Loudoun County schools were already in the national spotlight over a pair of sexual assaults on campuses, and were the subject of an investigation ordered by the Virginia governor. Then a teacher went public in 2022 with allegations that officials failed to stop a student from inappropriately touching her, testifying to a special grand jury.
Prosecutors told a Loudoun County jury this week that the revelations drew fresh scrutiny to the school district and angered former superintendent Scott Ziegler, who mounted a campaign of retribution against her.
Erin Brooks, who was a special-education teacher of the year in 2021, was given a bad review and then fired.
“They wanted the magnifying glass to go away. It was getting hot,” Special Assistant to Virginia Attorney General Brandon Wrobleski told jurors about the scrutiny that Loudoun schools were under. “And Erin Brooks made it even hotter.”
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The jury in Loudoun County Circuit Court found Ziegler guilty Friday of a misdemeanor charge for retaliating against Brooks, but acquitted him of a misdemeanor count of penalizing her for testimony before the special grand jury.
The verdict followed a five-day trial during which Brooks offered emotional testimony about the incidents and her pleas for help, and others described how Loudoun teachers feared reprisals for speaking up about problems in schools. Ziegler’s attorney denied there was any plot to silence Brooks.
Ziegler faces up to a year in jail when he is sentenced on Jan. 4. His attorney said she will file a motion to set aside the verdict.
Brooks told jurors that a 10-year-old, nonverbal student with intellectual disabilities inappropriately touched her and an assistant dozens of times a day, while school officials offered inadequate fixes such as a piece of cardboard to fend off the touching or sending her links to buy an apron to protect her private parts.
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“It’s not days,” Brooks testified about how long she endured the touching without relief. “It’s weeks and months.”
The case was the first of two criminal proceedings Ziegler is facing that grew out of a high-profile special grand jury probe that was ordered by Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin as one of his first acts after taking office in 2022.
Ziegler is set to stand trial in February on charges that he publicly lied about a student carrying out a sexual assault at one Loudoun high school in 2021, before the teen was transferred to a second school where he assaulted another female classmate. Outraged parents questioned why the perpetrator was allowed to attend a new school while facing sexual assault charges.
The attacks also made Loudoun a national focus of a roiling debate over what bathrooms transgender students should use. The perpetrator was wearing a skirt during the first attack, which occurred in a girl’s bathroom, but the teen’s mother and teachers said he was not gender-fluid. The teen was convicted of both attacks.
The Loudoun County School Board fired Ziegler in December, following the release of a 91-page report by the special grand jury that documented major missteps by Ziegler and other Loudoun officials in their handling of the 2021 sexual assaults.
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Those allegations are unrelated to the current trial and occurred months before Brooks’s issues began at Rosa Lee Carter Elementary School in Ashburn, but they serve as a relevant backdrop to what played out.
Brooks testified that her problems started in February 2022, when the student began touching her and her assistant’s breasts, buttocks and groins as they taught class. Brooks, who said she had suffered a sexual assault as a child, was traumatized and said it was inappropriate for other students to witness.
In the weeks that followed, Wrobleski told jurors in his closing statement that Brooks flagged administrators about the problems. School officials attempted to help, but Wrobleski said the fixes were either inappropriate or ineffective and included the cardboard piece and an offer to buy Brooks an apron.
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In March 2022, Wrobleski said, Brooks reached out to the Loudoun school system’s human resources department about filing a Title IX complaint, but no action was taken. Title IX is the federal law that prohibits discrimination based on sex in educational institutions. School district officials testified that Brooks had not given them enough information to act on a Title IX complaint.
Wrobleski told jurors that Brooks became frustrated with officials’ lack of action, so she and her assistant resolved to reach out to an education activist, Ian Prior, about what was happening. Prior alerted the school board during public comments at a meeting in late March 2022.
Wrobleski said Prior’s comments served as a “turning point” in what had been a stellar run with Loudoun schools for Brooks. He told jurors the timing of the public comments was bad for Ziegler, who was already on the hot seat over the 2021 sexual assaults, and the superintendent sought to get rid of Brooks in response.
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Things grew worse for Brooks in April 2022, when she was subpoenaed to testify before the special grand jury about the issues in her classroom, Wrobleski said in court. The grand jury had begun its work that same month investigating how Loudoun school officials handled the previous attacks by a student.
In May 2022, Brooks got an unsatisfactory annual review, following a string of positive evaluations, Wrobleski said. Ziegler then recommended her contract not be renewed and the school board approved the action at a June meeting.
Wrobleski cited the testimony of school board member John Beatty in his closing statement. Wrobleski said Beatty told jurors that Ziegler told them during a closed session that Brooks was fired because she had testified before the special grand jury and spoken to Prior, who had been a thorn in the school administration’s side. Other school board members who testified at trial did not mention such comments.
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Ziegler did not testify during the trial, but his attorney, Erin Harrigan, said there was no plot to dispatch Brooks. Harrigan said Brooks’s problems with her student were the result of her not following an education plan laid out for him by staff that included giving him an iPad to communicate and a reward system for good behavior. She said school officials diligently worked to help Brooks.
That contention was bolstered by the testimony of Carter Elementary School principal Diane Mackey, who told jurors that Brooks’s classroom performance was lacking, and that Mackey faced no pressure to give Brooks a bad review.
Harrigan said Brooks was also reprimanded for a privacy violation after she sent emails about the student touching her from her work account to an assistant’s private email. Brooks testified she wanted to preserve her correspondence with school officials about the assaults because she feared they would try to cover up what happened.
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“You have to ask yourself, is that really why Erin Brooks was not renewed?” Harrigan asked jurors about the prosecution’s claims about retaliation. “Or was it because she was not performing?”
The jury sided with prosecutor’s version of events.
A Loudoun jury acquitted Loudoun schools spokesman Wayde Byard of lying to the special grand jury during a trial in June about the 2021 sexual assaults.
Earlier this month, a judge unsealed an internal report by Loudoun County schools of its handling of the 2021 sexual assaults. The report found school officials waited months to launch an investigation of the first sexual assault, could have performed a threat assessment on the perpetrator and might be doing too little to investigate other sexual assaults in the district.
Brooks has also filed a civil suit over her firing that is still pending.
John C. Whitbeck, her attorney, said Brooks was pleased with Friday’s verdict.
“After a long and painful process, Erin is very pleased with the outcome,” Whitbeck said. “She looks forward to moving on from this and continuing to spend time with her family and get back into teaching.”
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