Under legislative pressure, Texas Gov. Rick Perry said the Texas Youth Commission board will resign amid new criminal allegations involving staff and revelations that the juvenile corrections health care system is in shambles, the Houston Chronicle reports. Perry and legislators are battling over how to rebuild an agency with high staff turnover and accusations that corrections officers and administrators physically and sexually abused youth in their custody. Now, officials are trying to figure out how a former adult-corrections-system guard managed to land a youth commission corrections officer job while under investigation for sexually assaulting a male inmate on his former job.
Volunteer math tutor Marc Slattery, who called Texas Rangers to report abuse in 2005, apparently had been indicted in 1986 on sexual assault charges but pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of simple assault. Sen. John Whitmire questioned how the agency could have allowed someone with a criminal record to serve as a volunteer a state youth facilities.
Link: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/4632544.html