Sexual misconduct roils N. Texas youth lockup

New allegations belie reforms state made to system after 2005 scandal

AUSTIN — Ten years after a sex abuse scandal sparked top-to-bottom reforms in Texas’ juvenile justice system, investigators are probing allegations of widespread sexual misconduct between guards and teenaged offenders at a North Texas lockup.

A former correctional officer at the Gainesville State School, Samuel Lee Wright, was convicted in July of improper sexual activity with youths in custody, a seconddegree felony, and was sentenced to 10 years in prison, officials said. About 230 youths are housed at the facility.

Two additional correctional officers, both women, have been arrested in recent weeks on charges that they had sex with 18-year-old youths in custody or tried to. An additional arrest is expected in coming days on similar charges, officials said. One of the correctional officers already arrested is pregnant with an offender’s child, records show.

“The Texas Juvenile Justice Department takes its mandate to protect youths and communities very seriously, and has implemented

new guidelines providing additional measures designed to ensure safety,” an internal agency report provided to state officials about the investigation states.

“The recent arrests of these correctional officers demonstrate that our reporting mechanisms, camera footage and checks and balances are accomplishing what they were intended to accomplish. Vigilance in observing and reporting questionable behavior is a key to keeping the youth in our care safe.”

A copy of the report was obtained by the Houston Chronicle.

Investigators at the agency said they are focusing on determining how widespread the sexual activity is between staff and youths. Internal reports show most of the youth victims are age 18.

It’s also unclear whether other state-run youth lockups are having similar problems, because records were not available.

Officials said they are concentrating their current inquiry on Gainesville.

In recent days, officials confirmed they have directed that all youth transports — on foot and in vehicles — will be on a “never alone” basis, where two staff members must be present when moving youths. In cases where two staffers are not available, staff will wear body cameras.

In a statement, TJJD Executive Director David Reilly pledged swift action to ensure youths are safe.

“No facility or program dealing with children and youth is immune from staff misconduct,” he said.

While agency officials insist they have stepped up training and security protections in recent months, part of reforms initiated after the 2005 sexual abuse scandal at what was then the Texas Youth Commission, reports obtained by the Chronicle show sexual misconduct and inappropriate relationships been an issue at Gainesville for some time.

Action promised

Opened in 1913 as a training school for girls, the 160acre center north of Dallas has been plagued in recent years by increasing gang activity, disruptions and assaults — the same issues faced at the rest of the staterun youth lockups.

Agency officials have blamed that on an increasing number of violentcrime offenders, thanks in part to the reforms that kept most nonviolent and lower-level offenders in county-run rehabilitation and treatment programs.

A complaint logged in March 2016 alleged that a program specialist was having an inappropriate relationship with a youth. “She lets him touch her in inappropriate ways … she even kissed him,” according to the report.

Another complaint logged February 2017 reported a correctional officer “was having sexual relations with (a youth) up until he left and now she is having sexual relation with (another youth). They do things in the infirmary van so there is no camera evidence but it is clearly obvious.”

“This is serious and needs to be investigated and stopped,” the report states.

In April 2017, a grievance reported that a female supervisor at Gainesville “keeps performing oral sex on youth in the ODS van at night. She is also having youth perform oral sex on her. She paid to have the youth perform oral sex on her.”

In June, a youth reported that a female correctional officer “will pay youth to watch them masturbate.” A month later, a supervisor reported that a youth told him that “over the past year he had sexual contact” with two staff members, “one provided him with oral sex and the other provided sexual intercourse. He said this occurred in the vans.”

That same month, officials received a report from the parent of a youth who had recently left the lockup that “he bragged to them that he had a sexual relation with a guard at Gainesville. … This staff wanted to co-sign a vehicle for him, and provided her driver’s license and other information.”

In late August, a letter to a youth was found during a dorm search, in which a female staff member “detailed the writer wanting to perform sexual acts with the youth.”

In July, Wright, who had been a correctional officer at Gainesville for just under three years, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for engaging in sexual activity with three teenagers at the lockup — three males, ages 16, 17 and 18.

Wright was a former guard at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, who authorities later confirmed had continued working at the juvenile justice agency even after officials there discovered he had a previous history of disciplinary infractions.

His conviction, and the arrests of two additional female correctional officers in the months since, highlights what officials say for years has been a chronic issue in juvenile lockups: sexual misconduct. In an era when teacher-student sex has reached chronic proportions in schools, sex in correctional facilities is often used to gain power or control.

Agency officials said the Gainesville facility has “unique challenges,” including 36 buildings on 40 acres, which creates many pathways in and around the buildings. The center’s layout makes it more challenging to monitor electronically than other TJJD campuses, they said.

The facility also has the second largest population of youth among the TJJD schools and secure state facilities.

‘Still broken’

Nonetheless, when allegations surfaced in the spring of 2005 that staff members at a state-run youth lockup in West Texas had regularly engaged in sexual misconduct with incarcerated youths, Texas lawmakers swiftly took action to make sure it never happened again.

As a result of the headline-grabbing scandal, the top administrators and governing board at the Texas Youth Commission were terminated, dozens of staff members were fired and faced criminal charges for sexual assault and the agency was placed in a form of receivership as sweeping reforms were put in place.

The new agency implemented a “zero tolerance” policy on sexual and physical abuse at the six remaining lockups it operates that house about 1,000 teen offenders, down from more than 5,000 youths at 14 facilities in 2004.

State Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire, a Houston Democrat who was an architect of the 2007 reforms, said the latest allegations at Gainesville come after years of reports of gang activity, assaults and disruptions at the state’s youth lockups, even with all the reforms.

Based on the initial information, Whitmire said he intends to focus on what new reforms are needed at the juvenile-justice agency to ensure that the sexual activity is curbed once and for all.

“After all the reforms we made, these new reports at Gainesville are very, very troubling,” he said. “I think our system is still broken.”