http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stories/051307dntextycemail.3975bed.html#Messages reveal more concern about media than abuse allegations
12:31 AM CDT on Sunday, May 13, 2007
By EMILY RAMSHAW / The Dallas Morning News
eramshaw@dallasnews.com
AUSTIN – When a Texas Ranger found evidence of sexual abuse at a juvenile prison in February 2005, Texas Youth Commission officials were far more concerned with protecting their public image and managing the news media than they were with addressing the problems, a Dallas Morning News review of hundreds of internal agency e-mail messages shows.
Instead of dealing directly with the allegations, top agency executives strategized on how to keep the media at bay. Instead of expressing concern for the abused youth, they worried that other inmates would take the opportunity to make up accusations. And instead of accepting responsibility for the crisis, they deflected blame.
In one 2005 e-mail to top agency officials, Chip Harrison, superintendent at the West Texas State School in Pyote, where the scandal began, recommended assigning one person to deal with the media, to prevent "credibility problems and make us all suspect of a cover-up."
Two weeks later, after very limited coverage, he sent a distressed message, complaining about hard-to-control reporters and saying he intended to tell youths they would be held responsible for their behavior "regardless of any threats they make to file allegations against staff."
In an e-mailed response, deputy executive director Linda Reyes told him to hold off on the conversation.
Doubts raised
After the Texas Ranger's investigation, which produced a graphic report alleging repeated abuse, only two TYC officials, general counsel Neil Nichols and Ray Worsham, the director of youth care investigations, seemed to question whether they had dropped the ball.
Mr. Nichols, who has since resigned, wrote to Mr. Worsham suggesting they take a close look at their own investigations into West Texas State School youth complaints to "see if we might have missed something." Mr. Worsham, who was suspended this year over allegations he redacted documents, gave the agency a pass for missing the Ranger's evidence because the youth complaints were ambiguous.
"It is extremely difficult, even for specially trained investigators, to get that sort of disclosure from an adolescent male," he wrote.
The media storm that TYC officials originally anticipated began to brew in late 2006. A staffer for a House member asked a TYC investigator if she would talk to reporters. When the investigator, Tish Elliott-Wilkins, told her superiors about it, executive director Dwight Harris ordered investigators to refer legislative or media calls to the agency's chief of staff.
Mr. Harris demanded to know how Ms. Elliott-Wilkins responded "to the question about whether TYC knew of any allegations" before the Ranger's investigation. Then, just weeks before the news broke in The Dallas Morning News and on the Web site of the Texas Observer, Mr. Worsham wrote a confidential e-mail to agency spokesman Tim Savoy, asking if a News reporter had given any indication that "one of my investigators was talking to him."
Shortly after, Ms. Elliott-Wilkins e-mailed that she had received a call from a Texas Observer reporter – and was quickly ordered not to speak to him.
On the defensive
Once it was clear they couldn't contain the story, top officials sent anticipatory e-mails to board members and legislators, telling them that there had been abuse at West Texas but that they had done due diligence by leaving it in the district attorney's hands.
And Mr. Worsham sent an e-mail to all TYC administrators, asking them to look for "red flags" for staff-on-youth sexual abuse: spending time away from the group "in the walk-in freezer, that sort of thing"; a perception among youths that a staffer was gay; or youths reporting that a relationship was "icky, creepy or weird."
But as the allegations poured in, TYC officials changed their tack, going on the defensive and blaming the news media for blowing the story out of proportion.
In a letter to West Texas State School employees, Mr. Harris wrote: "To hear it from the news, you would think the agency was trying to cover up for two people accused of sexual misconduct with our youth. That is preposterous. Why in the world would any of us do such a thing?"
Before Mr. Harris and the TYC's board of directors resigned, the agency continued to try to hold off the media. In a February e-mail, juvenile corrections director Lydia Barnard told Mr. Savoy that she had no intention of answering a reporter's questions.
"Oh gee," she wrote. "I think ... I'll decline."
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stories/051307dntextycemail.3975bed.html#
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