Sex Offender Issues

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Why just do this in Texas since it's in the internet news now? We need this done in all states. I bet you'll find thousands of other government workers doing the same sexual abuse. You not that won't happen though, don't we? Texas, death capital of the country, can't even solve their own problems. We know where Bush and Gonzales cames from, right? Corruption head quarters!

Now how come we've not heard about this until now? And how come we are STILL not seeing it on the national spot light? Wonder why? NOTHING BUT CORRUPTION! WHERE IS THE TV NEWS COVERAGE ON THIS APPARENT COVER-UP?

Expert on loan for a week helped Buckeye State face its own problems two years ago.

When Ohio's governor appointed Thomas Stickrath to take over that state's Department of Youth Services in December 2004, the agency was reeling from stories of abuse.

Over the previous year and a half, a half-dozen guards had been indicted on sexual battery and dereliction charges.

One was accused of beating a girl so badly that she had a broken eardrum. Another was accused of being a lookout during a beating. In one overcrowded facility, boys traded sex for candy.

At least two federal lawsuits charged that youths were denied legal counsel and that the department failed to stop sexual abuse and to provide adequate medical care at a prison for girls. The previous director had just been forced to resign.

Though youth advocates remain divided about how much Stickrath improved Ohio's department, he arrives in Austin today on loan from Ohio to advise lawmakers about how to do the same for the embattled Texas Youth Commission.

"There are some parallels to where Ohio was approximately two years ago," Stickrath, 52, said in a telephone interview.

The Ohio Youth Services Department has less than half the population of the Texas agency, which had about 4,800 youths according to 2006 year-end statistics, but the steps Stickrath took in Ohio could provide some view of what Texas could expect.

The Texas Youth Commission is facing a sex abuse scandal and cover-up allegations.

At least one registered sex offender had been working at a youth prison; in another episode, commission board members seemed clueless about a sex abuse investigation of two administrators at a West Texas school.

"We knew we had to restructure the agency, and it's no secret that Ohio had similar problems," said Robert Black, a spokesman for Gov. Rick Perry. Stickrath "has experience turning around a youth agency that's fallen into disarray."

Black said Stickrath would be in Austin less than a week.

Texas will pay only his expenses, Black said.

In the director's message in the Ohio agency's 2005 annual report, Stickrath described a "back to basics" approach.

He cleaned house, replacing six of the eight facility superintendents. He adopted tougher hiring standards, and turnover among corrections officers has declined 50 percent in some facilities.

The department adopted a policy that spells out rape and sexual abuse to employees and wards and teaches them how to report misconduct.

The department conducted "vulnerability assessments" of youth prisons to figure out where assault could take place.

"We looked at every nook and cranny, from a design, use and scheduling point of view," Stickrath said in the interview. "We asked the question: Have we architecturally or schedule-wise designed failure? It doesn't result in a hugely expensive fix. It doesn't result in closing down a dormitory. It's this door should be locked or not locked; we need a larger window in this area, maybe a camera. It doesn't need huge capital investment."

In an effort to boost transparency, the department welcomed student and church volunteers to visit it.

And he insisted on keeping youths, some of whom are behind bars for sex crimes themselves, occupied.

"I have no tolerance for idleness among our kids," he said.

Meanwhile, Ohio lawmakers expanded their oversight of the Youth Services Department.

Some of the reports from the Correctional Institution Inspection Committee suggest that the Ohio youth department still has significant problems.

Studies found that in the first half of 2006, more than a year after Stickrath took office, there were 10 instances of staff members assaulting youths and 800 instances of youths assaulting other youths. Another report showed that a quarter of complaints lodged by youths during the first four months of 2006 met with no response.

Stickrath is a career prison man who began working for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction in 1978 as a law student. For the 14 years before he took over as head of the Department of Youth Services, he was the No. 2 official in the adult corrections department, with oversight of more than 90,000 offenders, 14,000 employees and a $1.6 billion budget.

Those who have worked with him say his methods are not as Dickensian as his name would suggest.

"He's not a loud, emotional person," said Sharon Weitzenhof, director of Ohio's juvenile justice coalition, an advocacy organization. "He's receptive to bringing in others from outside the organization."

"What he did was very systematic," Weitzenhof said. "There was no simple fix, no one big fix that solved everything."

But Kim Tandy, the head of the Children's Law Center in Kentucky, which has filed three class action lawsuits against the department over the past several years, said the department was far from a model one.

"They have a long way to go to clean up the culture and conditions within this department," Tandy said. "There continue to be kids assaulted and hurt in these facilities.

"There is a larger vision that needs to be created that brings back the concept of rehabilitation rather than warehousing."

Stickrath acknowledged that his department still had a lot of work ahead of it.

"You can set the tone overnight, set a course overnight," he said, "but cultural change takes some time."