Investigators will confront hundreds of sexual abuse allegations against guards from all 13 Texas Youth Commission prisons, the Dallas Morning News reports. Juvenile inmates have filed more than 750 complaints of sexual misconduct against correctional officers and other employees since January 2000. The complaints range from flirting or suggestive letters – to rape. Officials who originally investigated the allegations said they were able to substantiate only 88. They acknowledge that the actual count of legitimate complaints is far higher. In the last seven years, no agency employee is known to have served prison time for sexual abuse committed on the job.
The 750 allegations could be only a start. The Texas Rangers and others will encounter new charges as well as accounts of assaults that weren’t reported until now. One inmate told the newspaper about being forced into a cell with a a larger, stronger, older inmate. The inmate, who didn’t report the incident, said, “I allowed him to sodomize me, because I couldn’t fight him anymore.” This week, more than 70 law enforcement officers were sent to youth prisons statewide to conduct interviews and seize documents.
Link: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/030707dnpronutyc.39129f4.html