Governor Balking at TYC Overhaul
March 1st, 2007 at 3:08 pm
Governor Perry and the Senate are squaring off today over whether or not the Texas Youth Commission should be placed in conservatorship in the wake of the sex abuse scandal and coverup at the West Texas State School in Pyote. As we reported last night, the Senate voted unanimously to move the agency toward conservatorship, which means an outside convservator would be appointed to oversee the agency while the board and most of the top leadership are replaced. The governor, however, seems to feel that replacing the board chair will be enough, now that the executive director has resigned. The House is now considering the Senate’s proposal and word is that nothing will happen on it today.
The Houston Chronicle, meanwhile, is pumping up the pressure on Perry, noting in this morning’s edition that Perry’s office knew about the Rangers investigation since February of 2005. According to spokesman Ted Royer, however, the gov’s office never got a follow-up report, so didn’t know how bad the allegations were or how poorly the agency dealt with the problem.
Or did they? In June of 2005, an administrative review of the agency’s handling of the crisis at Pyote was done by a TYC inspector named Tish Elliott-Wilkins. That review, obtained by the Observer, was the basis for much of our original report breaking the story on February 16. We’re hearing that the report was passed around to legislative leadership in the summer of 2005. Anybody who read that report would be hard-pressed to say they didn’t know just how bad the situation was at TYC.
The question then: Did Perry’s office get a copy? We’re on it.
March 1st, 2007 at 8:16 pm
Oh my, it seems we may need a conservatorship of the entire state of Texas at this point. Papers, media, and legislature have been so quick to categorize all the employees of TYC into one category based on the small portion of those who have done these horrible things and those who failed to take action; might we have to include leaders from this state into this generalization.
March 2nd, 2007 at 8:07 am
And finally, the covers are pulled back:
Alfaro: Legislators knew about allegations
By Jessica Robertson
Baytown Sun
Published March 2, 2007
Top-ranking legislators in Austin knew about allegations of sexual assault at a West Texas state juvenile facility in 2005 — two years before they called for a change in leadership at the Texas Youth Commission — former Baytown mayor Pete Alfaro said.
On Wednesday, Gov. Rick Perry replaced Alfaro as the commission’s board chairman after Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst demanded that the entire board be fired.
The move comes after a week of allegations in the Texas Legislature that TYC officials knowingly did nothing after two investigations found that administrators at the West Texas State School in Pyote had repeated sexual contact with inmates.
The Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express News reported that Perry’s staff learned last fall of a Texas Rangers investigation, but the governor took no action to reform the Texas Youth Commission until after the report became public last week.
Alfaro resigned from the board on Thursday after Perry replaced him as chairman with vice chairman Donald R. Bethel. Despite claims from legislators that they knew nothing about the assault allegations until recently, Alfaro said he has documentation to prove otherwise.
Sen. John Whitmire, who chairs the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, received a TYC report in March 2005 on the status of a Texas Rangers investigation into the matter, Alfaro said.
“For him to say that he didn’t know about it is not true,” Alfaro said, adding that when he showed a copy of the report to Whitmire on Wednesday, he said he had never seen it before. “He threw it on the desk and said, ‘I don’t know anything about this.’”
The blame cast on the board has been “disappointing,” Alfaro said, holding firm to his assertion that he did not participate in a cover-up.
“I think the legislators have got so much on their plates that they may have seen (the Texas Rangers report) and then misplaced it or forgotten about it,” he said. “It’s disappointing because the people that need the most help — the youth — are the ones being affected by this.”
Alfaro, who Perry appointed as chairman in 2004, was named to the board in 1995 by then-Gov. George W. Bush. He was reappointed in 2002 to a term that was set to expire in August.
The Texas Rangers began their investigation into the West Texas facility on Feb. 23, 2005, Alfaro said. The board learned of the allegations the next day, he said, when they were told that “key legislators” would be notified.
The report was completed in late March 2005 and included information that the school’s assistant superintendent had allegedly sexually abused students, viewed pornography on the job and covered up complaints about the misconduct.
A follow-up internal investigation ordered by the commission’s executive director was completed in July 2005 but was not distributed to board members or legislators, Alfaro said.
The Dallas Morning News was the first to publicly disclose the report last week, which is when Alfaro said he first read the 14-page document.
“That’s when I said, ‘we need to do something about this,’” he said. “It’s the more damaging report. It really gives the specific names of the people that were involved in the abuse.”
After reading the more extensive report, Alfaro said he met with TYC officials in Austin to get a handle on the situation, asking that the status of all investigations that had been referred to local district attorneys be monitored and reported on monthly.
The board was also working to secure a third-party investigation into the alleged cover-up, he said. In a Feb. 18 letter to Perry, Alfaro asked the governor for assistance in appointing an outside entity for the job.
“I sent a letter to the governor asking for help,” he said. “But I was told verbally that they didn’t have the authority to do that.”
During a meeting in Austin on Wednesday, legislators railed against board members for not taking action on pursuing criminal charges against school administrators sooner. Both the prison’s assistant superintendent and school’s principal resigned in 2005 without the threat of litigation.
Nothing was done, Alfaro said, because state statutes prevent the board from initiating criminal prosecution, which kept members from making a Ward County district attorney file charges in the incident.
“The biggest complaint they have against us is the policies are such that we give the investigation to the local DA,” he said. “They’re the ones that determine when and whether or not they’re going to prosecute. They were mad at us because we didn’t pursue it. Well, we don’t have that authority, according to the attorney general.”
Still, he said, if the board learned the extent of the allegations sooner, something could have been done.
“I’m not making excuses,” Alfaro said. “What happened here should not have happened. But had the board known about this report when it was released, I guarantee things would have been different, bottom line.”
In addition to replacing Alfaro as chairman, Perry also asked the board to appoint Texas Department of Criminal Justice deputy director Ed Owens as TYC executive director.
Dwight Harris resigned from the position last week after reports of the abuse allegations surfaced. His job is being handled by the agency’s general counsel.
Those changes weren’t enough for some legislators.
In a rare evening session on Wednesday, the Senate unanimously passed a resolution calling for Perry to appoint a conservator to oversee the commission.
That move would result in the firing of all board members. The resolution says the commission engaged in “gross financial mismanagement” because state employees were abusing inmates while being paid by the state and working on state property.
“What disturbs me the most is that managers at the Texas Youth Commission went to great lengths to cover up these incidents of sexual abuse,” Dewhurst said. “It’s clear the leadership of the TYC must be immediately replaced to protect children in the agency’s custody and to restore the public’s faith on our youth correctional system.”
March 2nd, 2007 at 6:01 pm
Once again, the negative staff prevail and the ones actually producing quality work are over-shadowed. The buddy system has severely undermined TYC’s mission.