ARLINGTON, Virginia — Even though the trial of a sex offender, who allegedly entered a female locker room by claiming to be transgender, will not happen until February, it could still be decided by the court of public opinion through the Virginia election. A slew of cultural issues, including this case, are affecting poll numbers in the last weeks leading up to Election Day.
Richard K. Cox is facing 44 charges in Virginia’s 17th Judicial Circuit Court, including indecent exposure, indecent liberties with a child, and possession of child pornography. The 58-year-old was arrested when a parent reported seeing Cox naked in a locker room shower with the curtain open, touching himself, in front of her 5-year-old daughter. While an exact trial date has not been set, the court has blocked out three weeks in February to possibly schedule the trial.
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The case is just one of many from Virginia that are gaining national attention and becoming major talking points ahead of the Virginia elections.
Carrie Sheffield, an Arlington resident, homeowner, and senior policy analyst at the Independent Women’s Forum, said she has not heard Abigail Spanberger, the Democratic candidate for governor, address this situation.
“I would love to ask her directly, Abigail Spanberger, do you support this behavior?” Sheffield said. “Do you support a biological male pedophile being allowed to go into these locker rooms unchecked, exposing himself to young girls in these locker rooms?”
Virginians heard Spanberger’s response in the gubernatorial debate Thursday night, as moderators asked the Democrat if she supports males playing in female sports and using female bathrooms.
“I think it’s incumbent upon parents and educators and administrators in each local community to make decisions locally,” Spanberger said.
The moderator asked her to clarify her answer several times, and no matter how they asked the question, Spanberger responded the same. When Earle-Sears started berating her, Spanberger finally shouted out, “There should never be naked men in locker rooms.”
Some Virginians think these locker room incidents could turn the election for Republicans.
“I think it is enough,” Lundquist-Arora, a mother of two boys in Fairfax County, said about whether Spanberger’s response would affect the election’s outcome. “I think people see it’s a problem when people who you’re asked to vote for are running from reporters. That’s the opposite of transparency.”
For months, Spanberger has been asked by local reporters in Virginia if she supports allowing biological men in women’s restrooms, and she has evaded the question. In 2023, she voted to allow biological males to compete in female sports while she was a member of the House of Representatives from Virginia’s 7th Congressional District.
“Well, at the end of the day, Abigail Spanberger wants there to be boys and girls bathrooms and wants boys to be in girls’ sports, and that’s where she stands,” Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) told Fox News. “And the reason why she cannot answer the question is because she knows where she is, is so objectionable to almost all Virginians, and therefore she refuses to answer the question.”
Attorney General Jason Miyares has spoken out against the policy that allowed Cox to enter the restroom to begin with, blaming his opponent, Democrat Jay Jones, for supporting the bill that allowed Cox to get a driver’s license identifying the biological man as a woman.
“Jay Jones is complicit, allowing the scarring of the countless victims who watched as Richard Cox repeatedly exposed himself under the protection of a bill he voted for,” Miyares said.
In 2020, Jones represented Norfolk as a Virginia state delegate when he voted in favor of the bill signed by then-Gov. Ralph Northam to allow Virginians to obtain a driver’s license based on their gender identity instead of their biological sex.
“The failure to protect these women and young girls falls directly on those who advocated for this bill,” Miyares said.
Cox allegedly exposed himself to at least a dozen young girls in the female locker room of Washington-Liberty High School. The Arlington High School has a pool open to the public for lap swimming and children’s swim lessons outside of school hours. Parents had complained for months but their complaints fell on deaf ears as Arlington County allows people to use the restroom by their gender identity over their biological sex.
“Abigail Spanberger stands with Jay Jones,” Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, the Republican gubernatorial candidate, said. “Sides with the gender extremists over Virginia’s daughters. And backed Joe Biden while Virginians paid the price. Abigail isn’t fighting for us—she’s fighting for them.”
Jones is being called to drop out over text messages saying he wants to “piss on the grave” of Republican former Virginia House Speaker Todd Gilbert. The 2022 messages also show Jones saying he would shoot Gilbert, calling his children “little fascists,” and wishing Gilbert’s children would die because “only when people feel pain personally do they move on policy.”
New polling from the Republican Attorneys General Association shared with 7News shows this has already affected the Virginia attorney general’s race. Before Jones’s texts were released, the democrat was leading Miyares 46.4% to 42.5%. After the Jones text story broke, the new RAGA poll taken on Oct. 7 has Miyares in the lead, 45.8% to 43.7%.
During the debate, Spanberger did not directly confirm Jones’s reendorsement but also did not call for him to drop out of the attorney general’s race.
“The comments that Jay Jones made are absolutely abhorrent. I denounce them when I learned of them, and I will denounce them every opportunity I get,” Spanberger said at first.
“I’m saying as of now, it’s up to every voter to make their own individual decision. I am running for governor. I am accountable for the words that I say, for the acts that I take, for the policies that I have put out,” Spanberger responded when asked again.
Lundquist-Arora feels there is a war starting within the Democratic Party, as culture issues are driving the headlines in the weeks before the election.
“What’s happening in the Democratic Party is they’re having a war within their own party,” Lundquist-Arora said. “It’s becoming clear to moderates that the people who are winning, in terms of the ones that are being endorsed to run for office, are the extreme leftists.”
In Fairfax County, a biologically male sophomore is being allowed to use the female locker room because the student identifies as female. When several 14-year-old girls complained, the administrators at West Springfield High School told the girls to change faster or use a single-use restroom.
Another case, also at WSHS, a former female student is suing the school for allowing a biological male student, who identifies as gay, not as transgender, to use the female locker room.
When other female students began to complain on social media, an Instagram post shows the boy wrote, “I go in the girls’ bathroom for safety reasons, in the boys’ bathroom I’ve been threatened to be jumped multiple times, raped, and screamed at every time. In the girls’ bathroom, no one has ever said anything to me about how they are so uncomfortable, stop being a little bitch behind ur spam account is[sic] embarrassing. My counselor and principal both said I’m allowed to go in there, I don’t even look at any of you, I go in a stall. You go to a public school, not everything is catered to you.”
A father of two West Springfield High School students spoke with the Washington Examiner anonymously about the cases. He has two sons enrolled in the school and a daughter who is not yet in high school.
“How I would deal with it? I would be absolutely irate,” the WSHS father said. “Had my daughter been in that locker room when that boy was in there watching her change, like I can’t even fathom that situation. Nobody should be looking at my children, whether boys or girls, dressing or undressing of the opposite gender.”
However, regarding the election, one mother, who has high school children and lives in Fairfax County, is not sure it will be enough to turn Virginia blue.
“I just see Fairfax County being so deeply blue,” the Fairfax mother said anonymously to the Washington Examiner. “People have drank the Kool-Aid so badly that they’re still just saying, ‘Who cares what Jay Jones said? We’re just going to forgive him,’ and they’re just going to vote the party lines.”
“I think it’s a variable, and I think it will sway some votes,” the WSHS father said. “I think a majority of blue voters are, you know, in American society today, in our current culture, there’s an approach of if it doesn’t affect me directly, then it doesn’t affect me.”
He went on to say that many government or former government workers who lost their jobs due to Department of Government Efficiency cuts are young professionals who do not have children, and these school issues may not matter as much to them. The Democratic voters he knows blame the Trump administration and will vote along the party line no matter what.
“I think their hatred for this administration is going to outweigh anything else,” the WSHS father said. “I think a majority of the populace in Northern Virginia doesn’t have kids. We have a lot of young, single professionals, who vote just straight blue, and it’s not that’s not going to change.”
“I was also affected by DOGE,” the Fairfax County mother said. “I’ve been unemployed for the last three months. I have a lot of conservative friends or people who I’m communicating with in these Fairfax County parents groups, who also either themselves directly or their husbands, were affected by DOGE. They’re very sour against the current administration, even though their ideologies may not have changed; they’re very sour at how things have been carried out.”
“Because everybody loves to hate President Trump people, that don’t know what’s going on, are going to just vote against being Republican,” a mother with two children at WSHS said to the Washington Examiner anonymously.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) could contribute much of his election success in the commonwealth to culture issues surrounding COVID-19, a boy wearing skirts sexually harassing multiple girls in the high school bathroom, and sexually explicit books being read to children. However, the WSHS mother says Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, the Republican candidate for governor, does not have as much support because parents are upset these incidents are still happening under her administration.
“Unfortunately, I think the economy will win the election,” the WSHS mother said. “I do believe Youngkin was elected culturally, for sure. Parents want to be involved. Parents want to make the decisions. Parents are the people who should be allowed to make the decisions. But then all this crap is still going on.”
Youngkin is currently working with the Virginia Board of Health to set regulations in place to prevent biological males who identify as female from participating in women’s sports and from using women’s locker rooms.
VIRGINIA LOCKER ROOM SUSPECT SCOLDS JUDGE FOR NOT USING PREFERRED PRONOUNS, AND JUDGE APOLOGIZES
State and federal mandates already require that these private spaces be separated by biological sex. The Department of Education said it would freeze federal funding for several Northern Virginia public school districts whose bathroom policies do not comply with those of the Trump administration. The schools have not lost federal funding, but they will not automatically receive government money and must request cost reimbursements.
Fairfax County Public Schools and Arlington County Public Schools have sued the Department of Education over the move. Miyares has filed two amicus briefs in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit to block FCPS’s and APS’s attempts to automatically get federal funding.