Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin has pardoned a Loudoun County father who was arrested at a school board meeting in June 2021. The pardon came weeks before the father’s jury trial for disorderly conduct.
“Upon careful deliberation and review of the circumstances of the matter, I have decided it is just and appropriate to grant this absolute pardon that reflects Scott Thomas Smith’s factual innocence of Disorderly Conduct,” the Republican governor wrote in his Sept. 8 decision, which was released on Sept. 10.
“I am pleased to grant Scott Smith this pardon and help him and his family put this injustice behind them once and for all.”
Scott Smith and his family have been in a legal battle for two years, since Mr. Smith’s arrest while seeking to bring justice to the teenage boy—who identifies as “gender-fluid”—who raped his daughter in a girl’s bathroom in their high school in May 2021. Mr. Smith, who runs his own plumbing business, previously described to The Epoch Times the burden of the drawn-out legal process as “a full-time job” and the financial and emotional toll as “immeasurable.”
His obstruction-of-justice charge was dismissed in May 2022 by the Loudoun County Circuit Court; a jury trial was set on Sept. 25 for his disorderly conduct case before Mr. Youngkin’s pardon.
The rape happened at a time when the Loudoun County School Board sought to pass a new policy that would allow students to use bathrooms and locker rooms according to their chosen gender identity. Parents pushed back strongly against the policy, citing the risk of sexual assault. At the school board meeting on June 22, 2021, school district Superintendent Scott Ziegler brushed off their concerns.
“To my knowledge, we don’t have any record of assaults occurring in our restrooms,” Mr. Ziegler said, noting later that “the predator transgender student or person simply does not exist.”
Later at the meeting, Mr. Smith was arrested for disorderly conduct and obstructing or resisting a police officer without force after getting into a verbal confrontation with a woman who accused him of lying about his daughter’s rape.
By Terri Wu
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