New details have emerged about two young teenagers who authorities say were sexually assaulted in Burnet County, Texas, in October while under the care and custody of the state’s Department of Family and Protective Services.
The foster youth, who were just 13 and 16 at the time of the alleged assaults, are among the hundreds who have been poorly cared for in makeshift settings in hotels, offices and temporary shelters.
A report filed in federal court Friday by monitors overseeing a yearslong lawsuit against the state and the Department of Family and Protective Services outlines the alarming new information about the lacking supervision of the younger girl:
The 13 year-old victim had run away from foster care multiple times and had been reported missing nine times between 2021 and 2022. And the October assault was not the first she had survived. After running away from a foster care placement two years ago, the court monitors found, she was abducted from a gas station, drugged and sexually assaulted by two men.
By late September, she was reportedly living with a woman who said she took the girl in after the 24-year-old man the girl had been living with left. But Child Protective Services deemed the woman’s house to be an “unauthorized placement,” and removed her.
The child welfare agency next cast the girl into another dubious designation, categorizing her a “child without placement” or “CWOP” — a term that has become commonplace in the field when kids are left to sleep in makeshift, unlicensed places such as county offices, hotels and churches.
Still, someone was supposed to be keeping close watch on the vulnerable 13-year-old. Court monitors revealed she had a “service plan” requiring “constant line of sight” supervision because she was at high risk of running away.
Then her vulnerability was treated like a crime, the recent report reveals. When the girl ran again, she was taken by law enforcement to a juvenile detention facility for several days, before being brought back to another CWOP setting, a temporary shelter.
That shelter was a building owned by Highland Lakes Crisis Network, according to The Texas Tribune. The religious nonprofit supports disaster victims, foster families and others in Burnet and Llano counties and had been providing the building for the Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) to use for children without proper foster care placements. An agreement between the nonprofit and the department stipulated that up to five children could be housed at the site at a time, with supervision from two adults, including at least one CPS caseworker.
On Oct. 17, after the child went to bed, a department staffer reported her missing from the bedroom, and the window open.
“It is not clear whether the caregivers at either CWOP location had been advised that the child’s plan of service required line-of-sight supervision because DFPS did not open investigations following the runaway episodes from these settings,” the court monitors stated.
“We can confirm the protocol for runaways was followed,” said Marissa Gonzales, a spokesperson for Department of Family and Protective Services, said in an email this afternoon.
Gonzales declined to comment further on the case.
A different spokesperson for the department, Patrick Crimmins, told The Texas Tribune that “It is important to state immediately that the safety of children and youth in foster care is paramount, and the reason our agency exists is for their welfare and protection. Nothing means more, and we will continue to work to find ways to safeguard those in our care,” Crimmins said.
As The Imprint reported last month, the 13 year-old and an older teenage girl were alleged victims of sexual assault by two men on the October day they left the “CWOP” shelter. The court monitors’ report does not provide additional details on the older teen and both girls’ identities are being kept confidential. But the tragic crime illustrated the well-known hazards for teens in these settings: young people who are known to be struggling with weighty matters of family loss, the trauma resulting from childhood abuse and mental health challenges — without the anchor of family support or a consistent home.
A dire lack of homes for such older foster youth leaves them vulnerable to exploitation, advocates and child welfare experts have consistently warned the agency and the courts.
The two Texas girls were reportedly walking to Walmart when they were picked up by the two men, both 41, who drove them to a hotel in Burnet, where the alleged assaults took place.
The two suspects have been charged with multiple counts of child sexual abuse and are being held in the Burnet County Jail, according to court records.
The crimes prompted the owner of the shelter where the girls had been staying to terminate the agreement with the Department of Family and Protective Services, citing concerns over the children’s health and safety, according to the The Texas Tribune report.
State officials report that the number of children in these unlicensed settings has declined from as many as 416 children statewide in July 2021, to roughly 65 per night. But monitors Deborah Fowler and Kevin Ryan, reporting to U.S. District Court Judge Janis Jack, continue to sound the alarm on the risks of these temporary placements.
In the most recent report, the child welfare experts questioned “whether the agency is adequately protecting children from a serious risk of harm when it continues to house children in CWOP settings.”
Their conclusion? “Based upon the Monitors’ review of DFPS investigations of CWOP settings over the past 18 months, the answer frequently is no,” they wrote.
Responding to questions about how tragedies for kids without placements could be avoided, Kate Murphy, director of child protection policy at the nonprofit organization Texans Care for Children, said the best way is to try to avoid foster care altogether.
“Something we know about ‘children without placement’ is that most are older, and have behavioral health or mental health needs,” Murphy said. She noted that roughly one-third are placed in foster care simply because “their parent didn’t know how to help them or couldn’t afford to help them.”
To fix that, Murphy is urging the Legislature to make better use of state investments and to expand the availability of mental health and substance abuse services, which are eligible for federal matching funds.
“Kids continue to experience trauma when they are bounced around from placements, and those additional experiences of instability within care can also lead to them being without placement — so their needs continue to worsen,” Murphy said.
The assaults reported in Burnet County are a clear example. After the October assaults, the 13-year-old girl was placed in a psychiatric hospital for multiple weeks, where medical staff learned she was pregnant. The child said she was impregnated by her adult ex-boyfriend, according to the report.
Next, she was put in a foster home after her hospitalization but fled that placement too, alleging that the caregivers were “emotionally and physically abusive,” according to the report. The authors noted that another child in the same foster home had also reported abuse there.
The 13-year-old — in her short life marred by numerous caregivers’ failures — was in yet another foster home as of mid-January.