A Fairfax County Public Schools teacher’s claims that a high school social worker pressured a student to obtain an abortion are likely “false,” according to an interim investigation report, which alleges that the teacher made the accusation after she was disciplined for buying pregnancy tests for a student.
Zenaida Perez, a teacher of English for students of other languages at Centreville High School, went public in August with her allegations against CHS social worker Carolina Diaz, prompting an investigation of the Virginia school district.
Perez claimed that Diaz facilitated and paid for student abortions without parental consent, with the approval of former CHS Principal Chad Lehman, who she accused of trying to “cover up” information related to the allegations.
Last week, the King & Spaulding law firm hired by FCPS asserted in a 61-page interim report that, based on current information, it seems that Diaz did not encourage or pay for a student’s abortion. The report also claimed that Lehman did not attempt to “cover up” the allegations but investigated them in 2022 and determined that they “lacked factual support.”
“Mrs. Perez’s allegations appear to be rooted in speculation. It also appears that in her zeal to prove her suspicions true, Mrs. Perez procured statements from students that were false,” the interim report stated. “In doing so, Mrs. Perez, among other things, violated policies and regulations that require teachers to maintain professional boundaries with students.”
Zenaida Perez did not immediately respond to The Christian Post’s request for comment.
Perez’s claims about school-funded abortions sparked outrage after the allegations first appeared in an August report by independent journalist Walter Curt, prompting Virginia’s Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin to call on state police to open an investigation.
The interim report alleged, however, that Youngkin’s office and Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares’s office may have known about the allegations for a year or more before the governor’s office referred them to the state police for investigation.
According to the report, Perez prepared a complaint in March 2023 to the Virginia Attorney General, accusing the CHS social worker of facilitating an abortion for a 17-year-old student and CHS administrators of coercing the student and her legal guardian to keep quiet and refrain from legal action.
In response to an inquiry from The Christian Post, a spokesperson for the state attorney general’s Office of Civil Rights said that it “has no record of a complaint filed by Ms. Perez.”
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s office did not immediately respond to The Christian Post’s request for comment.
FCPS was not contacted by the Virginia Attorney General’s Office regarding the March 2023 complaint, according to the interim report, which noted that FCPS senior administrators did not become aware of Perez’s allegations until they became public in August.
The report alleges that the ESOL teacher’s allegations regarding school-funded abortions originated in 2022, when CHS administrators were investigating a report that Perez had purchased pregnancy tests for a CHS student, which is when the teacher began accusing Diaz of arranging abortions for students.
Diaz was a witness against Perez in the pregnancy test investigation, according to the law firm’s interim report, which resulted in school leaders determining that the ESOL teacher had “acted unprofessionally in violation of FCPS policies and regulations.”
“In Mrs. Perez’s own words, her discovery that Mrs. Diaz even might have some involvement in facilitating student abortions was a ‘godsend’ because it was ‘evidence’ she could use ‘against the woman who set me up with a pregnancy test,’” the interim report explained, citing a rough, autogenerated transcript.
“By her own admission, from this point forward, Mrs. Perez actively conducted her own ‘investigation’ in an effort to compile ‘evidence’ against Mrs. Diaz (and later also Mr. Lehman), and her efforts in this regard included pursuing students, parents, and guardians outside of school to obtain information or statements supporting her suspicions,” the document continued.
The report further alleges that Perez’s conduct during her private investigation violated FCPS policies and may have “crossed ethical, and possibly also legal, lines.”
After Perez went to Lehman with her claims about Diaz in May 2022, the social worker provided Lehman with a note from the student Perez reportedly bought pregnancy tests for, known as Student A.
In a note to the principal included in the interim report, Diaz claimed that Student A told her that Perez had tried to pressure her into providing a false statement in the teacher’s defense.
“According to Mrs. Diaz’s written report, Student A told Diaz directly that she was pressured by Mrs. Perez ‘to say that she [Perez] did not buy her a pregnancy test,’ and further reported that Mrs. Perez ‘rais[ed] her voice,’ berated the student, and told the student ‘she [was] going to lose her job because of this,’ and that school staff were ‘out to get her,’” King & Spaulding’s report stated.
The law firm went on to argue that the incident with Student A shows that Perez “has a demonstrated tendency of failing to respect proper boundaries with students and their families,” alleging that the teacher also has a history of making complaints against “school staff and administrators whom she feels wronged by in some way.”
Perez allegedly pressured students into providing statements for these complaints, according to the firm, which concluded that the teacher engaged in the same behavior in her complaint about school-funded abortions, “although the implications here and harm caused to other people are far more serious.”
Samantha Kamman is a reporter for The Christian Post. She can be reached at: samantha.kamman@christianpost.com. Follow her on Twitter: @Samantha_Kamman
