetration” and “police handling,” and acknowledging that those topics would stand out in her work.

Byard, Salgren, and now-indicted Superintendent Scott Ziegler drafted a statement that went out to parents that day that explained police presence at the school by saying the situation was simply an “angry parent” — without mentioning that the parent was angry because his daughter had just been raped — and stating that there was “no threat to the student body” even as a rapist was at large.

An email uncovered by prosecutors showed that on that day, Ellis wrote an email suggesting that they make the statement less misleading. “Can we say [the incident causing police to respond] was confined to the main office? No sure that was true,” she wrote, according to prosecutors.

Jennifer Laffer, Byard’s defense attorney, contended that Flynn didn’t tell Byard about the rape, but merely about an angry parent. However, evidence at trial suggested that Flynn had openly told other top officials about it, and that all the executives knew, including Salgren, who generally got information from Byard. “Flynn is telling everyone,” prosecutor Jason Faw said. “Why would Wayde Byard be the only person he didn’t tell?”

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Faw said that Chief of Staff Mark Smith had been fired over his handling of the rape, and that Byard had a motive to lie for fear of being next.

Byard’s defense attorney set out a theory in which she suggested that Byard might have said under oath that he didn’t know about a rape because he didn’t believe the victim and thought it was merely consensual anal sex that the school system had asked the police to investigate. She did not explain how this would square with the way that Flynn found out about the incident: by the girl coming to the office in tears and reporting that she had been raped. Prosecutors said the theory also didn’t fly because Byard additionally responded in the negative to a question that called it a rape allegation.

Faw said that in grand jury testimony, Byard “acknowledges being told something about a boyfriend/girlfriend in a bathroom that ‘went sideways,’ which sounds a lot like a sexual assault to me, but then he goes into denial mode.” Byard told the grand jury he was told “really nothing” about a sexual assault.

Faw said Byard “slipped up” in his grand jury testimony by, despite claiming he didn’t know about the May rape until around October, also saying that he learned that Scott Smith was “the father of the victim” when Smith was arrested on June 22. That’s the day of the infamous school board meeting where Ziegler lied that there had never been a bathroom rape, while pushing a transgender policy, and Smith again became enraged and was arrested.

Prosecutors also pointed to another email that they said shows that Byard was aware of the rape, which school official Kevin Lewis contemporaneously noted could affect the school’s then-proposed transgender policy because the rapist was wearing a skirt. Byard sent Ziegler an email in August 2021 containing a local news article about Smith’s sentencing for disorderly conduct, at which his attorney explained that he was angry because her daughter had been raped. Also, in an email shortly after the rape, he refers to “the same family” from the earlier incident, indicating he knew why the father was at school and angry that day, prosecutors said.

Judge Douglas Fleming said that on Thursday, the jury will decide the outcome after weighing the credibility of the witnesses. “I don’t think Mr. Flynn left any doubt, if you believe his testimony, about what he said” to Byard, he said.

He said that a false statement about a school official’s knowledge of a rape, during a grand jury looking into a rape coverup, was far from incidental. “We’re here because it was very material. ‘It was bad.’ ‘It was unique.’ ‘Never dealt with it before,’” he said, quoting witnesses, some of whom simultaneously said they had little memory of the unusual and severe situation. “The jury can reach its own conclusion,” he said.

Colorado Health Clinic Invited Children With Autism To Drag Story Hour: Report

A Colorado health clinic that works with autistic children allegedly held a Drag Story Hour earlier this month, which included “age appropriate” performances by five drag artists.

The Daily Signal first reported Seven Dimensions Behavioral Health, a state-licensed day treatment program that uses Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) therapy primarily used for patients with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), sent an email in May to parents advertising the controversial event that was scheduled on June 10.

In the email addressed to “7D Families,” the clinic promoted a “June Make Up” event in the facility’s Evergreen Clinic, asking parents to fill out an attached permission form if their child planned on attending the Drag Strory Hour.

“This is a drag story hour that will include a mix of stories/activities and age appropriate performances by 5 drag artists,” the email continued, which allegedly included performers named Sunni Delight, Brennan Sexyback, August Celestial, Jaques Strapp, and JustinN’Out.

“There will be 3 stories and two activities: Auntie Uncle-Drag Queen Here, The Girl Who Thought In Pictures Thought in Pictures, If You’re a Kid Like Gavin, Parachute party and freeze dance. Parachute party includes a rainbow parachute that the kids hold onto making the parachute go up and down and/or the kids go under the parachute while RBTs wiggle the parachute for the kids,” the email continued.

RBTs, or Registered Behavior Technicians, are certified professionals licensed to provide direct, one-on-one therapy to children with autism using ABA therapy.

The national parental rights group Parents Defending Education (PDE) first obtained the email.

“Rather than upholding its oath to ‘do no harm,’ this clinic is betraying the trust of families in need who have come to them for help,” PDE President Nicole Neily told The Daily Signal. “It is unconscionable that medical providers would target programming at a vulnerable population.”

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PDE submitted a public records request to Jeffco Public Schools in Jefferson County, Colorado, to investigate if the health clinic had a formal agreement with the district, according to The Daily Signal. The outlet reported a contract does exist between the two institutions that end on June 30, 2023.

“‘That contract states that their payment for ‘special educational and related services in Out-of-District placement’ is ‘not to exceed $250,000 for all Orders in any Contract Term,’” the outlet reported.

Children and adolescents on the autism spectrum are disproportionately represented among the large, newly emerging cohort of children claiming to be transgender. Over the past 10 years, there have been at least nine studies connecting ASD and transgender identities. Rates of autistic traits in these studies range from 5% to 54% among those with gender dysphoria, significantly higher than among the general population.

Some researchers believe the percentage of young girls with autism who believe they’re experiencing gender dysphoria is actually higher, and that many females who have autism go undiagnosed. Up until recently, autism was considered a “boy’s diagnosis,” affecting males-to-females by a ratio of 4-to-1. Experts now believe that girls’ autistic traits present differently, which may require a separate diagnostic criteria to detect.

Data from the now-shuttered Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) at the U.K.’s Tavistock Centre found that autistic adolescents were significantly overrepresented in the population of referrals to the clinic. Pediatrician Dr. Hilary Cass was commissioned to conduct a review of the services provided by the National Health Service and investigate why there has been such a huge rise in the number of adolescent biological girls seeking referrals to gender clinics.

In March, The Daily Caller News Foundation reported an alarming link between children with autism and the transgender population. Research reported by the outlet showed people who identify as transgender are three to six times more likely to be autistic.

Dr. Susan Bradley, a Canadian psychiatrist who began working with gender dysphoric children in the 1970s, told the outlet that medical industry professionals have been exploiting children with high-functioning autism by convincing them they are transgender.

“When somebody happens to mention that, you know, they’re trans or they hear about trans kids and go online, even if all they do is say, ‘I wonder if I’m trans,’ a lot of these kids are automatically accepted. ‘Well, you must be trans if you’ve even thought about that.’ And for them, that is a very helpful reaction, because all of a sudden, they feel as though that explains all of the trouble all the way along,” Bradley told the DCNF.

Christina Buttons contributed to this report.

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