June 1, 2022
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Our 205th year | Vol. 205, No. 22 | www.Fauquier.com | $1.50
Former youth soccer player sues travel coach and soccer club, claiming sexual abuse Trial scheduled to begin Aug. 15; plaintiff asking for $10 million in damages
“My parents trusted him, after all, he was my soccer coach and a secret service agent.”
By Liam Bowman
Piedmont Journalism Foundation
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5. Owned by Energix Nokesville, LLC
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Proposed “conservation residential” areas
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Nokesville area map with potential data center sites
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MAP CREATED BY COY FERRELL/FAUQUIER TIMES
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See NOKESVILLE, page 4
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As debate swirls around whether to turn northern rural Prince William County into a massive data farm enclave, residents of Nokesville are also worried. Between recent land use change applications, an ongoing update of the county’s long-range land-use map and an existing digital district west of town – all of which could permit construction of data center complexes -- locals see signs that their tiny town and its rural surroundings could become another digital corridor. “There’s tremendous concern by the people of Nokesville related to expansion of data centers into the rural area,” said Prince William County Planning Commissioner Tom Gordy, who lives in Nokesville and represents the Brentsville District, in an interview last week. Gordy ticked off a list of citizen concerns: diminished water quality and
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availability, more transmission lines, increased traffic, stormwater runoff and noise. He also argued that data center developers’ willingness to pay up to $1 million an acre makes land unaffordable for other commercial and residential uses. “This isn’t just about a building going up. There are second- and third-order effects of data centers that many communities around the country are learning about as they have allowed them to be built in their areas,” he said. Some community activists think that if data centers take hold in Nokesville, they could spill over into neighboring Fauquier County, where land is cheaper, but which has yet to see its first commercial data center operation. Amazon Web Services has purchased land behind Country Chevrolet in Warrenton, with the intention of building a data center there, but no application has been submitted yet.
Parcel key Prince William County
Rural area residents wary about proposed industrial zone on Fauquier’s border
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Data center dread spreads to Nokesville
See ABUSE, page 8
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Fauquier County honored its veterans during a Memorial Day parade on Monday, May 30. After the Main Street parade, a ceremony was held in the Warrenton Cemetery to honor local veterans who have died. See pages 12 and 13
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Honoring the fallen
old William “Jake” Fisher in 2013, contends that former coach Mark Gallick drugged and raped him repeatedly between 2005 and 2009, when Fisher was a promising young player on Gallick’s travel team, the
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PHOTO BY CARSON MCRAE/MCRAE VISUAL MEDIA
—JAKE FISHER, IN A COURT FILING
A man who says he was sexually abused as a juvenile by the coach of his Fauquier County-based travel soccer team has filed a $10 million lawsuit against the coach and the organization, alleging that the soccer club’s leaders were negligent for failing to remove the coach or report his behavior despite receiving multiple complaints about suspected misconduct. The civil suit, filed by 31-year-
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STATE TITLE FOR HIGHLAND GIRLS SOCCER, REGION CROWN FOR FAUQUIER BOYS LACROSSE: Sports, Pages 19-23
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