Almost two weeks ago, on October 14, NewsBusters reported on how The Washington Post took their sweet time discovering the high school rape cases in Loudoun County, Virginia but omitted key details like the fact the first one happened in a girl’s bathroom, and how the attacker was “gender-fluid.” But there’s a new wrinkle in their reporting as NewsBusters recently discovered The Post had stealth edited the piece to include the sexual identity of the attacker, the day after our reporting called them out.
Thanks to the Way Back Machine, you can see that this archived version of The Post article had no mention of the fact the attacker identified as “gender-fluid.” But in the current version, they mention it in paragraph four. But they tried to cast doubt on it:
The parents of the victim of the first alleged assault issued a statement Thursday through the Stanley Law Group blaming school officials. They asserted that the charged youth is “gender-fluid” and that the incident occurred in a girls’ bathroom. Those details have not been confirmed by authorities.
The first time these added details showed up was in an archived version from October 15, the day after NewsBusters called them out. And the only notation that anything was added was this five-word line buried at the very bottom of the piece: “This story has been updated.” There was no explanation of what was added.
“The parents spoke out against a policy put in place by the school board several months later, in August, allowing students to use bathrooms that match their gender identities. At the time of the alleged incident, the policy was not in place,” further wrote Jasmine Hilton, Hannah Natanson, and Justin Jouvenal.
The key detail they omitted that time was that while “At the time of the alleged incident, the [bathroom] policy was not in place,” the radical liberal school board was in the process of trying to get that policy enacted and tried to cover up the attack.
Now, fast forward to Monday, October 25 to when the Loudoun County Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court found the attacker guilty of the first rape (the alleged second one was still in the legal system), and Jouvenal was the only one of the original three to write about the new developments.
He continued to downplay the sexual identity of the attacker and recycled the line about when the bathroom policy went into effect:
The case generated local and national attention after the parents of the girl assaulted in May said the charged youth was “gender fluid,” prompting renewed backlash against a policy in Loudoun County schools that allows transgender students to use bathrooms that match their gender identity. That policy was adopted after the May assault.
Jouvenal also continued to ignore the school board’s cover-up. “The case also has sparked anger from parents who have questioned why the teen was allowed to attend another school while awaiting trial in the May assault,” he simply wrote.
This was also the first time the paper acknowledged the attacker was wearing a skirt:
The defendant initially told detectives the second sexual act did not occur, but later said it may have happened briefly and accidentally when a knee-length skirt he was wearing got caught on his watch as the pair were fumbling around in the bathroom stall.
And throughout the piece, he seemed to hint that the girl wasn’t really a victim because “the 15-year-old victim in the first case testified she had consensual sexual encounters with the defendant on two occasions in a girls’ bathroom…” Jouvenal also strangely noted her parents were “gratified by the outcome of the case.”
