In a livestream beamed to his more than 33,000 Facebook followers, Ronald Durbin advised Coweta Public Schools on how to handle recently surfaced sexual assault allegations.
“You need to pray to God you can settle all these claims in a way that doesn’t defund your school system for the next 20 years,” Durbin said to the camera during the 30-minute recording made at his home. “You’re gonna have to write a check for this one.”
Supporters contend Durbin’s aggressive, inflammatory tactics are just what’s needed to hold power to account. But parents say his allegations are exaggerated, his demeanor disrespectful and his intent nefarious. Durbin’s mission, he said, is to destroy public education.
Durbin said he learned of the sexual assault allegations at Sloat Middle School from two distressed mothers who phoned him one evening in late October. The next day, he entered Sloat with his livestream rolling and told the registrar at the desk he was there to talk about kids being sexually abused on the playground. When the woman replied that Sloat doesn’t have a playground, Durbin scoffed.
“Are we really going to get into the semantics of where kids are being abused?” he said.
Principal Dave Wineinger, who’d been with the district for 12 years, approached and told Durbin to get in touch with Superintendent Max Myers across the street. As Wineinger retreated to his office, Durbin followed and peppered him with questions about how to obtain records as the principal repeated he couldn’t comment, eventually faltering.
“Are you drunk?” Durbin demanded.
“No, I am tired,” Wineinger said as he collapsed to the floor.
In the livestream, Wineinger was prone on the carpet as two school personnel tried to shield him from Durbin’s view and another sat on the floor, encouraging him to breathe. Wineinger asked that a police officer be contacted.
“How many boys did you let get sexually molested, sir?” Durbin taunted. “Six? Eight?”
The number of children involved in confirmed September and October incidents at Sloat is unclear, though the district has released a timeline of events that suggests there were at least two victims in those months. Superintendent Myers declined an interview with Oklahoma Watch but told KTUL-TV that, after what was initially perceived as student misconduct rose to the level of criminality, the school contacted police on Sept. 22.
A mother who reported the September events spoke to Oklahoma Watch but asked that her name be withheld to protect her son. She said he was repeatedly assaulted by a single peer through groping and indecent exposure starting Aug. 19 while in physical education class at Sloat. In general, she praised the school but said it didn’t handle the incidents well, failing to prevent repeated assaults or to address the aftermath responsibly.
She contacted Durbin as a last resort, she said, after seeing a post of his online, but has been disappointed. She described Durbin as an immature bully who’s lost sight of the mission to hold the powerful accountable for missteps.
Parents in attendance at a Nov. 10 Coweta Public Schools Board of Education meeting also expressed worries, though they refrained from using Durbin’s name.
Mother Sandee Crook said the school district responded appropriately to the assaults per its published timeline, questioning why Durbin has gained traction.
“Why are we as a community allowing this to continue?” asked Crook. “Why does it feel like we are allowing YouTube personalities and online bullying to prevail?”
Durbin has gone afield of Sloat’s most recent events, claiming scores of children have been abused in Coweta and other districts while serving as a lightning rod for the dissatisfied at a time when government is under fire. Public schools, especially, have been scrutinized, with the Trump administration championing the funneling of public dollars to private schools, including faith-based institutions. Against that backdrop, Coweta’s turmoil has become a case study in how distrust of institutions, amplified by social media, can transform a local crisis into a statewide, even national, referendum on transparency, safety, and the motivations of those who tell the story.
Durbin is no stranger to controversy. Once a cannabis industry attorney who advocated for press freedom and the integrity of open meetings, his aggressive tactics, chronicled on his YouTube channel, which now has more than 94,000 subscribers, landed him in hot water with the Oklahoma Bar Association. His license to practice law was suspended in 2024 and he was disbarred last month.
While Durbin has been known to confront city councilors and court clerks, his other targets, judges and police officers, should be no strangers to confrontation. But public schools are newer territory for him. In an interview with Oklahoma Watch, he said he first posted about a school when he visited Glenpool after the assistant superintendent was accused of hosting underage drinking parties last year. His posts often give snippets of information, something he said is necessary because it would take too much time to give the complete context.
“That would be like on September 11th, the reporters who were reporting on the towers being hit waiting until they had all the facts,” said Durbin. “That’s just not the way the world works.”
Durbin is unapologetic about confronting small-town educators who may be unprepared to spar with a former attorney holding a camera.
“If you work for public tax dollars, I’m sorry, you work for the public,” Durbin said. “I’m gonna show up and ask whatever questions I want to of a public employee that I can get in a public place.”
Durbin’s strategies have been effective in shaking things up. Police body-camera footage, posted by Durbin, showing the aftermath of his visit to Coweta’s Sloat Middle School, included Wineinger, the principal, complaining to police officers that he was “going to have to be nice” to the families who gave Durbin information. Wineinger was suspended with pay on Oct. 31 due to the footage.
After visiting Wineinger, Durbin advertised a public meeting and organized a gathering attended by about 30 protestors who surrounded Superintendent Max Myers, a lifelong educator from Coweta, in his office. People from out of town took the opportunity to air their concerns.
“I run a business and if something goes wrong in that business, that’s my responsibility,” a biker from Muskogee said.
He repeated Durbin’s estimate of how many people were assaulted in the physical education class.
“Six kids?” the biker said. “If I failed that miserably, I would not have a company. So why are you sitting in that chair? Why have you not resignated?”
“I’m not even gonna have a comment for that,” Myers said.
A clip of the interaction in which the biker said he’d be back if nothing is done went viral after X account Libs of TikTok, known for presenting public school educators in a mocking light, posted to its 4.5 million followers about what the post described as a massive scandal in Coweta. The post notes a collaboration with Oklahoman Lane Brown, a self-described Christian conservative who’s joined Durbin in elevating the idea that multiple abuse cases in Coweta have been swept under the rug.
The protest, which marked the first involvement of mainstream reporters, prompted the chief of police to hold a press conference days later, during which he defended the school system and estimated that Coweta Public Schools had handed over 10-15 cases in the past year.
Oklahoma Watch compared Coweta, which has about 3,700 students, to school systems of similar size and location. Claremore referred eight cases to law enforcement in 2020-2021, the last year federal data is available. Sapulpa referred 28.
Coweta Police Chief Mike Bell went on to host a collaborative event with counselors and tribal authorities, inviting concerned parents to air grievances or report new crimes. According to the police department, one new crime was reported and 10 families sought updates on cases closed or in progress.
At the event, Bell told Oklahoma Watch he wasn’t sure if the scrutiny would be fruitful, but that it might be a good thing to have agitators taking a look at the community.
“Well, it’s outside people coming in that got this all started,” said Bell. “But it’s the parents that’ve been complaining throughout the years, according to them, that we haven’t been doing anything. We just want to make sure that we didn’t miss something. If there is something that we missed, we need to fix it.”
Durbin said he’s still skeptical, and though he described himself as a lover of public schools and a graduate of public schools, he said the system is too bloated with administrative salaries and not focused enough on supporting teachers. He said he sees it as his mission to fix education by destroying it.
“Sometimes you have to blow stuff up to improve it,” he said.
