FAIRFAX COUNTY, Virginia (LifeSiteNews) — The teacher who accused Fairfax County Public Schools employees of arranging secret abortions for students behind their parents’ backs is standing by her story and vowing to help expose the truth no matter the cost.
As covered by LifeSiteNews on August 6, a then-17-year-old girl at Centreville High School had an abortion in 2021 after social worker Carolina Diaz swore her to silence. A second teen, five months’ pregnant at the time, pleaded to keep her baby and then fled the abortion facility after Diaz told her abortion was her “only choice.” According to independent journalist Walter Curt, who broke the story, Centreville Principal Chad Lehman “greenlit the whole operation” and even used “tax dollars to finance this pipeline.”
Shortly after the story broke, Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin said he was “deeply concerned with the allegations” and directed the Virginia State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation to “open a full criminal investigation into the matter immediately.” Virginia law requires parental consent for anyone younger than 18 to get an abortion.
Per Curt’s original story, the second girl “later confided in her teacher, Mrs. Zenaida Perez, who allowed her name to be used on the record and provided The W.C. Dispatch a recording of the family confirming that no one at the school had ever informed them of the intent to terminate their daughter’s pregnancy.” (Curt reviewed the audio but did not include it in his story.)
“Mrs. Perez says the scandal did not end at the clinic door,” he continued. “According to written statements by multiple students that The Dispatch has reviewed, school administrators tried to muzzle her once she learned the truth—pressuring classmates to bait her into minor policy violations that could justify firing or force a quiet resignation.”
On September 5, Fox 5 DC published excerpts of an exclusive interview with Perez. “There is no doubt in my mind that this happened,” she said. “When she told me, I was like, I couldn’t believe it.”
As for where the abortion money came from, Perez said she had theories but not the proof to share them.
Perez says she is cooperating with the investigation as much as she can: “I gave them everything I have, and I will continue to find more evidence to help them.” She also emphasized that intimidation from the district won’t work on her: “I’m not going to stop until the truth comes out, no matter what. They are not going to stop me. I’m not afraid of them anymore.”
State investigators declined to give an update on the status of the investigation. FCPS gave Fox 5 DC a statement claiming it is “fully cooperating with the Virginia State Police investigation, and it would not be appropriate to comment further on these 2021 allegations. At no time would this alleged situation, as described, be acceptable in Fairfax County Public Schools.”
Though commonly opposed by the abortion industry and its activist allies, parental involvement rules for underage abortions stop the practice from being used by sexual abusers to cover up and continue their crimes, as is often the case — sometimes with the knowledge and cooperation of Planned Parenthood staffers, as established by undercover investigations by the pro-life group Live Action.
Twelve states have banned all or most abortions. But the abortion lobby continues to work feverishly to cancel out those deterrents via deregulated interstate distribution of abortion pills, legal protection and financial support of interstate abortion travel, constructing new abortion facilities near borders shared by pro-life and pro-abortion states, making liberal states sanctuaries for those who want to evade or violate the laws of more pro-life neighbors, and embedding abortion “rights” in state constitutions.
Meanwhile, disregard for parental rights and student welfare when they intersect with left-wing values is a recurring problem in the Virginia education system. Two boys at Loudoun County’s Stonebridge High School were recently suspended not for harming or threatening other students but for objecting to the placement of a gender-dysphoric female in the boys’ lockers.
Loudoun highlighted the dangers of such situations years ago when superintendent Scott Ziegler allegedly covered up the rape of a female student by a “transgender” classmate in a girls bathroom due to its damaging implications for the LGBT movement. He was later convicted in 2023 of “using his official position to retaliate against someone for exercising their rights” by firing a teacher who testified about the situation before a grand jury.
