Sex offender used transgender identity to access Arlington school pools
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The transgender bathroom saga in Northern Virginia sparked another controversy Friday with the release of emails from Arlington County, Virginia, schools regarding correspondence board members received from serial sex offender Richard Kenneth Cox.
Cox, 58, came into the national spotlight after Virginia’s Fairfax County Democratic prosecutor Steve Descano declined to prosecute Cox on charges of perversion in women’s locker rooms and neighboring Arlington County, Virginia, arrested him in 2024 on similar charges he faced in court in October.
Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, a Republican gubernatorial candidate, in emails to Arlington, Virginia, schools over concerns about the use of facilities at the semi-public aquatic center, harshly criticized reports that Cox, who identified herself as a transgender woman named “Riki,” was allegedly able to prey on teenage girls in the Washington suburb.
“This ‘woman’ – child predator Richard ‘Riki’ Cox – repeatedly used the girls’ locker room and exposed himself to young girls,” Earle-Sears said in a statement Friday. he said. “Abigail Spanberger feels she has a right to be there.”
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Mugshot of sex offender Richard Kenneth Cox. (Arlington County Sheriff’s Office)
Fox News Digital reached out to Democratic gubernatorial candidate Spanberger to confirm whether he opposes or supports Virginia policies that allow transgender women born male to use women’s facilities, but did not receive a response.
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests filed by ABC News’ Washington affiliate returned emails between school officials after Cox sent a lengthy message to a member. Arlington schools (APS) allow people to use facilities that match their gender identity of choice.
“I realize this is a very short notice, but the issue occurred on Friday, October 25, 2024, and I need your help before I know who to vote for. I am a member of the LGBT and specifically transgender community,” Cox wrote to board member Kathleen Clark.
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Clark may not have known that the sender — “Riki Cox” — was a registered sex offender, Richard K. Cox, the report said. A school board official told ABC Member Clark also intervened in his private capacity and took corrective action as soon as Duran realized a sex offender was on school property.
“We have never knowingly admitted a sex offender to our aquatics facilities,” the official said.
Cox, who was previously reported to have been living out of her van at one point, said transgender people are “disproportionately homeless” and have to rely on county facilities like pool locker rooms to shower.
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Arlington, Virginia, an immediate suburb of Washington, D.C., is seen on a hazy afternoon. (iTunes via Getty Images)
“But I should also make it clear that this is an opportunity not just to get clean, but to be and feel part of the community. However, Washington-Liberty Swimming Pool, solely due to complaints from a transgender person in the locker room, made a rule that people using the shower, not the pool, had to use the single, isolated locker room away from everyone else, as if they were some kind of freak or something,” Cox said. he wrote.
Cox said he once considered using the unisex room voluntarily, but “wanted to feel like part of the community” and apparently those forced to be excluded from the single-occupancy shower should be the ones complaining.
Cox said several people running for school board positions claim to be pro-LGBT, but Cox wants to see who can overturn the school district’s locker room decision and seemingly keep their word.
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“Respond please and thank you,” Cox said.
A second email from Cox to the board, obtained by an ABC News affiliate, confirmed that Cox felt the apparent pressure for Cox to finish showering in the main locker room again sent “the message that a transgender person is a freak and not normal and beautiful like everyone else, I guess.”
According to the affiliate, Clark later responded and told Cox that she had not received “transphobic remarks” from staff during the incident and that she hoped Cox could use the showers and locker rooms she was most comfortable using.
Cox, who has a sex offender criminal record dating back to the George H.W. Bush era in northern Virginia, faces at least 21 charges, according to public court information viewed by Fox News Digital in early October.
Expenses are related to visits to school facilities in Barcroft, Virginia, as well as a private gym.
The activist group Defending Education told Fox News Digital that as of January, the Arlington County, Virginia, government board was working with the county school board to craft responses to Cox’s incidents at the pool.
However, according to reports, Cox was individually banned from entering the building following his arrest.
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Arlington, Virginia, Superintendent Francisco Duran said: a Washington Post reporter The district follows state laws and federal Fourth Circuit legal precedents that require anti-discrimination protections based on gender identity and sex in places of “public accommodation.”
Sarah Parshall-Perry, vice president of Defense Training, said in a statement that as an Arlington resident and attorney, she was “aggrieved and outraged” by the incident.
