“And this is actually turning Loudoun County our direction, but not just Loudoun County: all of northern Virginia. “They’re not standing up for children’s safety,” Youngkin said. 2 election against Democrat Terry McAuliffe. The Republican said on Fox News Tuesday evening that the outrage sparked by the incident was providing his campaign with a significant boost ahead of the Nov.

Regardless of the complex set of facts, Youngkin has said one thing is clear: It’s helping him politically. The county sheriff’s office and school board are now openly feuding over their shared response. And while there are legitimate questions about the local school board’s handling of the issue, the truth appears to be more complex than how it has been portrayed in right-wing media. Media figures and politicians rushed to judgment and made the story about a transgender male preying on a young girl, when in fact the first of two assaults took place in the context of a previously consensual sexual relationship between two teens. Some of the most inflammatory claims are false. Republican politicians and right-wing media have used the story of a sexual assault in a school bathroom to claim that public schools are run by ideologues imposing liberal dogma on children, that the assault was the result of misguided policies to accommodate transgender students, and that the school system and the mainstream media hide information from parents and the public if it is politically inconvenient.Ī close look at facts that have emerged shows a far more complicated picture. The hard-fought gubernatorial election in a Democratic-leaning state is widely seen as a test case for how Republicans could try to win elections in other states next year. A sexual assault case involving high school students in northern Virginia has become a major talking point for the Republican Party in the Virginia governor's race, adding another hot-button issue to an already volatile political environment.

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