“I can’t believe that there wasn’t someone in the neighborhood who recognized that this kid was going dangerously wrong. It may be that nobody likes busybodies...”
We are now living in a world where the person who does not acknowledge the boy wearing a dress is in fact a girl is the one who faces trouble, not the boy in the dress. Women who object to another ‘woman’ exposing ‘her’ penis are the ones seen with a ‘problem’, not the nut job in their changing room.
People can notice and talk. They can talk to law enforcement, school teachers, etc. In a small town like that, people know one another, and gossip is rife.
People knew about this kid, and he was still a minor when doing a lot of this stuff. But nobody took him in hand.