A Virginia father who was arrested at a school board meeting has ripped Attorney General Merrick Garland for painting him as a domestic terrorist — saying he’d just been trying to raise the alarm about his daughter getting “sexually assaulted” in a school bathroom.
Scott Smith, 48, became a symbol of angry parents confronting school officials when he went viral at a June 22 meeting of the Loudoun County School Board as he was wrestled to the floor and arrested.
But on Tuesday, Smith told Fox News that he had been trying to raise the alarm about his daughter’s sexual assault — and only flipped out when officials and then another parent denied it.
It appears to be backed up by video of an arrest, which captured his wife shouting, “My child was raped at school and this is what happens!”
Smith told Laura Ingraham that he finally decided to speak publicly about his daughter’s ordeal because he says the same alleged attacker was charged with another similar attack — and because the AG suggested angry parents like him were “domestic terrorists.”
“This DoJ thing — that’s scary,” Smith said.
“That’s really scary, that our government will weaponize themselves against parents and they’re using my video across the nation to spread fear,” he said.
“That’s wrong. I am not a bully. I am not a racist. I love everyone. I love this country. I want better stuff for it,” he insisted of his passionate appearance at his first-ever school board meeting.
Smith was charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. His attorney, Elizabeth Lancaster, told the Daily Wire that the rush to judgment completely ignored the devastating message he was trying to share.
“If someone would have sat and listened for 30 seconds to what Scott had to say, they would have been mortified and heartbroken,” Lancaster said.
Smith told the Daily Wire that his daughter was attacked at Stone Bridge High School on May 28 by a boy “wearing in a skirt” who took advantage of transgender rules “to get into the bathrooms.”
“This has been a crazy three months but basically my daughter was sexually assaulted at the end of school, in May,” the dad said.
He insisted to Ingraham that he went to the June school board meeting to “find out why our children weren’t safe.”
He flipped when a “parent-activist” wearing a rainbow-colored skirt started “antagonizing” him and his wife, threatening to ruin them and denying the alleged assault of his daughter.
“The next thing I know … the police are grabbing me and I’m tackled to the ground,” he said of the now-viral video of his arrest.
“I was just shocked and horrified,” he said of his arrest. “This could have been handled a lot differently.”
Lancaster told the Daily Wire that a boy was charged with two counts of forcible sodomy, one count of anal sodomy, and one count of forcible fellatio related to an incident that day at that school. However, the records are sealed because they involve a juvenile suspect.
The sheriff’s office told Fox, “This case is still pending court proceedings.”
Smith insists it is the same 15-year-old boy who was charged Oct. 7 for a similar attack at neighboring Broad Run High School.
“The investigation determined on the afternoon of October 6, the 15-year-old suspect forced the victim into an empty classroom where he held her against her will and inappropriately touched her,” the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office said. He was not named because of his age, but was initially held at the Loudoun County Juvenile Detention Center.
It was not immediately clear how the suspect was in a different school, or what, if any, action was taken against him by school officials.
Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) Superintendent Scott Ziegler had told the June meeting there were no records at the time of “assaults occurring in our restrooms,” as in Smith’s daughter’s case.
He also insisted that rumors of “the predator transgender student or person simply does not exist.”
This week, a spokesperson for Ziegler told Fox that the alleged attacks “were reported immediately to the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office, and LCPS cooperated fully with the investigations.”
“Any information related to student information is confidential under state and federal laws regarding student privacy,” the spokesperson said.
Smith was charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest at the board meeting. In August he was sentenced to 10 days in jail, all suspended, contingent on a year of good behavior, but said he would appeal, Loudoun Now reported.
