LEESBURG, Va. (CN) — The attorney for a suspended Loudoun County Schools communications officer standing trial for perjury on Tuesday described her client as a scapegoat for a system-wide failure that resulted in two campus rapes.
The case against Wayde Byard stems from a controversy over the school system’s handling of two separate assaults involving the same assailant — one in May 2021 at Stone Bridge High School and the other in October 2021 at Broad Run High School. Both schools are located in the sprawling, Washington, D.C., suburb of Loudon County, Virginia.
A grand jury report about the incidents said that the assailant — who wore a skirt in a school bathroom during the first assault that occurred around the same time the county was considering whether to allow transgender students to use the bathroom of their choice — had exhibited problematic behavior before the attacks. In one memo written prior to the incidents, a teacher's aide noted that the boy draped himself across the lap of female students and arrived in class with his arm hooked around a girl's neck during the pandemic.
The scandal turned Loudoun into "the epicenter of a national story," according to Theo Stamos, prosecutor in the case and special counsel to Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares. The issue was front and center in Republican Glenn Youngkin's successful campaign for governor, and he eventually ordered the grand jury probe.
In her opening statement, Stamos read a question asked to Byard during the grand jury investigation:
"OK," began one of the prosecuters, "so you're the public information officer and on the afternoon of May 28 of 2021, you were unaware that there had been an allegation of a sexual assault by one male student against a female student in the bathroom at Stone Bridge High School until months later?"
"I would say that's correct," Byard responded.
But on the day of the first attack, Byard has been described as being involved in composing a memo sent to the school community aimed at explaining news of a disruption at the school after the attack, when the victim's father, upset and furious, arrived. The school's principal, Timothy Flynn, testified that he gave Byard a complete rundown of the incident right away.
During cross examination, Jennifer Leffler, Byard's attorney, asked Flynn why he met with prosecutors but wouldn't meet with her. At first, he said, he hadn't secured counsel. He added that he had cooperated with law enforcement. Pressed by Leffler, he said he didn't want to meet with her.
In a similar vein, during opening statements, Leffler described her client as being unfairly targeted.
"Why are we here?" she asked. "I would suggest that [Byard] is the spokesman;" he's the face of Loudoun County Public Schools.
She told the jury of four women and nine men, one of whom is an alternate, that as spokesman, Byard had nothing to do with student placement or discipline.
For prosecutors, proving perjury could be uphill sledding. The law is replete with qualifiers. In Virginia, a person commits perjury if he or she “willfully swears falsely on such occasion touching any material matter or thing, or if a person falsely makes oath that any other person is 18 years of age or older in order to obtain a marriage license for such other person, or if any person in any written declaration, certificate, verification, or statement under penalty of perjury willfully subscribes as true any material matter which he does not believe is true.”
Former school superintendent Scott Ziegler also faces three misdemeanor charges.
The adolescent in both attacks was charged with two counts of forcible sodomy.
The trial continues Wednesday.
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