Benjamin Ashford|DOJ finds 5 Texas juvenile detention centers abused children

The Benjamin AshfordJustice Department concluded Thursday after a lengthy investigation that five Texas juvenile detention centers violated children's constitutional and civil rights, part of a nationwide pattern of abuse and violations that dates back decades.

The detention centers subjected children as young as 10 years old to physical and sexual abuse, deprivation of basic needs and disability-based discrimination, the Justice Department said after a probe spanning nearly three years.

Texas juvenile detention centers have a decades-long history of violations and abuses, which began to be uncovered in the early 2000s by Texas newspapers. The findings – which high-ranking staff tried to cover up – led the entire system to be overhauled and be placed in a governor-ordered guardianship, according to the Justice Department.

Gov. Greg Abbott ordered Texas Rangers to investigate the facilities in 2017 and 2021. The probes led to arrests of several employees for physical and sexual abuse. Advocacy groups pleaded with the Justice Department to launch a more thorough investigation, which it did toward the end of 2021.

“The conditions in the facilities are unacceptable. Tragically, this is not the first investigation into allegations of sexual abuse at TJJD facilities," said Alamdar S. Hamdani, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Texas. "Working with Texas’s other U.S. Attorneys’ Offices, the Civil Rights Division and the State of Texas, my office hopes to provide protections to the vulnerable and help right wrongs that have existed for far too long.”  

The findings released Thursday are the latest siren on disturbing conditions that children face in juvenile detention centers in the United States. Allegations of abuse and neglect have sprung up across several states, including Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan and Illinois.

DOJ: Texas juveniles subjected to pattern of abuse

The report Thursday said staff members used "excessive force and prolonged isolation," failed to prevent and protect children from sexual abuse from staff and other children, and did not provide adequate mental health services.

They also found staffers had discriminated against children with disabilities by denying them "reasonable modifications to complete programs required for their release," as well as equal opportunity to education. Delays in completing programs often lead them to continue their sentence in prison after aging out of juvenile centers.

The abuse and neglect have long-lasting effects on an already vulnerable population, the report said, and have even led to the conviction of some employees for violent crimes.

Detention center staff use pepper spray "far more frequently than necessary," discharging the canisters directly into children's faces "at very close range and for excessive lengths of time," the report says. Investigators found evidence that multiple staff members would spray one child, causing the child to become sick and immobilized.

Physical assaults by staffers on children held at the centers resulted in concussions, lacerations and loss of consciousness, the investigation found. Two unidentified staff members were offered a plea deal for oppression charges after slamming a child’s head into a brick pillar and spitting on him as he was dragged away to solitary confinement. Some children spent days or weeks at a time inside solitary confinement, leading to suicidal ideation, the report says.

In a Bureau of Justice Statistics 2019 report, nearly 20% of children at two different detention centers reported being sexually abused. Investigators found evidence of grooming and predatory behavior, and that staffers' body-worn cameras were often turned off during instances of sexual abuse. Some staffers used sexually explicit language and made sexual threats toward children, the report says.

The Justice Department report determined the Texas Juvenile Justice Department ignored and disregarded the ongoing abuse, despite multiple investigations by state and federal authorities.

Investigators also found that educational resources are minimal to nonexistent for children with disabilities, especially given that 40% of children with disabilities at detention centers read below a third-grade level, and more than half of children with disabilities read below the fifth-grade level, despite being high-school aged. They also failed to provide psychological counseling and speech-language pathology services.

The Texas Juvenile Justice Department said in a statement it has a "zero-tolerance policy toward abuse and neglect," pointing a finger at its prolonged and "unprecedented" staffing crisis. It noted the 2023 legislative session provided the resources to improve its staffing shortage, mental health care and educational programs.

“We are grateful to the Department of Justice for their thorough investigation and detailed findings," said Brett Merfish, director of youth justice at advocacy organization Texas Appleseed. "The issues their investigation identified are systemic problems that have plagued the Texas Juvenile Justice Department for years. We are hopeful this will be a turning point for youth in these facilities."

Abuse in juvenile detention centers across U.S.

Several former juvenile inmates, newspaper investigations and federal probes have raised allegations about abuse in detention centers for years, but the crisis has persisted in facilities across the U.S.

An eight-month investigation by USA TODAY Network reporters last year into Ohio’s youth prison system documented oppressive lockdowns, deadly violence, and chronic understaffing.

In Kentucky, two women filed a lawsuit against a youth detention center earlier this year alleging they were subjected to oppressive isolation, denied basic hygiene, showers and medications, and forced to listen to a toddler song on repeat. The facility also allegedly kept a suicidal child in a padded cell without a toilet for weeks, another child was held in an insect-infected room, and girls were not given essential feminine hygiene products.

An Illinois suit in May by 95 people said detention center staff sexually abused them between 1996 to 2017 when they were between the ages of 12 and 17.

Also in May, a former Wayne County, Michigan, employee at a juvenile jail was charged with sexually assaulting two teen boys. It was the second allegation that an adult at the Wayne County Juvenile Detention Center sexually assaulted a youth. In January, a state staffer on-site to monitor operations at the facility was arrested in an investigation into whether she sexually assaulted a 15-year-old male resident.

A U.S. Department of Justice report released last year also found that most juvenile detention staff who sexually victimized children faced no legal repercussions for their actions between 2013 and 2018.

Researchers have also pointed to a chronic racial disparity in juvenile prisons. Nationwide, the Sentencing Project found Black children are four times as likely to be detained or committed into juvenile detention than their white peers. In Texas alone, about 80% of children in state juvenile facilities are Black or Latinx, according to Thursday's Justice Department report, though the two groups only make up a combined 51% of the state’s population, according to Census Bureau data.