When Zenaida Perez was attending university in Havana, Cuba, one of her peers nominated her for a “Young Communist League” award. Perez told IW Features the award was meant for students who had good grades and were thought to be “team players.”
But a fellow student publicly objected to the nomination because Perez’s father lived in the United States and Perez kept in touch with him. The dissenting student argued Perez’s continued relationship with her father indicated that she was “not one of us”—that she was not a true communist because she maintained relations with a parent who lives in an enemy country.
Perez told IW Features that she didn’t particularly want the award, but objected to the student’s complaint. She explained publicly at the time that Fidel Castro’s ex-wife lived abroad after their divorce, but their son, Fidel Ángel “Fidelito” Castro Díaz-Balart, had a relationship with his mother. The student then allegedly slapped Perez across the face for “disrespecting” Fidel Castro Jr., and the university suspended Perez for the same reason.
At that point, Perez contacted her father to make plans to immigrate to the United States, and then moved to Florida in 1990.
Perez claims that three decades later, she now faces a similar situation in Fairfax County, Virginia, for telling the truth about secretive collusion between a minor and school staffers to facilitate an abortion.
“The lack of freedom in Cuba suppresses free speech,” she told IW Features. “I never thought I would face anything similar until recently because of the retaliatory actions taken against me.”
The inciting incident, initially reported in August, involved two pregnant students at Centreville High School. In both cases, the school’s social worker, Carolina Diaz, reportedly offered abortion assistance for the minor students without their guardians’ knowledge. One of them, a then-15 year old who was five months pregnant, refused the procedure and carried her pregnancy to term. The other girl, a 17 year old, went through with the abortion in November 2021.
A signed statement (translated from Spanish) from the student who had the abortion says, “Mrs. Carolina Diaz scheduled the appointment for me at the abortion clinic in Fairfax, paid the costs of that medical procedure, and kept everything quiet without informing my family.”
According to court filings, the girl who did not go through with the abortion issued the following statement: “It is really wrong to offer young, pregnant girls, as a first option, the abortion. Even when these girls are minors. That was the option that the school nurse and the social worker gave me when I was already five months pregnant.”
On Aug. 7, following the initial media report about the incident, the district’s superintendent, Michelle Reid, sent an email to Centreville High School staff “to address the concerning allegations.” She wrote, “I want to stress that at no time would the situation as described in these allegations be acceptable in Fairfax County Public Schools.” She continued, “[T]he division has taken immediate action to engage an external independent investigator to get all the facts.”
FCPS paid King & Spalding $980,515.14 to investigate the matter in August and September this year. Many Fairfax County taxpayers question the decision to hire such an expensive law firm to conduct an external investigation during a time of local economic uncertainty. In May, for example, district leaders eliminated 275 teacher positions to address the district’s $121 million fiscal 2026 budget shortfall.
IW Features requested comment from FCPS regarding its costly independent investigation. As of publication, they have not responded.
On Aug. 13, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin further directed state police to open a criminal investigation into the matter. That investigation is ongoing. IW Features requested comment from the Virginia State Police regarding the status of the investigation. They did not respond before publication.
At the end of October, just a couple of weeks before the state’s gubernatorial election, King & Spalding announced its findings, which were inconclusive. The law firm’s report states that Perez’s allegations are “likely untrue.”
In response, Perez told IW Features, “We’ll just wait and see who is lying here. I have the truth and very strong evidence to prove it. They know they are lying. If they had nothing to hide, they wouldn’t have hired that expensive law firm to conceal what they did.”
Perez continued, “It’s very profitable for King & Spalding to cover up all their wrongdoings.”
Following King & Spalding’s Oct. 16 report, the district placed Perez on administrative leave. Perez told IW Features that she thinks the decision is permanent because the leadership revoked access to her professional email account and the student information system log-in. They also told her to return her laptop, keys, and all district property.
On Oct. 29, Perez filed a lawsuit alleging that school and district officials defamed her character and retaliated against her for being a whistleblower. A mother herself, Perez told IW Features that she stands for the truth and for parental rights.
Immediately after she filed her lawsuit, she said, “I must stand here before the Fairfax County Circuit Court to see justice, not only for myself, but also for those that are raising their voices now…to stand to protect minor girls and the rights of parents from school bureaucrats seeking to harm them.”
Meanwhile, Carolina Diaz, the social worker who allegedly facilitated the student’s abortion, continues to work at Centreville High School as of the publication of this article.
In addition, Chad Lehman, the principal of Centreville High School, who, according to Perez’s lawsuit, failed to act on the abortion information when Perez initially reported it to him in May 2022, was promoted to executive principal of Region 5 in the fall of 2024.
In fact, many parents are wondering why Lehman and district leaders did not act on the allegations when Perez initially brought them to light in 2022. It was not until the media reported on the alleged abortions that district leadership initiated an independent investigation.
Perez told IW Features, “The corruption level has increased terribly since I came here. I’m not the only teacher harassed and retaliated against. There are many.”
She continued, “There are two sets of rules – one set for them [the leadership] and one for us.”
IW Features requested comment from FCPS regarding its decision to place Perez on administrative leave. They did not respond.
Another teacher at Centreville High School, Julie Perry, believes that school and district leadership are retaliating against Perez. She told IW Features, “It makes me very sad to see my colleague, Zenaida, being heavily retaliated against because she was only doing the right thing by reporting illegal activity. She has a heart of gold and is a fantastic teacher that does not deserve this retaliatory treatment.”
Perez’s lawsuit alleges that her standing with school administration began to deteriorate in May 2022, after she reported the student’s abortion without parental consent to then-principal Chad Lehman.
Aside from placing her on administrative leave, Perez claims that school officials attempted to entrap her in unprofessional situations so that they could write her up. For example, her lawsuit states, “On April 8, 2025, an 18-year-old male student…confided to Perez that [Assistant Principal Montell] Brown instructed him to ask Perez for a ride in her personal vehicle to Costco, and that once Perez gave him the ride, he was to report the incident to Brown, so that he could write Perez up.”
Perez believes that district administration officials—specifically, John Foster, division counsel—was conspiring with school administration to find ways to unjustly terminate her employment. She told IW Features, “I think he [Montell Brown] is under manipulation from John Foster.”
Many people believe this wouldn’t be the first time district leaders retaliated against community members who were inconvenient to their agenda or reputation. For example, a former FCPS student, known in the courtroom under the alias “Kate,” alleges that school and district leadership are to blame for her peers sexually assaulting her when she was a seventh grader at Rachel Carson Middle School in 2011. During her court case, the district’s lawyers reportedly demanded invasive vaginal and anal exams of the alleged sexual assault victim for injuries she says occurred more than a decade prior, tried to smear her reputation in court, and then insisted that she reimburse the district for about $250,000 in legal fees.
In an email, Kate told IW Features, “The school district’s traditional defense whenever anyone speaks up is to scream that they’re lying or fraudulent. Then, they hire big law defense firms billing millions in taxpayer dollars to crush the everyday person and polish their own image through public relations.”
On Perez’s case, Kate added that it “appears to be another example of this same playbook—retaliation, legal bullying, and the weaponization of power against whistleblowers and survivors.”
As Kate suggests, the fight for parental rights and truth is costly when one is up against a Goliath public school district with a $4 billion budget. Such funds can secure legal representation or “investigations” far beyond that of the David who challenges them.
And yet people such as Perez bravely engage because they immigrated to America in pursuit of its ideals and freedoms. And they are willing to stand for the truth even when they are literally or metaphorically slapped in the face.
