An adult student at a Wisconsin high school was arrested after exposing his genitals to a child inside the school’s gender neutral bathroom, according to a Saturday report from local station WSAW-TV..
Austin Sauer, an 18-year-old student at Rhinelander High School in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, was arrested Thursday for fourth degree sexual assault, child enticement and exposing his genitals to a child inside the school, according to the Oneida County Sheriff’s Office.
The child’s gender has not been identified, but the child is believed to be a girl, the Christian Post reported.
The gender neutral bathroom has now been closed, an official from the Sheriff’s office said, according to the Christian Post, and the school didn’t send a message to parents because it was an isolated incident and Sauer had been removed from the school. (RELATED: School Board To Fight After Judge Imposes Pro-Trans Bathroom Policy)
“The arrest in question is still under investigation with the Oneida County Sheriff’s Department so I am limited in what I can say,” a Rhinelander High School representative told the Daily Caller.
“This was not a random incident. Both students went into the bathroom voluntarily. That bathroom is no longer available to students. The male student will no longer be able to be on the school grounds,” the representative said, referencing the school’s statement.
Sauer has not yet been charged and an investigation is allegedly ongoing.
The Daily Caller reached out to the school and the police department. The story will be updated if comment is provided.
Unisex bathrooms and other policies allowing transgender people to choose the bathroom that matches their gender identity have been a contentious subject, most notably in 2018 when a man exposed himself to a young girl in a Target women’s bathroom. Target changed its bathroom policy two years prior to the incident to allow transgender customers to choose which bathroom they would like to use, Business Insider reported. Evangelist Franklin Graham blamed the store’s policy of allowing people born as men to use women’s restrooms for essentially permitting the circumstances for the incident.
In an effort to accommodate to transgender students, school districts across the country have sought to implement unisex bathroom policies, or policies that allow non-binary students to choose which bathroom to use. Maryland is among the states that have pursued such policies, allowing transgendered students beginning in 2017 to use whichever locker rooms or bathrooms they prefer after students initiated the push.