Sex offender used his transgender identity to gain access to Arlington school swimming pools

Northern Virginia’s transgender bathroom saga stirred up further controversy Friday with the release of emails from Arlington County, Va., schools regarding board of correspondence members received from serial sex offender Richard Kenneth Cox.

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

Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, the Republican gubernatorial candidate, blasted news that Cox — who identified himself as a transgender woman named “Riki” in emails sent to Arlington, Virginia, schools over concerns about the use of facilities at his semi-public aquatic center — was allegedly capable of preying on young people girls in the suburbs of Washington.

“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 released Friday. “Abigail Spanberger thinks he has a right to be there.”

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Photo of sex offender Richard Kenneth Cox. (Arlington County Sheriff’s Office)

Fox News Digital contacted Democratic gubernatorial candidate Spanberger to confirm whether she opposes or supports Virginia policies that allow transgender women born male to use women’s facilities and did not receive a response.

Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests filed by the ABC News Washington affiliate returned emails between school officials after Cox sent a lengthy message to a member. Arlington Schools (APS) allows people to use facilities that match their desired gender identity.

“I realize it’s very short notice, but the issue just happened 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 indicated that Clark may not have known that the sender – “Riki Cox” – was a registered sex offender, Richard K. Cox. A school board official told the ABC affiliate that Clark was also responding in a private capacity and that as soon as Duran recognized a sex offender was present on school property, he took corrective action.

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

Cox, who previously lived in her 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, DC, is seen on a foggy afternoon. (iStock via Getty Images)

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

Cox said he had previously considered voluntarily using the unisex room, but “wanted to feel like part of the community” and that the complainants should be the ones apparently ostracized in the single-sex shower.

Cox said several people running for school board positions claimed to be pro-LGBT, but Cox wanted to see who could reverse the school district’s locker room decision to apparently keep its 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 the apparent pressure for Cox to finish showering in the main locker room again sent “the message that a transgender person is a monster and I guess not normal and beautiful like everyone else.”

Clark then responded, according to the affiliate, by telling Cox that she hoped he would not receive “transphobic statements” from staff during the incident and that he should be able to use the showers and locker rooms that Cox is most comfortable with.

Cox, who has a sex offender record dating back to the George HW Bush era in northern Virginia, faces at least 21 charges, according to public court records viewed by Fox News Digital earlier in October.

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

Since January, the Arlington County, Va., government council had been working with the county school board to formulate 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, said Superintendent Francisco Duran a journalist from the Washington Post that the District follows state law and federal legal precedent from the Fourth Circuit requiring anti-discrimination protections based on gender identity and sex in places of “public accommodation.”

Vice President for Education Sarah Parshall-Perry said in a statement that as a resident and attorney of Arlington, Virginia, she was “aggravated and angered” by the incident.