Me, too. If you hadn't sent the email, I wouldn't have learned of these details, and they're important. Also, Jesse, I appreciate your chastising yourself for your credulity on the initial podcast, and I'd like to underscore it. We're all too susceptible to outrage. I count on you (among others) as an antidote to that frailty. (Even as, of course, you're allowed to be human, too. I'm writing now of your professional obligation.)
Jesse, thanks for circling back to this issue on the recent pod and offering a mea culpa--even if Katie didn't seem to want to let you issue it! "You were angry," she said. Uh, yeah. That's the point.
It seems like you're missing the point to come down on this as "strongly disputing" the Daily Wire, although they certainly should have done this research themselves. The main and worst facts of the story still seem correct - the only change is a possible miscommunication, and at worst misrepresentation in the heat of the moment about how much was the police department involved. It seems pretty feasible that Smith didn't perceive a School Resource Officer as "the real police," or that it was explained to him incorrectly. I doubt a lot of people who didn't go to a 4 year college during/after the Title IX Dear Colleague era spend a lot of time thinking about what is a mandated reporter. The negative press around SROs in reporting about school gun violence probably doesn't help their reputation either, thinking of the infamous Broward County story. I can easily see Smith interpreting that the "mall cop" of the school was "handling it". The simplest story still seems to be that Smith shows up at school, perceives the case is being mishandled (which, how could you not if you're in this position), and loses his temper, at which point the school is not interested in a calm conversation about next steps.
This also doesn't explain the superintendent's comment about no assaults taking place in the school bathrooms, which seems like the highest level of either incompetence or cover-up. If anything, it makes it worse since these logs confirm the assault was documented and was going through the school's incident process. So how could the superintendent not know?
Agreed. I went to a school with SROs (a decade ago but still) and I would have considered them a glorified "mall cop" until reading your definition here. The bare minimum that people know about the rape investigation process is that you need a kit - if I was a parent and I had shown up and learned that only the SRO was investigating and that they weren't currently making plans to start the rape kit process I'd likely call that "in house" and be irrate too - rather than spending time googling what exactly an SRO is and who is paying them.
And if the assistant principle knows, and there is external law enforcement invovled, why isn't the superintendent also notified? Can you imagine having to have the police investigate something at your work and that not needing to run "up the chain" for notification?
I was just about to post a comment saying similar. This clarifies some details but doesn’t really change the substance of the story. At best, they did the bare minimum in reporting and then subsequent events suggest they did very little else.
I agree...obviously the school wasn't averse to calling HQ and having a non-house police officer come to the school. A rape on campus doesn't warrant that, but an upset parent does?
And why would they even want to handle it "in house?" Surely their in-house officer wasn't going to be able to perform a rape kit, which has shown to be pretty valuable in this entire story since the girl was accused of lying about being sexually assaulted. The School Resource Officer being a mandated reporter is really immaterial; days would have passed likely before any next steps were taken.
This feels more like the school wanted to cover up the sexual assault for some reason...wonder if we will find out that the perpetrator has some ties to the district.
Where I live SROs are fully part of the local police force, and every school professional knows that if one has been notified of an issue then a full-fledged investigation is underway. However, our SROs would've immediately called in a sexual assault specialist, and there's no record of that in the log. It's no wonder Smith lost it given the SRO was probably bumbling the initial steps of the investigation--as a parent, I would've, too.
In every normal school, if there'd been an alleged sexual assault, the assistant principal would've been communicating with the principal immediately, and yes the superintendent would've been notified shortly thereafter. I just don't see a scenario where the Loudon County superintendent didn't know the facts of the case before that June school board meeting where he denied there was any record of bathroom assaults.
I think the issue here is that at no point does the school administration appear to have had the intention of not reporting the matter to the police. As evidenced by the fact that they did. The parent might not have realized the SRO was "real police" and their reaction is certainly understandable and can be excused. But the school administration did notify the SRO, and it's reasonable to assume they knew the SRO was real police. It is also reasonable to expect DW to have figured it out before publishing the article. The fact that they're refusing to admit that their initial reporting was misleading seems crazy to me.
They reported it to the SRO, which while IS real police, they also said they were handling this "in house" which means no no rape kit, no physician visit, and no sexual assault specialist (as Kelp noted above).
The concept that a school can handle an incident "in house" while also reporting it to the police is missing from the DW article. It's an important part of the story and it's omission creates a misleading impression that the school tried to keep the police out of it.
I get that DW should have dug deeper and included in their reporting that there is one SRO on campus who is an actual officer. To me? That doesn't make anything much better at all.
The fact that the school decided that they could handle it all "in house" with the one cop and the administration is ludicrous. That's not how our criminal justice system operates. By keeping it "in house" the school was, essentially, keeping the police out of it as far as most citizens would take that "the police" to mean.
The precinct HQ should have been notified, the accused should be questioned formally on camera (this isn't normally done by the arresting officer as far as I know), charges should have been filed if appropriate, the victim should have a rape kit performed and also questioned formally on the record, etc.
I guess. But the Daily Wire doesn't make that a central piece of the allegation. As Jesse mentions, it's just a single line that they quickly move on from. I actually thought Jesse was overly reading into it when the first episode aired and frankly still feel that the error was Jesse's and he has handled this petulantly. I still like him ofc and good on him for actually getting the logs.
This feels right to me. And I also can not blame the father for continued outrage. Because when your daughter is raped, cool and rational deliberation at all times is an unreasonable ask. The story feels like a story of a horrendous mileu of awful events and then mixed wires.
Jesse is absolutely not missing the point, which is that it looked as if the school was hoping to cover up an assault. Beware of doubling down. It rarely helps in sensemaking.
Many things are lost in bureaucracy, whether corporate or government. I wouldn’t be surprised if his answer was both honest and ignorant. The result, him not knowing, I wonder how awful that really is. Would him knowing have an impact on the case? I’m open to arguments on that question, but experience in both government and corporate bureaucracy tells me that often the answer is “no.”
Loved getting this email. And appreciated the prompt dissemination of new information. Thank you! If an email is about a topic I am not interested in, I just delete it, but will rarely log on (never did on Patreon) and would totally miss it until a year later when I am randomly trolling the site and can’t remember anything about the original story.
Please do send emails when following up on stories discussed in the podcast. I listen because of the interesting stories you discuss and prefer to have the full picture even if that requires reading words on a screen. Thanks!
Yes to emails. And, in addition, I don’t really understand people getting annoyed by an email from someone they subscribe to. Seems like a them problem not a you problem.
Send the emails. I'm not lurking around in Substack. I have a job and a wife and we are looking for a cat loving F 25-35 with great tits for possible poly...sorry, wrong thread.
To be honest mate, I don’t have time or the inclination to check websites all day. As such, receiving an email is handy. Allows me to delete if I am time poor, not in the mood or not interested. If people are not keen on the inbox having items in it then a rule can easily be set up to direct these to a folder for later review. Keep up the great work both you and Katie.
Sorry—I didn’t see this comment before so commented above. I strongly prefer to receive updates like this one by email because I never check the website. Thanks.
I'm fine with emails like this, that offer substantive follow up. If it was just a blurb with little useful info or a link and that's all, I might be annoyed, but this this a significant update.
Thank you for the update! This part of the story did strike me as possibly the result of a miscommunication with the parent. FWIW, all school employees are mandated reporters, not just the SRO.
Yes good call -- "5. Any teacher or other person employed in a public or private school, kindergarten, or child day program, as that term is defined in § 22.1-289.02;"
Notifying a mandated reporter isn't the same as the child being seen by a physician, having a rape kit done, and having formal charges brought. The principal said they were keeping it "in house?!?" But they didn't keep "in house" the father of the rape victim being irate on campus. THAT is worthy of going "out of house"...
Leaving aside the Daily Wire's fishiness after you reached out, it seems to me that this could easily be a misunderstanding on Smith's part and an obfuscation (or laziness) by DW.
Saying that they were looking into it in-house may ignore the legal responsibilities of an SRO but may well align with a parent's understanding of school personnel. An SRO seems quite different than detectives from the county sheriff's office. Perhaps Smith made a mistake as to the significance of the SRO, which the media covering it (DW, given that legacy media is asleep at the wheel) should've picked up on. It seems reasonable to me for a parent to worry--particularly if the administration failed to express sufficient concern--that the school would sweep it under the rug to keep it from going public.
Moreover, the original entry in the log is ambiguous as to the timing of some key events--did the student tell the administration "a couple of hours ago" (before the 1:30 log entry) or did the alleged assault happen "a couple of hours ago" with the student reporting closer to 1:30? After that, a supervisor was requested at 2:21pm, and it looks like the student's family didn't leave until 3:45. The story says the student didn't go to the hospital until "that night." There are a lot of delays in there. Critically, we don't know what school administration said to Smith--perhaps they were apathetic or otherwise unbothered.
Ultimately, I don't see this document as a smoking-gun against Smith's account. The DW's coverage was perhaps a bit too credulous, but that seems par for the course these days.
I think you are overly self-conscious on corrections to the point of being detrimental. While, I appreciate a need to be precise and accurate, your corrections on the whole tend to be small but often, the latter of which lends to an impression that you are often wrong and thus shouldn't be trusted.
In this specific case, no one is going to blame you for recounting in a podcast what the Daily Wire reported if what the Daily Wire reported turned out to be wrong or not the whole story - especially when you said you were going to be doing your own reporting on it.
This would be different if it were a written article, but I believe you would have worded things differently in a written article anyway. "Live" spoken word gets a grain of salt that a published written work that has gone through drafts and edits doesn't. If you wanted to hold to the same standard of that kind of reporting, you'd have to put much more production into the podcast with pauses while you guys do research, re-recordings and edits, which would change the free-flowing nature of the podcast. But it's up to you.
Waiting 50 minutes to call an ambulance after a child was sexually assaulted is totally unacceptable. It’s absurd to suggest that time could have been used to sit them each down to find out what happened. If she said she was raped, that’s for a hospital to determine not a principal. Rape isn’t just sex you didn’t ask for, it’s violence. She almost certainly was injured and required immediate medical attention and they should have called an ambulance right away.
I worked in a Virginia high school for four years, and it took me a little while to realize SROs were "real" police, partly because there are also, under VA code, "school security officers." The SROs wear the local law enforcement agency's standard uniform. The SSOs wear a different uniform and are not armed, they receive training and certification, but are not sworn officers. They look like actual cops unless you look closely.
If someone mentioned an SRO to you, and if you'd never seen the actual SRO, you might think the unarmed SSO was the SRO. Contributing to my confusion was the fact that someone on staff pointed to one of the SSOs and said "he was a janitor here up until last year." I said, "then he became a cop?" and they said, "oh, he's not a cop."
*Then* I saw the actual SRO, asked "what are the cops doing here?" and was told "oh, that's Officer Brown, our SRO." "Oh, then what's Mr. Henry?" "He's one of our SSOs."
This is a good example of why mainstream media (and liberal news outlets) should do reporting and digging on these stories if only to prevent the right from misinforming people because they seem very upset when the right misinforms people.
Agreed, this is an excellent point. I think they find it easier to label these publications entirely untrustworthy and leave the stories alone, but obviously with a lots of stuff (Wi-spa etc) that kind of falls apart and they just start to also look untrustworthy.
Thank you for following up on this, Jesse! It's good to have this clarifying information. I really love it when you guys do some independent digging and would love to see more of it for stories like this.
So, in response to the update info from the police logs I have to disagree with Jesse and side with the Daily Wire (ouch!). A rape cannot be properly investigated by one non-specialisy cop and more officers outght to have been called. Here's why: in any sexual assault there are at least 3 crime scenes (victim's body, suspect's body, location of incident) which need to be immediately secured and examined in order to prevent evidence being lost through destruction or contamination. No one should go from one scene to another because it risks contamination which can make it impossible to prosecute a case. In this instance at least 3 officers were needed to just secure the scene, plus a seperate forensic unit to examine the bathroom and two more to examine the suspect and victim. The victim was examined at the hospital, but where was the suspect while all this was going on?
So I agree with the daily wire that the school officer should have called for more backup. I wonder whether the father also thought so and whether the school preferred to keep it quiet by just having the school officer deal with it 'in house' and that may be what caused the disagreement?
I don't fault you for your original take. It's the risk of reporting on something "live". There's always a chance new facts will come to light later that could change everything or nothing. The most important thing is your follow-up and public acknowledgment about what changed. Instead of acting those idiots at The Daily Wire digging doubling down just to get outrage clicks...
+1, it feels like some news reporting body should have gotten this info well before it came to some podcasters saying "Hey! I could easily get that and verify!"
+2, it’s a prime example of the world of rolling news we live in which now has the extra layer of instant reportage by non-mainstream outlets not to mention the endless speculation and judgement of the public.
(sorry for typos!) *Instead of acting like those idiots at The Daily Wire doubling down just to get outrage clicks.
Also I agree with a lot of the other commenters regarding this bit of news not changing the overall impact of the story I think? A lot of well thought out responses here!
Also, I know it’s a very distant C-plot in this story, but no one at any point did any land acknowledgements. That should get somebody put on some kind of list, I think.
A couple of points: 1) it's shitty Rosiak didn't credit you. That sucks and I hope he makes it right. 2) regardless the official employer of the SRO, I find it entirely consistent to consider having the SRO handle it woefully inadequate and consistent with "handled in house".
Like other readers have stated, this doesn't change the substance of the story. That said, you did excellent work here and it advances the story. (But seriously, that sucks Rosiak did that.)
Agree on all points. The original DW story is still plenty appalling. But Rosiak should be a big boy and admit that this detail is surely wrong and he should credit Jesse with revealing what was surely either an exaggeration by the dad or an unfortunate miscommunication between the school and the dad in the heat of a very disturbing moment.
Should the dad be in a position to understand and articulate the subtle difference between a school resource officer who works at the school on behalf of the school but is employed by the police, versus a police officer whose primary responsibility is Loudoun County and not the school?
I think it's a little harsh to expect that from the parent, who has his own goals, priorities, and objectives.
This part of the story looks like a miscommunication or misunderstanding, and one that looks reasonable to me. If I'm that parent I want a true 3rd party, not someone with relationships inside the school.
It's all unfortunate and I'm reluctant to fault the father for much of anything.
Regarding the essence of a new development in a story, I personally think that your headline is backstepping almost too much. Reading only the headline, it sounds as if the rape allegations came under question, not some detail regarding basically the meaning of "in-house". I might have added "contradicts some procedural Details of police involvement" Just for the headline-only reader 😉
Please do send the emails. I'm not going to log in here on the off-chance there's a post (I almost never visited the Patreon site either.
Agreed. People get very weird about emails. Just delete them if you don’t want them; it takes 5 seconds.
Ditto on Katrina’s comment. I appreciated receiving the email. Otherwise I’d have missed it.
I find substack’s particularly way of managing user authentication surprisingly confusing. The emails prevent me from having to deal with that.
Me, too. If you hadn't sent the email, I wouldn't have learned of these details, and they're important. Also, Jesse, I appreciate your chastising yourself for your credulity on the initial podcast, and I'd like to underscore it. We're all too susceptible to outrage. I count on you (among others) as an antidote to that frailty. (Even as, of course, you're allowed to be human, too. I'm writing now of your professional obligation.)
Jesse, thanks for circling back to this issue on the recent pod and offering a mea culpa--even if Katie didn't seem to want to let you issue it! "You were angry," she said. Uh, yeah. That's the point.
Completely agree. These emails are extremely helpful and informative. I would have missed this had I not been notified by email.
Completely agree. These emails are extremely helpful and informative. I would have missed this had I not been notified by email.
It seems like you're missing the point to come down on this as "strongly disputing" the Daily Wire, although they certainly should have done this research themselves. The main and worst facts of the story still seem correct - the only change is a possible miscommunication, and at worst misrepresentation in the heat of the moment about how much was the police department involved. It seems pretty feasible that Smith didn't perceive a School Resource Officer as "the real police," or that it was explained to him incorrectly. I doubt a lot of people who didn't go to a 4 year college during/after the Title IX Dear Colleague era spend a lot of time thinking about what is a mandated reporter. The negative press around SROs in reporting about school gun violence probably doesn't help their reputation either, thinking of the infamous Broward County story. I can easily see Smith interpreting that the "mall cop" of the school was "handling it". The simplest story still seems to be that Smith shows up at school, perceives the case is being mishandled (which, how could you not if you're in this position), and loses his temper, at which point the school is not interested in a calm conversation about next steps.
This also doesn't explain the superintendent's comment about no assaults taking place in the school bathrooms, which seems like the highest level of either incompetence or cover-up. If anything, it makes it worse since these logs confirm the assault was documented and was going through the school's incident process. So how could the superintendent not know?
Agreed. I went to a school with SROs (a decade ago but still) and I would have considered them a glorified "mall cop" until reading your definition here. The bare minimum that people know about the rape investigation process is that you need a kit - if I was a parent and I had shown up and learned that only the SRO was investigating and that they weren't currently making plans to start the rape kit process I'd likely call that "in house" and be irrate too - rather than spending time googling what exactly an SRO is and who is paying them.
And if the assistant principle knows, and there is external law enforcement invovled, why isn't the superintendent also notified? Can you imagine having to have the police investigate something at your work and that not needing to run "up the chain" for notification?
I was just about to post a comment saying similar. This clarifies some details but doesn’t really change the substance of the story. At best, they did the bare minimum in reporting and then subsequent events suggest they did very little else.
I agree...obviously the school wasn't averse to calling HQ and having a non-house police officer come to the school. A rape on campus doesn't warrant that, but an upset parent does?
And why would they even want to handle it "in house?" Surely their in-house officer wasn't going to be able to perform a rape kit, which has shown to be pretty valuable in this entire story since the girl was accused of lying about being sexually assaulted. The School Resource Officer being a mandated reporter is really immaterial; days would have passed likely before any next steps were taken.
This feels more like the school wanted to cover up the sexual assault for some reason...wonder if we will find out that the perpetrator has some ties to the district.
Right, Chrissie. The SRO is a Real Police Officer (tm) when they want him to investigate a rape, but not enough of a cop to handle an irate parent?
Great point.
That’s incredibly Internet Over-Righteous ™️.
Where I live SROs are fully part of the local police force, and every school professional knows that if one has been notified of an issue then a full-fledged investigation is underway. However, our SROs would've immediately called in a sexual assault specialist, and there's no record of that in the log. It's no wonder Smith lost it given the SRO was probably bumbling the initial steps of the investigation--as a parent, I would've, too.
In every normal school, if there'd been an alleged sexual assault, the assistant principal would've been communicating with the principal immediately, and yes the superintendent would've been notified shortly thereafter. I just don't see a scenario where the Loudon County superintendent didn't know the facts of the case before that June school board meeting where he denied there was any record of bathroom assaults.
I think the issue here is that at no point does the school administration appear to have had the intention of not reporting the matter to the police. As evidenced by the fact that they did. The parent might not have realized the SRO was "real police" and their reaction is certainly understandable and can be excused. But the school administration did notify the SRO, and it's reasonable to assume they knew the SRO was real police. It is also reasonable to expect DW to have figured it out before publishing the article. The fact that they're refusing to admit that their initial reporting was misleading seems crazy to me.
They reported it to the SRO, which while IS real police, they also said they were handling this "in house" which means no no rape kit, no physician visit, and no sexual assault specialist (as Kelp noted above).
The concept that a school can handle an incident "in house" while also reporting it to the police is missing from the DW article. It's an important part of the story and it's omission creates a misleading impression that the school tried to keep the police out of it.
I get that DW should have dug deeper and included in their reporting that there is one SRO on campus who is an actual officer. To me? That doesn't make anything much better at all.
The fact that the school decided that they could handle it all "in house" with the one cop and the administration is ludicrous. That's not how our criminal justice system operates. By keeping it "in house" the school was, essentially, keeping the police out of it as far as most citizens would take that "the police" to mean.
The precinct HQ should have been notified, the accused should be questioned formally on camera (this isn't normally done by the arresting officer as far as I know), charges should have been filed if appropriate, the victim should have a rape kit performed and also questioned formally on the record, etc.
I guess. But the Daily Wire doesn't make that a central piece of the allegation. As Jesse mentions, it's just a single line that they quickly move on from. I actually thought Jesse was overly reading into it when the first episode aired and frankly still feel that the error was Jesse's and he has handled this petulantly. I still like him ofc and good on him for actually getting the logs.
This feels right to me. And I also can not blame the father for continued outrage. Because when your daughter is raped, cool and rational deliberation at all times is an unreasonable ask. The story feels like a story of a horrendous mileu of awful events and then mixed wires.
Jesse is absolutely not missing the point, which is that it looked as if the school was hoping to cover up an assault. Beware of doubling down. It rarely helps in sensemaking.
Many things are lost in bureaucracy, whether corporate or government. I wouldn’t be surprised if his answer was both honest and ignorant. The result, him not knowing, I wonder how awful that really is. Would him knowing have an impact on the case? I’m open to arguments on that question, but experience in both government and corporate bureaucracy tells me that often the answer is “no.”
Reply to this comment with feedback on the emailing issue.
Yes on the emails. I'm not likely to check the site, but always check my inbox.
I'd like an email for everything that gets posted on the page because I don't check substack independently for new posts.
Loved getting this email. And appreciated the prompt dissemination of new information. Thank you! If an email is about a topic I am not interested in, I just delete it, but will rarely log on (never did on Patreon) and would totally miss it until a year later when I am randomly trolling the site and can’t remember anything about the original story.
Email me as much as you want. I'm an adult and can handle it.
Please do send emails when following up on stories discussed in the podcast. I listen because of the interesting stories you discuss and prefer to have the full picture even if that requires reading words on a screen. Thanks!
Yes to emails. And, in addition, I don’t really understand people getting annoyed by an email from someone they subscribe to. Seems like a them problem not a you problem.
Yes to emails! This is an important update and I wouldn't have seen it had it been posted without an email.
Send the emails. I'm not lurking around in Substack. I have a job and a wife and we are looking for a cat loving F 25-35 with great tits for possible poly...sorry, wrong thread.
To be honest mate, I don’t have time or the inclination to check websites all day. As such, receiving an email is handy. Allows me to delete if I am time poor, not in the mood or not interested. If people are not keen on the inbox having items in it then a rule can easily be set up to direct these to a folder for later review. Keep up the great work both you and Katie.
+1 for emails. Especially follow ups to podcast stories.
I'm fine with the email - I'm not sure how I'd have known about the post otherwise.
I liked it. Thank you.
Sorry—I didn’t see this comment before so commented above. I strongly prefer to receive updates like this one by email because I never check the website. Thanks.
I'm fine with emails like this, that offer substantive follow up. If it was just a blurb with little useful info or a link and that's all, I might be annoyed, but this this a significant update.
I like em
Absolutely yes to emails. Useful AND methodone to my BAR addiction.
Thank you for the update! This part of the story did strike me as possibly the result of a miscommunication with the parent. FWIW, all school employees are mandated reporters, not just the SRO.
Yes good call -- "5. Any teacher or other person employed in a public or private school, kindergarten, or child day program, as that term is defined in § 22.1-289.02;"
Will add to piece.
Notifying a mandated reporter isn't the same as the child being seen by a physician, having a rape kit done, and having formal charges brought. The principal said they were keeping it "in house?!?" But they didn't keep "in house" the father of the rape victim being irate on campus. THAT is worthy of going "out of house"...
Leaving aside the Daily Wire's fishiness after you reached out, it seems to me that this could easily be a misunderstanding on Smith's part and an obfuscation (or laziness) by DW.
Saying that they were looking into it in-house may ignore the legal responsibilities of an SRO but may well align with a parent's understanding of school personnel. An SRO seems quite different than detectives from the county sheriff's office. Perhaps Smith made a mistake as to the significance of the SRO, which the media covering it (DW, given that legacy media is asleep at the wheel) should've picked up on. It seems reasonable to me for a parent to worry--particularly if the administration failed to express sufficient concern--that the school would sweep it under the rug to keep it from going public.
Moreover, the original entry in the log is ambiguous as to the timing of some key events--did the student tell the administration "a couple of hours ago" (before the 1:30 log entry) or did the alleged assault happen "a couple of hours ago" with the student reporting closer to 1:30? After that, a supervisor was requested at 2:21pm, and it looks like the student's family didn't leave until 3:45. The story says the student didn't go to the hospital until "that night." There are a lot of delays in there. Critically, we don't know what school administration said to Smith--perhaps they were apathetic or otherwise unbothered.
Ultimately, I don't see this document as a smoking-gun against Smith's account. The DW's coverage was perhaps a bit too credulous, but that seems par for the course these days.
I think you are overly self-conscious on corrections to the point of being detrimental. While, I appreciate a need to be precise and accurate, your corrections on the whole tend to be small but often, the latter of which lends to an impression that you are often wrong and thus shouldn't be trusted.
In this specific case, no one is going to blame you for recounting in a podcast what the Daily Wire reported if what the Daily Wire reported turned out to be wrong or not the whole story - especially when you said you were going to be doing your own reporting on it.
This would be different if it were a written article, but I believe you would have worded things differently in a written article anyway. "Live" spoken word gets a grain of salt that a published written work that has gone through drafts and edits doesn't. If you wanted to hold to the same standard of that kind of reporting, you'd have to put much more production into the podcast with pauses while you guys do research, re-recordings and edits, which would change the free-flowing nature of the podcast. But it's up to you.
Waiting 50 minutes to call an ambulance after a child was sexually assaulted is totally unacceptable. It’s absurd to suggest that time could have been used to sit them each down to find out what happened. If she said she was raped, that’s for a hospital to determine not a principal. Rape isn’t just sex you didn’t ask for, it’s violence. She almost certainly was injured and required immediate medical attention and they should have called an ambulance right away.
I worked in a Virginia high school for four years, and it took me a little while to realize SROs were "real" police, partly because there are also, under VA code, "school security officers." The SROs wear the local law enforcement agency's standard uniform. The SSOs wear a different uniform and are not armed, they receive training and certification, but are not sworn officers. They look like actual cops unless you look closely.
If someone mentioned an SRO to you, and if you'd never seen the actual SRO, you might think the unarmed SSO was the SRO. Contributing to my confusion was the fact that someone on staff pointed to one of the SSOs and said "he was a janitor here up until last year." I said, "then he became a cop?" and they said, "oh, he's not a cop."
*Then* I saw the actual SRO, asked "what are the cops doing here?" and was told "oh, that's Officer Brown, our SRO." "Oh, then what's Mr. Henry?" "He's one of our SSOs."
This is a good example of why mainstream media (and liberal news outlets) should do reporting and digging on these stories if only to prevent the right from misinforming people because they seem very upset when the right misinforms people.
Agreed, this is an excellent point. I think they find it easier to label these publications entirely untrustworthy and leave the stories alone, but obviously with a lots of stuff (Wi-spa etc) that kind of falls apart and they just start to also look untrustworthy.
Thank you for following up on this, Jesse! It's good to have this clarifying information. I really love it when you guys do some independent digging and would love to see more of it for stories like this.
So, in response to the update info from the police logs I have to disagree with Jesse and side with the Daily Wire (ouch!). A rape cannot be properly investigated by one non-specialisy cop and more officers outght to have been called. Here's why: in any sexual assault there are at least 3 crime scenes (victim's body, suspect's body, location of incident) which need to be immediately secured and examined in order to prevent evidence being lost through destruction or contamination. No one should go from one scene to another because it risks contamination which can make it impossible to prosecute a case. In this instance at least 3 officers were needed to just secure the scene, plus a seperate forensic unit to examine the bathroom and two more to examine the suspect and victim. The victim was examined at the hospital, but where was the suspect while all this was going on?
So I agree with the daily wire that the school officer should have called for more backup. I wonder whether the father also thought so and whether the school preferred to keep it quiet by just having the school officer deal with it 'in house' and that may be what caused the disagreement?
I don't fault you for your original take. It's the risk of reporting on something "live". There's always a chance new facts will come to light later that could change everything or nothing. The most important thing is your follow-up and public acknowledgment about what changed. Instead of acting those idiots at The Daily Wire digging doubling down just to get outrage clicks...
+1, it feels like some news reporting body should have gotten this info well before it came to some podcasters saying "Hey! I could easily get that and verify!"
+2, it’s a prime example of the world of rolling news we live in which now has the extra layer of instant reportage by non-mainstream outlets not to mention the endless speculation and judgement of the public.
(sorry for typos!) *Instead of acting like those idiots at The Daily Wire doubling down just to get outrage clicks.
Also I agree with a lot of the other commenters regarding this bit of news not changing the overall impact of the story I think? A lot of well thought out responses here!
"It's nuanced and complicated".
Also, I know it’s a very distant C-plot in this story, but no one at any point did any land acknowledgements. That should get somebody put on some kind of list, I think.
A couple of points: 1) it's shitty Rosiak didn't credit you. That sucks and I hope he makes it right. 2) regardless the official employer of the SRO, I find it entirely consistent to consider having the SRO handle it woefully inadequate and consistent with "handled in house".
Like other readers have stated, this doesn't change the substance of the story. That said, you did excellent work here and it advances the story. (But seriously, that sucks Rosiak did that.)
Agree on all points. The original DW story is still plenty appalling. But Rosiak should be a big boy and admit that this detail is surely wrong and he should credit Jesse with revealing what was surely either an exaggeration by the dad or an unfortunate miscommunication between the school and the dad in the heat of a very disturbing moment.
Should the dad be in a position to understand and articulate the subtle difference between a school resource officer who works at the school on behalf of the school but is employed by the police, versus a police officer whose primary responsibility is Loudoun County and not the school?
I think it's a little harsh to expect that from the parent, who has his own goals, priorities, and objectives.
This part of the story looks like a miscommunication or misunderstanding, and one that looks reasonable to me. If I'm that parent I want a true 3rd party, not someone with relationships inside the school.
It's all unfortunate and I'm reluctant to fault the father for much of anything.
Regarding the essence of a new development in a story, I personally think that your headline is backstepping almost too much. Reading only the headline, it sounds as if the rape allegations came under question, not some detail regarding basically the meaning of "in-house". I might have added "contradicts some procedural Details of police involvement" Just for the headline-only reader 😉
So glad that you followed up to check. The Daily Wire's reporting was (and is) slanted.