Loudoun parents say daughter sexually assaulted by teacher, Title IX office made mistakes

ASHBURN, Va. (7News) — After eleven months of fighting for accountability, two Loudoun County parents are breaking their silence after they say their daughter and other female students were allegedly sexually harassed and sexually assaulted by their teacher at Stone Bridge High School.

The parents told 7News that they've been going through the Title IX process at LCPS for almost a year. The parents said they even reached out to their school board member, Harris Mahedavi, for help.

But the family says their school board member has “done nothing.”

This family is speaking exclusively with 7News Reporter Nick Minock to bring attention to the alleged Title IX issues at Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS).

“The mandate, the driving philosophy seems to be to protect LCPS at all costs. It’s not about focusing on students, focusing on the victims,” Jason Harding told 7News.

In March 2022, Jason and Tumay Harding said they received a text message from their daughter, who at the time was a tenth-grade student at Stone Bridge High School.

“I was sitting at the kitchen island, and I received a text from my daughter and she said, 'mom, you're going to get a call from the vice principal, don't worry.' And I said 'what's going on? You're scaring me.' And she wrote, 'I had it the easiest - the other girls not so much,”' Mrs. Harding said.

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Mrs. Harding told 7News she then received a call from the vice principal at Stone Bridge High School.

“And the vice principal told me, 'your daughter and two other girls have come to us with allegations against a teacher at the school. But don't worry, I'll get her to the cafeteria for lunch.' And I said, 'wait, what? What what's happening? What happened? I don't know anything about this,”' Mrs. Harding told 7News.

Mrs. Harding said she picked up her daughter and her classmates, with their parent’s approval, from school and that’s when Mrs. Harding learned of the allegations.

“He would come up from behind them and rub their backs and then rub their shoulders and touch their waists and move them side to side,” Mrs. Harding told 7News. “He started talking to them very inappropriately.”

“Sexually suggestive comments,” Mr. Harding said. “Things guys in a locker room might joke around with each other but you would never think of a teacher saying to a student.”

“And one day my daughter and her friend [and] I soon found out that he [the teacher] would allow them to skip their own classes and come to his class anytime without writing a pass because the pass would, of course, have a trail and he made it easy so that they could be best buddies and that they could come and talk to him and complained about things," Mrs. Harding alleges. "So there was the slow grooming process right there.

In a school board meeting in December 2022, Loudoun County School Board Chair Ian Serotkin told the public the LCPS Title IX office was expanded after two other sexual assaults that happened at two schools in 2021, including Stone Bridge High School --- which led to the attorney general’s special grand jury investigation, a scathing report and the firing of the superintendent.

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The Harding family has been going through the so called improved Title IX office at LCPS for more than a year.

“The operation is run at a minimum in an incompetent fashion without adherence to standard Title IX policy and done in a very haphazard fashion,” Mr. Harding said.

"We’ve had to fix their mistakes at least ten times,” Mrs. Harding claims.

“At our own cost bringing on our own lawyer who is an expert in Title IX policy,” Mr. Hardin added.

The family said LCPS refused to open a Title IX investigation.

“It’s like a corrupt auto insurance company that automatically rejects every claim. And then keeps rejecting keep rejecting,” Mr. Harding said. “The most frustrating thing for us is we entered this process assuming they would be advocates for our daughter and would explain to us this policy - --and knowing Title IX to have a dedicated Title IX team investigator --- we are going to get to the truth of this and that’s the exact opposite of what happened. We got the runaround in so many different circumstances, were provided incorrect policy that they had to later backtrack around, were presented situations where we were giving evidence and didn't have the ability to review or make any changes with regards to testimony, things of that nature. Only to find out that everybody else, including the accused, was able to go and review and tweak and change things.”

7News asked LCPS if the teacher is still employed at Stone Bridge High School. LCPS said 'yes' and that the teacher is on leave.

“Disgusted, absolutely disgusted,” Mr. Harding said. “We know that the Title IX process can get very drawn out. We're coming up on a year since the accusations were made. But from an HR [human resources] perspective, they did a very comprehensive investigation. They know of previous reports of similar conduct and have waited for the Title IX findings to make their final HR determination. So he's been on paid vacation essentially for the past year. His contract obviously was renewed in the Fall so they can continue this farce. And it's appalling to us that he's still getting paid by the county. I don't know if it's the prior superintendent, Ziegler, that was afraid to take action. Or they're using the cloak of the Title IX investigation to somehow give them some latitude or if they were trying to hide from the headlines because they didn't want to see a teacher fired for this particular reason? But we're mortified and appalled that he's still employed by the county.”

Mrs. Harding said it took her nine months to learn from the school system if the teacher was on paid or unpaid leave.

“He is a predator,” Mrs. Harding said. “God knows how many girls he’s hurt in the past. Through research of our own –-- not through Title IX --- or anyone else has helped us do. I found out a girl that was also assaulted by this man a year prior to our children’s assault and harassment and Title IX and HR did nothing about it. They walked him out for a week and he came back in.”

“We want his teaching license to be taken away and to never be around children again because we feel he’s a dangerous man,” Mrs. Harding said.

“We think the investigation, top to bottom, should be completely reviewed because so many elements of it were done in an improper inconsistent, inequitable fashion,” Mr. Harding said of the LCPS Title IX office.

ALSO READ | Virginia high court denies LCPS petition to block grand jury sex assault investigation

7News reached out to LCPS for comment on this story. 7News will update this story with their response.

“And they [LCPS] seem to be diluted in the notion that they've improved the Title IX office and that it's in a much better state,” Mr. Harding added. “And I don't believe that's the case. I think that there are students inevitably that are going to be victimized and suffer more, because this operation is being run improperly and it needs to be reviewed, top to bottom. Simple as that.”