Texas Youth Prison Outcry

AUSTIN, Tex., March 22 — “Investigations hot line,” said Brian Yasko, answering the phone at the Texas Youth Commission in a windowless command post that officers are calling “the belly of the beast.”

Quickly, Mr. Yasko began scribbling down details of yet another complaint, this one from a mother who said her son at the San Saba State School, now called the John Shero State Juvenile Correctional Facility, had been threatened by a sexually deviant corrections officer.

Yes, said Mr. Yasko, an investigator for the inspector general of the state Department of Criminal Justice; she could remain anonymous. “What I’ll do is send this out to the field and have investigators interview your son,” he promised.

Since a sexual abuse scandal at the Texas Youth Commission became public last month, prompting mass firings and resignations, more than 1,100 investigations have been opened into new accusations of rape and other mistreatment. At last count 282 cases had been closed without action.

Many of those complaints have been flooding into the makeshift situation room here staffed around the clock by employees of the inspector general’s office of the adult prison system and of the state attorney general’s office.

These officers, in turn, parcel out the cases to about 100 investigators from the two agencies and the Texas Rangers who are interviewing witnesses at 24 youth detention centers and scores of small contract facilities across Texas, where more than 4,000 youths ages 10 to 21 are serving sentences of at least nine months — but almost always longer — for criminal violations.

Ny Times Article Here