Bolted Doors and Broken Laws

In Fairfax County, Clandestine School-Funded Abortions Bypassed Parents, Exposing A Hidden Pipeline Endangering Teenage Girls.

INVESTIGATIONS: By Walter Curt

Fairfax County’s Centreville High School is staring down a potential criminal firestorm. Two female students—both minors—say school officials arranged and bankrolled abortions at Fairfax Healthcare Center without so much as a phone call to their parents, a direct break with Virginia’s parental-notification law. One girl underwent the procedure at 17; the other, five months pregnant and pleading to keep her baby, bolted from the clinic after social worker Carolina Díaz allegedly told her she “had no choice.” Principal Chad Lehman, the girls insist, knew—and taxpayers footed the bill.

A handwritten statement from the first student, translated for clarity, lays out how Díaz scheduled the appointment, paid the clinic’s fees, and swore her to secrecy. The girl, an 11th-grade ESOL student, says the abortion took place in November 2021—while she was still seventeen—making the concealment a straight-line violation of state law.

That letter alone would be enough to raise the hair on the back of a patriotic taxpayer’s neck, but there is more. A second Centreville minor, five months pregnant and wavering, was allegedly told by the same social worker that she “had no other choice.” The girl, terrified, ultimately bolted from the clinic rather than go through with the procedure. She later confided in her teacher, Mrs. Zenaida Perz, 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. I have reviewed the audio in full and verified its content, it’s heartbreaking.

Both incidents, sources say, were green‑lighted by Principal Chad Lehman and financed—again, allegedly—through school funds, meaning taxpayer dollars may have underwritten clandestine abortions carried out on minors without parental knowledge. If even half of these claims prove accurate, someone at the county office is writing checks that violate both state law and every standard of parental authority we once took for granted. And if two girls can name the same counselor, the same clinic, and the same pattern of coercion, what are the odds they are the only ones? Fairfax County Public Schools serves more than 180,000 students; even a “one‑percent problem” would translate into dozens of frightened daughters being hustled through a bolted door in a nondescript office building that neighbors recall is “always locked.” 

Attempts to visit Fairfax Healthcare Center in broad daylight revealed a metal bolt across the entrance and no staff on site—odd behavior for any legitimate medical practice, let alone one handling surgical procedures on teenagers. In the same hallway sits a driver’s‑ed storefront, a juxtaposition grotesque enough for an Orwell novel: learn to merge onto I‑66, then pop next door for a procedure the Commonwealth insists still requires Mom or Dad’s sign‑off. 

Under Virginia Code § 16.1‑241 (V), a physician must certify, in writing, that at least one parent has been notified before performing an abortion on a minor unless a judicial bypass is obtained. No bypasses appear in either case file provided to this reporter. Legal analysts tell me that if school employees indeed arranged and paid for these procedures, criminal as well as civil liability is in play—everything from contributing to the delinquency of a minor to misuse of public funds. 

Mrs. Perz says the scandal did not end at the clinic door. 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. Those tactics only hardened her resolve: “The girl never wanted that abortion, and her family was never told,” she insists.

And if two frightened teenagers can describe the same counselor, the same locked-door clinic, and the same hush-money trail, common sense says Centreville is nursing a deeper wound. How many daughters have already been shuttled through that bolted entrance on the taxpayers’ dime, their parents left out of the conversation until it was too late? Parents across Virginia must now stare that question in the eye—and demand answers—because unless swift accountability follows, an unmarked door in Fairfax will stand as a grim reminder that parental rights, the backbone of any free republic, can be pushed to the curb with a sly smile and a deadbolt.