Glasgow counselor fired for sex offense
Fairfax County Public Schools has fired a counselor at Glasgow Middle School who had been previously convicted of soliciting a minor for prostitution.
According to news reports, the counselor, Darren Thornton, had already been arrested and convicted outside of Fairfax County before he started working at FCPS. He started working at Glasgow in 2020.
In an Aug. 18 letter to the Glasgow community, Superintendent Michelle Reid wrote: “I want to assure you that as soon as the school board and I knew of the situation, we took immediate steps to dismiss the employee. I can confirm that the employee has been terminated and FCPS is petitioning the state to revoke his license.”
“There is no higher priority than the safety of our students and, on behalf of the school board and myself, I want to make this very clear: this entire situation is unacceptable from any perspective,” Reid wrote. “We are deeply concerned about how this happened in one of our schools.”
In response to a directive from the school board, Reid initiated “a comprehensive, independent investigation by outside counsel into the circumstances surrounding this situation. This is being carried out by an independent third party who has complete visibility into all internal processes.”
According to Reid, FCPS doesn’t have any information indicating that any students were involved.
Anyone with concerns or information about this or related situations should contact the FCPS Office of Safety and Security’s safety tip line.
2 responses to “Glasgow counselor fired for sex offense”
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Not all teachers are child molesters. However I was exposed to 3 child molesting teachers in my school days. One was a headmaster of a private school. He was convicted and is a registered sex offender. 2 were teaching at the same public school at the same time they were molesting children. 1 committed suicide after he learned the police were after him. The other teacher was arrested in a sting 20 years after the fact, and now sits in prison.
I’m more interested in knowing what processes are in place to prevent this from happening. Was there a background check done on this employee, were his references checked, was he a registered offender? Will there be transparency for the internal investigation and will the report be made public?