Sex offender used transgender identity to access Arlington school pools

The northern Virginia transgender bathroom saga notched 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, was thrust into the national spotlight after Virginia’s Fairfax County Democratic prosecutor Steve Descano declined to prosecute Cox for charges of perversion in women’s locker rooms while neighboring Arlington County, Virginia, arrested him in 2024 on similar offenses which he has faced in court in October. 

Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, the Republican gubernatorial nominee, lambasted news that Cox — who identified himself as a transgender woman named “Riki” in emails to Arlington, Virginia, schools regarding concerns about using facilities at its semi-public aquatic center — was allegedly able to prey on young girls in the Washington suburb.

“This ‘woman’ — child predator Richard ‘Riki’ Cox — repeatedly used a girls’ locker room and exposed himself to young girls,” Earle-Sears said in a Friday statement. “Abigail Spanberger thinks he has the 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 that allow transgender females born as males to use women’s facilities and did not receive a reply. 

Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests filed by ABC News’ Washington affiliate returned emails between school officials after Cox sent a lengthy message to one member. Arlington schools (APS) allow people to use the facilities matching 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 and specifically transgender community,” Cox wrote to board member Kathleen Clark.

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The report noted that Clark may not have known the sender — “Riki Cox” — was a registered sex offender, Richard K. Cox. A school board official told the ABC affiliate Clark also was responding in her private capacity and that as soon as Duran recognized a sex offender had been present on school property he took corrective action.

“At no time did we knowingly admit a sex offender into our aquatics facilities,” the official said.

Cox, who previously was reported to be 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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“But let me be clear that this is not only an opportunity to be clean but to be and feel part of the community. However, solely because of complaints of a transgender person in the locker room, Washington-Liberty Swimming Pool made a rule that people using the shower but not the pool must use the single, isolated locker room away from everyone else, like they are some kind of freak or something,” Cox wrote.

Cox said he once considered voluntarily using the unisex room but that he “wanted to feel like part of the community” and that complainants should be the ones forced to be apparently ostracized to the one-person shower.

Cox said multiple people running for school board positions claimed to be pro-LGBT but that Cox wanted to see who may reverse the school district’s locker room decision to apparently keep their promises.

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“RSVP please and thank you,” Cox said.

A second email reported by the ABC News affiliate from Cox to the board attested that Cox felt that apparent pressure for Cox to finish showering in the main locker room again sent “the message that a transgender person is a freak and I guess not normal and beautiful like everyone else.”

Clark later responded, according to the affiliate, telling Cox she hoped he didn’t receive “transphobic statements” from staff during the incident and should be able to use the showers and changing rooms Cox is most comfortable using.

Cox, who has a sex-offender rap sheet going 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 earlier in October. 

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

As of January, the Arlington County, Virginia, government board was working with the county school board on formulating responses to Cox’s incidents at the pool, the activist group Defending Education told Fox News Digital.

Cox, however, was individually banned from the premises following his arrest, according to reports.

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Arlington, Virginia, Superintendent Francisco Duran told a Washington Post reporter that the district follows state law and federal Fourth Circuit legal precedent requiring anti-discrimination protections based on gender identity and sex in places of “public accommodation.”

Defending Education Vice President Sarah Parshall-Perry said in a statement that as an Arlington, Virginia, resident and attorney, she was “aggrieved and incensed” by the incident.