ARLINGTON, VA - An incident at an aquatics center inside Washington-Liberty High School in the Washington, DC, suburb of Arlington is again calling attention to men being permitted inside female locker rooms.
National Review reports that on September 9, 2024, Jen McDougal brought her nine-year-old daughter to get dressed after a swim meet. She believed she would encounter a typical post-swim meet scene: moms helping their daughters dry off and get dressed to go home. Instead, she saw something horrifying.
Along with a dozen girls in the locker room was a naked man standing in the middle of the room.
The Washington-Liberty Aquatics Center is one of three such facilities operated by the Arlington Public Schools. During school hours, the locker rooms are restricted to students only, while outside of classroom hours, the locker rooms and pool are opened up to the public for swim lessons and recreational use for children as young as six months old.
McDougal told the outlet that she initially thought the man was in the wrong place. While his face and shoulders were covered with a towel, he was fully exposed below the waist and stood with his hands by his sides. McDougal wasn’t the only one in the room who appeared alarmed by the man being there, as other mothers “talked to their daughters in hushed voices” and seemed that they wanted to get their daughters out of the locker room as soon as possible.
McDougal’s daughter repeatedly told her, “I can’t stop seeing it.” She told her daughter that if she ever finds herself in a similar situation, she should leave immediately. “You never have to feel stuck in a room like that,” she said.
She decided to wait until the man came outside, which he eventually did. “He had the smirk on his face that was just uncomfortable.”
As it turns out, McDougal had reason to be concerned. The man inside the locker room, Richard Kenneth Cox, is a tier three registered sex offender, however, under school district policy, he is allowed in the female locker room because he claims he is a woman.
/1🚨BREAKING — AFL just filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education requesting a federal investigation into five Virginia school districts over radical “gender identity” policies that violate Title IX and President Trump’s order ending indoctrination in K-12 schools. pic.twitter.com/7OkGOZrvbu
— America First Legal (@America1stLegal) February 4, 2025
Moreover, Cox isn’t just your “run-of-the-mill” sex offender. He is a serial offender with a long rap sheet: in 1992, he exposed his genitals and masturbated in front of a child at a gymnasium; that same year, he was convicted of burglary; 2007, convicted of possessing obscene materials with a minor; 2021, convicted for failing to register as a sex offender; 2024, charged with indecent exposure for exposing himself in a women’s locker room at Planet Fitness. Cox has been a registered sex offender since 1998 and, according to court documents, identifies as a woman. He was also on the Virginia Department of Corrections most-wanted list in 2020.
In a civil rights complaint filed against Arlington Public Schools last week by the Defense of Freedom Institute, they allege that Cox had his “penis, testicles, and legs…fully exposed to anyone walking through the entrance.” Despite members of the community complaining about Cox “exposing himself to young children throughout the girls’ locker room for over an hour in a time frame when ‘the locker rooms were packed with kids,’” school staff blew them off, saying that despite getting complaints “since at least summertime,” they were unable to do anything because he says he identifies as a transgender woman.
Last October, Cox was arrested after a parent reported he exposed his genitals to another female in the Washington-Liberty girls’ locker room. However, when the victims declined to press charges, he was released from custody.
In November, police investigated several other incidents that occurred at Washington-Liberty and charged him with indecent exposure. He has a preliminary hearing on those charges next month.
Police have also tied Cox into multiple incidents where he exposed himself to women and children, including in locker rooms at Wakefield High School in October and November and the women’s locker room at Barcroft Sports & Fitness Center. He faces a preliminary hearing on those charges in March as well.
In sum, he is facing charges of indecent exposure, loitering at school after a sex conviction, indecent liberties with a child, entering a school after a sex conviction, and being near a playground.
Despite Cox being reported and arrested, the Arlington Public Schools have not revised their bathroom/locker room policy, which permits biological males from entering female spaces if they identify as the same. All they did was post “additional signage” to aquatic centers “that reminds all pool patrons to be considerate of others' privacy, cover intimate body areas when using shared spaces,” and has reviewed and adjusted “security protocols for signing in, Superintendent Francisco Duran told parents in an email.
In conclusion to his email, Duran wrote, “Arlington Public Schools will continue to foster an inclusive community for all, including members who identify as members of [the] LGBTQ+ community.” When called out at a recent school board meeting, Duran said, “We did not knowingly admit a sex offender into any of our aquatic facilities.”
McDougal arranged a meeting with Arlington School Board chair Mary Kadera, which prompted Kadera to take “prompt action” to implement the additional signage. However, the district ignored McDougal.
Nobody took down her contact information or took out a statement. McDougal was forced to look around the pool constantly, monitor the locker room, and bring her daughter into private changing rooms when necessary to evade Cox.
Cox argued in a motion to dismiss the Planet Fitness charges that “nudity alone is not indecent, or we could not have public locker rooms at all. And the question of whether it is indecent for a transgender person to be nude in the locker room that they identify with has also been answered by our courts, our legislatures, and public opinion, and the answer is no. No. So whatever it is that my accuser calls ‘indecent,’ other than the anti-trans discrimination that she harbors in her own mind, it has not been and cannot be proven in court,” 7 News reported.
7 News reporter Nick Minock said this “disputes a letter Cox wrote to a judge in 1995 in which he said he was “aware that I suffer compulsions to expose myself in public places.”
Public polling, however, disputes Cox’s contention that the issue of transgender women being allowed in female locker rooms is “answered by public opinion” in the affirmative. A 2021 YouGov poll found that 51% of US adults opposed biological men being allowed in women’s changing rooms and restrooms, while 31% supported it.
Some are asking for accountability for Arlington school system officials, including the superintendent, school board, and district staff who trained pool employees to disregard complaints of men in women’s spaces.
Virginia Gentles, an Arlington mother and director of Education Freedom and the Parental Rights Initiative at DFI, whose children used to take swim lessons at Washington-Liberty, asks for accountability.
Arlington Public Schools district guidance reads: "All Arlington Public Schools staff shall be periodically trained on topics relating to transgender students. School staff members are responsible for taking prompt and effective steps to prevent and respond to harassment of any kind, including that which is based on gender identity.”
“Arlington Public Schools must follow Title IX requirements to keep spaces segregated by sex,” Gentles said. “I want to know that little girls in Arlington will no longer have to be subjected to naked men in the community locker rooms. That’s what I want as a parent, as an aunt, as a community member. From a DFI perspective, I want the U.S. Department of Education to make it clear that the Office of Civil Rights is going to enforce Title IX and the requirements that women and girls’ sports spaces will be protected.”
Arlington isn’t the only northern Virginia school district where "inclusive” policies have been implemented, including Loudoun County, where in 2021, a “skirt-wearing” male student claiming to be a female sexually assaulted a girl in a school bathroom. He was then transferred to another school where he did the same thing.
Courts blamed the incident on “institutional failures” that ignored and covered up the male student's activities, however, parents, lawyers, and advocates lay blame on the school system’s “inclusive” bathroom policy, which permits students to “use [restrooms and locker rooms] that correspond to their asserted gender identity.
According to National Review, at least five northern Virginia school systems–Alexandria City, Arlington County, Fairfax County, Loudoun County, and Prince William County–all liberal enclaves–have policies in place that allow female-identifying male students access to girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms, according to a filing last week by America First Legal.
Breaking: A trans registered s—x offender with a history of indecent exposure to children has been arrested for allegedly exposing himself in the girls' locker room after being allowed to use the female facilities at Washington-Liberty High School @GeneralsPride's public pool in… pic.twitter.com/hrYksAzFaR
— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) January 17, 2025
The issue of transgender bathrooms elevated to the White House, where last week President Donald Trump issued an executive order that will pull federal funding from any school district that allows gender-confused athletes to either compete on a sports team or enter “intimate spaces” reserved for members of the opposite sex.
Some districts, however, have vowed to defy the president’s order, including Loudoun County, where Superintendent Aaron Spence claimed it would require Congress, not the president, to remove funding from public schools that defy his order. Spence contended that “despite what some have come to believe, our DEI efforts are not about divisiveness, our DEIA efforts are instead about opportunity and inclusion.”
McDougal, however, disagrees and worries that due to Virginia’s liberal sentencing guidelines, Cox may get off easy.
“It’s an abuse of women’s right to feel safe in public spaces,” she said. “I understand there are a lot of people who say you can’t take away a person’s right to use a bathroom that they feel is appropriate for them. But this loophole is what created this situation for us. And he was allowed to enter that restroom, that facility because he identified as transgender.”
