Sex offender used transgender identity to access Arlington school pools

The Northern Virginia transgender bathroom saga sparked another controversy Friday with the release of emails from Virginia’s Arlington County Schools regarding correspondence board members received from serial sex offender Richard Kenneth Cox.

Cox, 58, was thrust into the national spotlight after Fairfax County, Virginia’s Democratic District Attorney Steve Descano declined to prosecute Cox on charges of deviance in women’s locker rooms while neighboring Arlington County, Virginia, arrested him in 2024 on similar charges he faced in court in October.

Gov. Winsome Earl Sears, the Republican gubernatorial candidate, criticized news that Cox — who identified herself as a transgender woman named “Ricki” in emails to Arlington, Va., schools regarding concerns about use of facilities at her semi-public aquatic center — was allegedly able to prey on young girls in the Washington suburb.

“This ‘woman’ — child predator Richard “Ricky” Cox — repeatedly used the girls’ locker room and exposed herself to young girls,” Earl Sears said in a statement Friday. “Abigail Spanberger believes he has a right to be there.”

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Fox News Digital reached out to Democratic gubernatorial candidate Spanberger to confirm whether she opposes or supports Virginia policies allowing transgender females born male to use female facilities and 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 letter to a member. Arlington Schools (APS) allows people to use facilities that match their desired gender identity.

“I realize this is very short notice but the issue just 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 community and especially the trans community,” Cox wrote to board member Kathleen Clark.

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The report indicated that Clark may not have known the sender – Ricky Cox – a registered sex offender, Richard K. A school board official told ABC affiliate Clark was also responding in a personal capacity, and that once Duran became aware of the presence of a sex offender on school property, he took corrective action.

“At no time have we allowed a sex offender into our aquatic facilities,” the official said.

Cox, who was previously reported to have been living out of his van at one point, said transgender people are “disproportionately homeless” and must rely on county facilities like pool locker rooms to shower.

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Arlington, Virginia, an immediate suburb of Washington, D.C., seen on a foggy afternoon. (iStock via Getty Images)

“But let me be clear that this is not just an opportunity to be clean, but to be part of the community and feel it,” Cox wrote. “However, just because of complaints from a trans person in the locker room, Washington-Liberty Pool made a rule that people who use the bathroom but not the pool must use a separate locker room isolated away from everyone else, as if they were some kind of weirdo or something “The kind.”

Cox said he once considered voluntarily using the all-gender room but “wanted to feel like part of the community” and that the complainers should be the people who were apparently forced to be shunned in the single-sex bathroom.

Many people running for school board positions have claimed to be supportive of the LGBT community, Cox said, but Cox wanted to know who could overturn the school district’s locker room decision to apparently make good on their promises.

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“Please RSVP and thank you,” Cox said.

A second email reported by the ABC News affiliate from Cox to the board attests that Cox felt the apparent pressure on Cox to end showering in the main locker room once again sent “the message that a trans person is weird and I think they’re not as normal and beautiful as everyone else.”

Clark later responded, according to the affiliate, telling Cox she hoped he would not receive “transphobic statements” from employees during the incident, and should be able to use bathrooms and locker rooms that Cox felt more comfortable using.

Cox, who has a record of sex crimes dating back to the George H.W. Bush era in Northern Virginia, faces at least 21 charges, according to public court information seen by Fox News Digital earlier in October.

The charges relate to visits to school facilities as well as a private gym in Barcroft, Virginia.

As of January, Virginia’s Arlington County School Board was working with the county school board to formulate responses to Cox’s incidents at the pool, the education activist group told Fox News Digital.

However, Cox was individually banned from the building after his arrest, according to reports.

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ARLINGTON, Va., Superintendent Francisco Duran told a Washington Post reporter that the district follows state law and Fourth Circuit federal case law requiring protections against discrimination based on gender identity and sex in “public accommodation” settings.

Vice president of Education Advocacy Sarah Parshall Perry said in a statement that as an attorney and Arlington resident, she was “saddened and angry” by the incident.