Fairfax County Public Schools lawyers’ internal probe refutes school-assisted abortion allegations

Allegations that Centreville High School staff coerced minors into getting abortions and assisted them in undergoing the procedure without their parents’ knowledge are “likely untrue,” Oct. 16 findings from Fairfax County Public School’s legal probe surmised. 

The legal probe runs parallel to a separate, ongoing Virginia State Police investigation launched at the request of Gov. Glenn Youngkin after a conservative blogger reported in August that a FCPS teacher named Zaneida Perez alleged another staff member had helped students obtain abortions in 2021. The blogger has family ties to Youngkin but he said it didn’t influence his investigation.

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Under Virginia law, it is illegal for minors to get surgeries, like abortions, unless they have parental consent or a successful petition to a court. Such court records are also exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act. 

In the FCPS allegations case, emails between the accused staffer, a social worker, and Centreville’s former principal purport that “proper protocol” was followed concerning pregnant students, who were referred to a school nurse. The school nurse was employed by the local health department rather than the school division, and was legally allowed to discuss reproductive health care options with students. 

The documents released by King & Spaulding, the law firm FCPS hired, stem from their investigation into the abortion allegations and are part of a U.S. Department of Education request that required documentation regarding the matter. 

While the school division’s law firm said they have been unable to locate the former student who allegedly obtained an abortion, a letter purportedly written by the student that was referenced in the blogger’s report may have actually been written by Perez. That’s due to a “high similarity” in the handwriting of the supposed student letter and other complaints filed by Perez, the legal counsel said. 

The lawyers also recently spoke with a student that Perez claimed had been pressured to have an abortion, but the student said as recently as Oct. 9 this year that it was the school nurse she consulted, not the accused social worker, and that high school staff have been supportive of her decision to continue her pregnancy and give birth. 

The newly-released documents also suggest that Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares and Youngkin may have known about the allegations for more than a year, but have only spoken out about them in recent months, ahead of this fall’s pivotal statewide elections. 

The documents include a complaint about the abortion allegations from March 2023 that Perez filed with the attorney general’s office, which FCPS claims they were never contacted about. 

While the state attorney general office doesn’t have the local jurisdiction to prosecute the local complaint from Perez, the filing noted how a referral to state police could have been made in 2023. 

“OAG’s Office of Civil Rights has no record of a complaint filed by Ms. Perez,” a spokesperson for Miayres’ office said in a Oct. 17 email.

A spokesman for Youngkin said in an October email that the governor learned of the allegations following the August report, after which he had directed state police to launch a criminal investigation. 

The filing from FCPS’ lawyers’ probe also pointed to social media posts by a Northern Virginia parental rights activist that claim the Youngkin administration knew about the allegations “a year ago.”

In the new filings from their law firm, FCPS collectively shared that it finds it “very disturbing that so many of the individuals who are now (in the weeks leading up to a hotly contested election) shining a spotlight on these dated (and, our investigation shows, likely false) allegations have known about these same allegations for years.”

Walter Curt, the investigative reporter who published the August report about the abortion allegations, cast doubt on the law firm’s findings and took to social media to emphasize that a state police investigation is still underway.  

“We don’t have to give even a remote bit of credibility to the ‘findings’ of multimillion dollar law firms hired to try and get FCPS and Michelle Reid out of hot water,” he wrote on Oct. 17. 

FCPS Superintendent Michelle Reid has been under fire from parents along with state and federal leaders much of the year for various decisions, including overhauling admissions  at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology to promote greater diversity, and resisting statewide transgender policies that advocates said infringe on trans students’ rights. By mid-August, the district had begun arranging a security detail for Reid.

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Reid is also not the only local official to draw ire from Virginia’s executive branch. Steve Descano, Fairfax County’s Commonwealth Attorney, has been frequently portrayed by Miyares as too lenient a prosecutor. As attorney general, Miyares has long pushed for changes in state law that could allow the state to intervene in local prosecutions. 

The abortion allegations have percolated ahead of this year’s elections for the state’s executive branch —  Miyares is seeking a second term — and as the entire House of Delegates is also up for election. An in-progress constitutional amendment could enshrine reproductive rights including abortion access, but its potential to advance to voters on statewide ballots next year hinges on Democrats retaining their majority in the House this year. 

Reid issued a statement to Centreville families and staff on Oct. 16, echoing the attorney’s findings that so far indicate the abortion allegations are “likely untrue.”

“As I stated in a letter to the school community two days following these allegations, such behavior would never be acceptable in Fairfax County Public Schools,” Reid wrote.