Rebuke in youth jail case: Worker cites backlash after warning of possible abuse
By DOUG J. SWANSON
The Dallas Morning News
DALLAS, Texas — Bill Hollis was a caseworker at a state juvenile prison in West Texas, and he had suspicions. He believed the prison’s No. 2 official spent far too much time behind closed doors, late at night, with young male inmates.
“It just didn’t feel right,” he said.
Numerous former and present employees say now they suspected inappropriate staff-youth contact. |
So Mr. Hollis wrote a letter of complaint to the executive director of the Texas Youth Commission in Austin, the state agency that runs the West Texas State School. The reaction from agency management was quick and tough - against Mr. Hollis.
“I was told I was not doing my job properly,” he said last week. “I was told I was not supporting the administration. I was told I was the problem.”
Now that the prison’s sex scandal has come to light - two administrators have been accused of repeatedly molesting inmates - and Mr. Hollis has been vindicated.
But questions persist over why high-ranking TYC managers ignored warnings that the isolated prison had become a sex club for some of the men who ran it.
Dwight Harris, executive director of the youth commission, announced Friday afternoon that he was retiring immediately. Mr. Harris has insisted that he handled the West Texas matter correctly, but he acknowledged that he has been the target of strong criticism.
“I wanted to stay through this [legislative] session to promote our requests,” Mr. Harris said in a statement issued by the agency. “But it’s clear to me now that my presence might actually get in the way of those things we gravely need.”
The sexual abuse revelations have state lawmakers calling for reform. State Sen. Juan Hinojosa, D-McAllen, vowed that the Senate Criminal Justice Committee will take a “hard look” at the TYC in hearings this week.
Rep. Jerry Madden, R-Plano, chairman of the House Committee on Corrections, said he wants a special panel formed “specifically to look at problems at TYC.”
Rep. Sylvester Turner, D-Houston, chairman of the House Appropriations Criminal Justice Subcommittee, called for an overhaul of the Texas Youth Commission. “We need to take a full assessment of how we got to this point,” he said.
Repeated complaints
TYC incarcerates and treats the state’s most violent and chronic juvenile offenders, ages 10 to 21. The agency calls itself “one of the last lines of hope for these troubled youth.”
The Dallas Morning News reported last week that a TYC internal review found agency officials had ignored or dismissed staff complaints about the West Texas prison’s assistant superintendent and principal for more than a year. The review was released after a request under the state’s Public Information Act.
Numerous former and present employees say now they suspected - and reported to their supervisors at the prison - that there was frequent inappropriate staff-youth contact. “I don’t see how they couldn’t have known,” former correctional officer Christal Taylor said of prison administrators.
For example, Ms. Taylor told The News, the assistant superintendent frequently would remove young men from their dorms around midnight, take them to his office and return them around 2 a.m.
Others, like caseworker Hollis, noticed this odd behavior. “I said, why in the world would he take kids up there at night?” Mr. Hollis said. “Lights out is at 9.”
He reported this to his supervisor at the West Texas facility, Mr. Hollis said. The answer he received: “He’s the assistant superintendent, and he will do what he wants.”
Insular and isolated
The prison sits on an old World War II bomber base, adjacent to the tiny desert town of Pyote, many miles from any city and largely free from outside scrutiny. It houses about 250 youths.
“The West Texas campus was insular and isolated,” said the youth commission’s internal review. “Allegations and suspicions of misconduct were not reported or when reported were screened. Those who made reports without solid evidence were indirectly rebuked.”
Evidence of misconduct, the report said, was “covered up.”
In early 2005, a volunteer teacher at the prison, frustrated that his complaints were ignored by prison administration, took his story to the Texas Rangers.
The Rangers’ investigation found evidence that assistant superintendent Ray E. Brookins and principal John Paul Hernandez sexually molested inmates. The Rangers determined that Mr. Brookins “engaged in sexual conduct with several students,” the TYC review reported.
A separate TYC report says that Mr. Hernandez had sexual contact with multiple inmates many times in his office, in a closet and in a classroom.
One of them, the report said, was lured into a closet with birthday cake. Mr. Hernandez then “turned out the lights, masturbated him and performed fellatio on him.”
Both men resigned their positions in 2005 in lieu of termination. Mr. Hernandez, 41, has denied the allegations but declined further comment. Mr. Brookins, 41, has refused to comment.
The criminal case against them has languished for two years, with no indictments and no prosecution. Last week, Ward County District Attorney Randall Reynolds said he is now making progress on the revived case with assistance from the state attorney general’s office.
Legislative criticism
Some legislators blamed TYC executive director Harris for not doing more to encourage timely prosecution of Mr. Hernandez and Mr. Brookins.
“It’s like you see a house on fire, and you’re standing there with a water hose, and you do nothing,” said Rep. Ruth McClendon, D-San Antonio, a former juvenile probation officer. “It’s frightening.”
Mr. Harris said Friday he would not comment on remarks by legislators, but he said he hopes TYC will get the funding it needs to increase prison staffing and guard training.
TYC has begun to check the personnel records of employees who are up for transfer or promotion, Mr. Harris said. That was not the practice until recently. Mr. Brookins was promoted to the Pyote prison in 2003 despite having been put on probation at another TYC facility for accessing pornography on his state computer.
Before he announced his retirement, Mr. Harris also said allegations that TYC tried to hide the sexual misconduct at the Pyote prison were “hurtful” and destructive to staff morale. He also said he does not question his own performance in the matter.
Investigating allegations
The agency issued a statement last week asserting that “no one made any allegations of sexual misconduct to the central office before the Texas Rangers investigation.”
However, agency documents and statements from former and present employees show that numerous questions were raised about suspicious behavior.
Mr. Hollis’ 2004 letter - which he said he wrote because his immediate supervisors ignored his complaints - said that assistant superintendent Brookins summoned inmates to his office late at night “when there is no one else present in the building.”
The letter added, “I am at a loss for how I would explain this to a youth’s parents or anyone else.”
Lydia Barnard, then a director of juvenile corrections, went to Pyote to investigate. Despite an abundance of rumors about Mr. Brookins, she said she found no evidence to confirm that he had “engaged in any unprofessional or inappropriate behavior.”
Mr. Hollis said the backlash was then directed at him. “I was told I was not doing the job properly,” he said. Of one supervisor, he said, “In his eyes, I was a piece of crap.”
Two months later, in November 2004, an inmate told a guard about Mr. Hernandez’s sexual contact with him, the TYC review said. The guard reported the allegations to Mr. Brookins.
“She said Mr. Brookins called her later that day and told her not to tell anyone else about the report, not even to talk to her supervisor about it again,” the review said. “That report ended with Mr. Brookins.”
The same months, another employee’s concerns about Mr. Brookins’ late-night sessions were forwarded to Ms. Barnard. “It was not registered or assigned as a youth or employee grievance,” the TYC’s internal review found.
Ms. Barnard, who was demoted to TYC’s parole department in an unrelated incident, did not return a phone call last week seeking comment.
In December 2004, Mr. Hollis sent an e-mail to the agency’s assistant deputy executive director, repeating his complaints about Mr. Brookins. A “facility review” that month found nothing in the way of sexual misconduct.
Two months after that, a Pyote volunteer contacted the Texas Rangers, and the criminal investigation began.
Right and wrong
Mr. Hollis, 56, now assistant superintendent of a Texas Youth Commission facility in San Saba, said it was his duty to write the executive director in 2004. “I’m by no stretch of the imagination a saint,” he said. “But there’s right and there’s wrong.”
He also said he was motivated by the need for respectful and humane treatment of TYC inmates, many of whom come from broken families and violent homes.
“If they are treated with dignity and respect, they, in turn, will learn to do the same,” Mr. Hollis wrote in his 2004 e-mail to agency management. “If we treat them like animals, that is the way they will behave.”
Records released to The News last week include a confirmed account of a sexual assault on one inmate by another in August 2005 at the West Texas State School.
“Youth MH entered his assigned room ... on dorm 1 to sweep,” the report said. “JY took the broom from MH and forced him on the bed and pulled his pants down. JY inserted the broom handle inside MH’s anus and pulled it out while TW watched for staff.”
The incident, the TYC report said, caused prison management to “go over” policy and “emphasize the need for better dorm supervision.”
The two youths involved in the attack were referred to the Waard County district attorney for prosecution, the report said. District Attorney Reynolds said last week that a grand jury declined to indict them.
Copyright 2008 The Dallas Morning News