A registered sex offender named Richard Cox exposed himself to girls and women in two high school swimming pool locker rooms in the Washington, D.C., suburbs this past fall. This happened a few weeks after a northern Virginia prosecutor elected not to press charges against the man for exposing himself at a local Planet Fitness over the summer.
While many local outlets have been covering this story for nearly a month, the local paper of record, the Washington Post — in the 20 days since the story broke — has not run a single article about the incidents.
Why would a prosecutor refuse to prosecute a registered sex offender exposing himself in a women’s locker room?
Why would the Washington Post refuse to cover such a story?
Also, why would Planet Fitness allow Richard Cox, a 58-year-old man, into the ladies locker room?
You can guess why.
Richard Kenneth Cox [keep full name], the serial sex offender, identifies as a woman.
Transgender ideology requires exactly this: Abandoning one’s duty to protect the vulnerable and to tell the truth. Transgender ideology, then, inevitably leads to sexual harassment or abuse.
In June 2024, Cox was arrested for exposing himself in a women’s locker room at a Planet Fitness gym.
Cox was already on the sex offender list because he had been convicted in the 1990s of “taking indecent liberties with children” in Arlington.
After the Planet Fitness charges, Cox defended himself on the grounds that he identified as a woman. Fairfax County State’s Attorney Steve Descano, a partisan liberal funded by George Soros, dropped the charges against the sex offender, setting Cox — an obviously perverted predator — free to prey on more women and girls in northern Virginia.
Washington-Liberty High School has a swimming pool that is also open to the public. County officials allowed Cox into the women’s locker rooms, where he proceeded to expose himself to girls and women, according to local news reports.
Starting in September, according to media reports, concerned mothers started complaining about Cox appearing in girls locker rooms. The pool manager refused to do anything about it because Cox identified as a woman. In short, a perverted man was allowed into girls locker rooms because he claimed to be transgender, and county officials, obedient to gender ideology, accepted that.
“The woman said she called the school board and reported the situation, but the Arlington School Board did not respond to her,” WJLA’s Nick Minock reported.
When the county arrested him for this in October, his arrest documents listed him as a female.
Why was this naked registered sex offender in the girls locker room? WJLA reports: “Witnesses said Cox was allowed to use the girl’s locker room at Washington Liberty High School because Arlington Public Schools allows people to use school bathrooms and locker rooms based on gender identity, not biological sex, and Cox told pool staff he identified as transgender.”
After Cox’s arrest, Arlington Public Schools defended its decision to allow Cox into women’s locker rooms, citing gender ideology: “APS permits pool patrons to access restrooms and facilities that correspond to their gender identity.”
APS is correct, in a sense. If you accept that a patron is a woman because that patron claims to be a woman, then you cannot keep that patron out of the women’s locker room just because that patron is 6 feet tall, obviously a man, and has a penis. The county has admitted it should have checked his ID against a sex offender registry.
WJLA, the local ABC affiliate, cited an Arlington mother saying “Cox exposed his fully naked body in front of her and her 9-year-old daughter in the Washington Liberty High School girls’ locker room in September 2024 after swimming lessons for children.”
One mother said she complained about men in the women’s locker room. The response: She “was told to use the family changing rooms.”
In Arlington County, Cox has been charged with 22 offenses since last October. These offenses include indecent exposure, sex offender entry onto school property, indecent liberties with a child, and sex offender loitering near a school.
Minock, the reporter for WJLA, has done most of the reporting on this story.
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The Washington Post, meanwhile, has never mentioned Cox in a single story, in the 20 days since Minock broke the story. The most likely explanation: The Washington Post doesn’t want to report on a story in which transgenderism is a cover story that allows a perverted man to prey on women.
And Planet Fitness has a policy that explicitly says men like Cox are allowed into women’s locker rooms, as Minock reported. The policy states: “All members, including transgender members, may use Planet Fitness locker room facilities, bathrooms, showers, and all other facilities/programs separated by sex based on their self-reported gender identity.”