I’m still thinking about this harrowing report the court monitors put out yesterday showing Texas’s total failure to implement reforms that a federal judge said were mandatory in order for the state to stop violating these kids’ rights. chronicleofsocialchange.org/child-welfare-…
They identified three deaths of kids in less than a year that could have been prevented. 11 kids have died in Texas’s longterm custody in less than a year!
In one instance, the monitors interviewed a frightened boy at a residential treatment center who said “staff hit them and beat on them every day for no reason.”
An investigation found one of the staff members at that RTC, who had hit the boy and broken his glasses, “had been investigated for abuse or neglect more than twenty times over a more than fifteen year career.”
“This was the seventh time just since 2016 that this perpetrator had been investigated for slapping or punching a child; all of those investigations ruled out abuse.”
All of the folks who are so concerned about an epidemic of child abuse—are you seeing this? chronicleofsocialchange.org/child-welfare-…
The attorney that’s probably the single most knowledgeable person about the myriad child welfare systems in place in this country said this report about Texas showed “as bad a system as I’ve ever seen.”
I started writing about child welfare in 2016, shortly after the judge in this case issued a ruling spanning hundreds of pages, documenting the extreme abuse of these kids, whose parents have lost their rights to parent them.
I wrote this story after spending time with and reading the file of a plaintiff in the case, Trish Virgil. At that point, Texas had spent millions of dollars appealing the suit instead of making reforms. houstoniamag.com/news-and-city-…
Now, a year after Texas stopped appealing & after repeatedly telling the judge they’re making reforms, this report shows what a joke that is. It’s incredibly frustrating to know that all this time has passed and more & more kids are still being harmed. People should be outraged.
