"Justice Ignored"

INVESTIGATIVE CATEGORY

Texas Public Radio
09/28/2022

Despite all the attention sex crimes against children have received in the past decade and the millions of dollars in funding to stop sex trafficking, significant holes exist in how the state serves child victims of these crimes.

This multi-part series “Justice Ignored” shows how one girl’s life touched on some of the biggest gaps in those services and in police response, ultimately leading to some of the biggest news scandals of last year.

The series begins with a narrative about Shawna Rogers, a girl who suffered sex abuse for years and failed by law enforcement, whose lackadaisical approach likely led to the alleged perpetrator never facing trial.

Child Protective Services then failed to offer any mental health services to the child, who had already been spiraling, leaving the daunting task to her grandmother, whose attempts to obtain help were too late. The story sees a girl’s life quickly spin out of control, resulting in avoidable tragedies and death.

In the second story, we take a long look into the man who Shawna said sexually abused her for years. The story asks why his employer – a state-licensed foster placement agency – continued to employ him after allegations surfaced and then even after they told the state they had fired him.

It also explores how he evaded trial despite allegations going back a decade through extensive interviews with the family of another woman who made similar allegations.

After publication, legal threats were made against TPR, as were denials. TPR published another story showing how the denials did not match the organization's own documents. The state launched an investigation and validated TPRs reporting. It issued many citations, and the nonprofit announced in December it would shut down.

The last story examines the biggest sex abuse scandal of the year in Texas and how it resulted in no prosecutions. Allegations were made against The Refuge — a treatment center for girls who experienced sex trafficking — and described how an employee there had exploited two residents. We turned our spotlight onto this facility because it was here from which Shawna and another girl fled just weeks before her death. We spoke to her friends from treatment, who also happened to be at the center of the aforementioned scandal. We gave them the opportunity to react to how they were largely ignored and how they, like Shawna, were deprived of justice.

The investigation relied on extensive open records from federal courts, state agencies, and law enforcement, as well as months of reporting and dozens of interviews that at times required extensive travel across the state. It also required developing sourcing among numerous background sources some of who risked jobs and legal threats to come forward.

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Submitted by Paul Flahive.