The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services has fired a support worker after a video emerged of her encouraging a vulnerable 14-year-old girl to consider becoming a prostitute to survive.
The shocking conversation was caught on film by the teen, who had begun recording her interactions with the worker after she had started to make similar suggestions on other occasions.
The video was released to Fox 26 News on Sunday, showing the girl covertly filming the worker explicitly telling her to become a prostitute. The interaction had taken place after the teen had approached the worker and asked for help to get food.
The teen was being housed the Harris County hotel awaiting foster care placement after entering the system at the request of her mother, who had become concerned about her daughter’s risky behavior.
“My daughter told me that the worker had been telling her to do these things, so she said she decided to video her,” Keisha Bazley, the girl’s mother, told Fox 26. Bazley filed a formal complaint and the video was shown to the Department, resulting in the staff member involved being terminated.
“The person in the video – who was employed as [Child Protective Services] support staff — was dismissed from her position August 10,” Marissa Gonzales, a Department spokesperson, said in a statement to the Texas Tribune. “The safety and appropriateness with which children in care must be treated is our paramount concern.”
Following the termination, Department Commissioner Jaime Masters travelled from Austin to Houston to personally apologize to the child and her mother.
But while Gonzales and the Department insisted that “nothing less” than the safeguarding of the youth in their care would be tolerated, this isn’t the first disturbing story out of the Texas child protection system in recent months.
In March, allegations surfaced that young girls in a government-contracted shelter for female youth victims of sex trafficking were being trafficked once again by their own case workers. Seven children, aged 11 to 17, were allegedly abused by 9 perpetrators working for the Refuge Ranch, which was run by the Refuge for Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking. An employee attempted to make the abuse known but the reports went neglected.
The employee had tried to alert the Department of Family and Protective Services, through which the private facility was operating, that a staff member had been selling nude photos of two of the young girls in their care, and had been buying illicit drugs and alcohol for the children. Despite the report, the Department failed to remove all of the children from the abusive care for five weeks after the first documented case of of exploitation had been brought to light.
While Texas Rangers reportedly found no evidence of any wrongdoing, court-appointed watchdogs discovered “ample” proof that the former child sex trafficking victims were being abused. According to court documents, allegations of child sex abuse, exploitation, neglectful supervision and physical abuse have all found substantiating evidence. The case is still under investigation.
In June, U.S. District Judge Janis Jack expressed her concerns that Texas’ child protection system was not performing adequate background checks on potential caregivers, according to the San Antonio Express-News.
Research has consistently found that children involved in the foster care or child protective service system experienced disproportionately higher rates of sexual and physical abuse.
A 2001 study by Johns Hopkins University found that children in foster care are four times more likely to be sexually abused than their non-foster peers, and children in group homes are 28 times more likely to be abused. Even more dramatic findings were published by child safeguarding organization Darkness To Light, which found that children living in foster care were 10 times more likely to be sexually abused than children residing with both biological parents.
According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, 60% of runaway youth who are victims of sex trafficking had previously been in the custody of social services or in foster care.
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