Youngkin Orders Criminal Investigation of Reports a Virginia High School Facilitated Abortions for Students

Virginia’s governor, Glenn Youngkin, is directing the state police to launch a “full criminal investigation” into allegations that Fairfax County Public Schools officials facilitated abortions for underage students without their parents’ consent or knowledge. Fairfax County Public Schools came under fire last week after a journalist, Walter Curt, published an article on his Substack alleging that school officials at Centreville High School — including a social worker, with administrators’ approval — facilitated abortions for students, who were minors at the time, without their parents’ consent. Mr. Youngkin said in a statement on Wednesday, “I’m deeply concerned with the allegations that Fairfax County Public Schools officials arranged for minors to get abortions without parental consent and may have misused public funds to pay for them.”He said he directed the Virginia State Police to open a “full criminal investigation into the matter immediately.”After Mr. Curt’s report was published, the school district said that it was investigating the charges and that it only “learned [last week] of these concerning allegations.” However, the teacher who came forward with the allegations, Zenaida Perez, says she told school officials about the allegations seven times since 2022. Ms. Perez told Fox News she first informed school officials that a social worker facilitated an abortion for a 17-year-old in 2021, without her guardian’s consent. She said she told the then-principal, Chad Lehman, about the allegation during a meeting on May 5, 2022.Ms. Perez said that during that meeting, she was asked by Mr. Lehman if she had given a pregnancy test to a student. She denied that she had given the student a pregnancy test, but reportedly told the principal that a student from Guatemala had told her that a social worker had made an appointment and paid for her to get an abortion in 2021. A letter allegedly from the student, which was originally written in Spanish, says that the social worker “helped me with a pregnancy termination, or abortion.”The social worker “made the appointment for me at the abortion clinic in Fairfax. She paid for the procedure and kept quiet about it, not letting my family know. I was worried that my family would react very badly if they knew about my pregnancy and the abortion,” the letter states. “When the abortion was performed, I was only 17 years old.”Ms. Perez told Fox News that a week after her May 5 meeting — on May 13, 2022 — she sent an email to Mr. Lehman to emphasize her concerns about the allegations. Ms. Perez gave Fox News what she says is a copy of the letter. She said she had the “evidence of another student who was helped by the social worker to solve the pregnancy issue.”Months later, in November 2022, she said she brought up the issue again with Mr. Lehman, who told her that he did not “remember there being a conversation about that specifically,” but that he did not believe the social worker would have facilitated an abortion. She said she re-sent her email to Mr. Lehman after the November conversation.Ms. Perez addressed the allegations again with a new principal, Erik Healy, on January 16 of this year, which once again appears to have failed to prompt an investigation. On March 7, she told an attorney who was investigating a workplace harassment allegation at the school about the abortion allegation. The attorney, Heidi Siegmund, said in an email that her team would “make sure the division counsel’s office is aware of your concerns.”After repeatedly raising concerns about the abortion allegation, with seemingly no action from the district, Ms. Perez says she reported the allegations to the school district investigator, James Mackie, on May 2, 2025. In an audio recording of the meeting, published by Mr. Curt, Ms. Perez says that school officials “pretended” that they were working to investigate the allegations. The school district says it is investigating the matter. When a reporter from a local TV station, WJLA, asked if any staff members arranged for abortions for students, a spokesman for the district said, “Not to [our] knowledge.” The spokesman said the district “launched an immediate investigation into these concerns as soon as we were made aware.”Whether anyone from Centreville High School notified school district officials about the allegations before May is unclear. It is not clear why the school district stated it only learned about the allegations last week, despite Ms. Perez reportedly meeting with an investigator from the district in May. Fairfax County Public Schools did not respond to the Sun’s request for comment about Ms. Perez’s claims.

Youngkin Orders Criminal Investigation of Reports a Virginia High School Facilitated Abortions for Students

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