Reese Oxner, The Texas Tribune

Gov. Greg Abbott and Texas Department of Public Safety officials have walked back some of their initial statements about the shooting and the authorities’ response after contradictory information came to light. Authorities first stated that officers engaged with the gunman before he entered the school; they later corrected themselves and said he went inside unopposed.

Details of how long it took for officers to reenter the school after their first confrontation with the shooter — about 1 hour and 15 minutes — have also sparked widespread outrage and criticism.

Here is a timeline of the events according to the most recent information available.

Editor’s note: This timeline will continue to be updated with new information as it becomes available.

Disclosure: The New York Times has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2022/05/27/uvalde-texas-school-shooting-timeline/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

By Reese Oxner, The Texas Tribune

AURORA, Colo. — Texas nurses Jessica Phillips and Keshia McDonald stared at each other in disbelief when they heard the news that abortions would soon be outlawed in the state.

The two were among hundreds of caregivers who learned that the U.S. Supreme Court had overturned Roe vs Wade as a national conference for nurses who specialize in women’s health was starting in Aurora, Colorado, last week.

“My first reaction was devastation,” said McDonald, who was at a workshop with Phillips and other nurses Saturday. “I never would’ve expected this in 2022, and I’m really just uncertain about the future of women’s health.”

The Supreme Court decided in a 6-3 vote to undo a nearly half-century precedent that had affirmed access to abortion as a constitutional right. It will now be up to each state to determine their own abortion laws, and half of them are poised to ban or severely limit the procedure. Through a “trigger law” that goes into effect 30 days after the Supreme Court releases a formal judgment, Texas will soon ban all abortions from the moment of fertilization with narrow exceptions only to save the life of a pregnant patient or prevent “substantial impairment of major bodily function.”

Many nurses and other health care providers have raised the alarm that banning abortion will have wide-sweeping effects, affecting lifesaving medical procedures beyond elective abortions. Medical professionals now worry about having to deal with complex legal questions about what they can and can’t do, sometimes in the middle of care in which every second matters.

No easy answers

The difficult questions started after Senate Bill 8 was passed in Texas. Phillips said after that statute was enacted, effectively banning abortions after about six weeks of gestation, she was shocked to hear physicians grapple with what they legally were allowed to do. And it’ll only get worse now that Roe was overturned.

[Abortion funds languish in legal turmoil, their leaders fearing jail time if they help Texans]

“The law isn’t specific in what scenarios abortions are allowed — but it also shouldn’t be. Physicians should be the ones making that call,” said Phillips, who was a labor and delivery nurse for 17 years and now uses her expertise working for a health nonprofit. “A patient’s health should be between her and those providing care to her.”

Throughout the first days of the Association of Women’s Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses conference, which started Saturday, medical professionals have gone over what the myriad abortion laws in their home states allow them to do now that Roe’s protections are gone. Texas’ trigger law banning abortions is expected to go into effect in about two months.

Phillips said these situations might be hypothetical, but they all stem from real-world experiences that are impacted by the Supreme Court’s ruling.

One example discussed was what to do if someone’s water breaks very early into the pregnancy. This could cause an infection, and the fetus is unlikely to survive, Phillips said.

Before Roe was repealed, doctors would typically perform an abortion and other treatments to keep the patient healthy. But under the Texas trigger law, physicians would be faced with a conundrum, she said. When is the patient sick enough to warrant lifesaving care? Is it right away, since doctors know that the patient will get an infection that could complicate other care or put her safety at risk? Or does the doctor first have to let the patient reach that point to avoid legal liability?

There are more and more questions like these every day, Phillips said.

“When is it considered grave enough to her health? Is it immediately because you know the outcome or do you have to wait for her to get sicker and sicker? Because you also have to consider that, if you wait for her to get sicker, delivering her is more complicated because sometimes they end up hemorrhaging or they’re already in organ failure or all sorts of things,” Phillips said.

Doctors will have to second-guess decisions not based on medical best practices but on abortion laws, she said. She fears it will lead to patients dying or not receiving the care they need.

“To hear physicians who’ve been doing this forever even consider having to let someone get sick blows my mind,” she added. “It’s not something I’ve in my 17-year career ever heard of.”

There are also times when doctors perform abortions because they know a pregnancy will not be successful and the baby would die after being delivered, Phillips said. But under Texas’ laws allowed after Roe was repealed, pregnant people would be forced to deliver.

“That’s a very emotionally devastating experience,” Phillips said. “And we know Texas does not have adequate mental health services.”

Jonathan Webb, CEO of the Association of Women’s Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses, which has more than 2,000 members in Texas, said the organization has started conversations with prosecutors to help educate its members about what medical procedures might now be deemed criminal in their states.

Webb knows from experience the tough decisions parents sometimes must make: His wife was once diagnosed with an ectopic pregnancy, in which an embryo implants outside the uterus. Proceeding with the pregnancy would have been fatal to his wife.

“We had to make a difficult decision over prioritizing her life over the life of our unborn child,” Webb said.

He can’t imagine being unable to make that decision on their own because of state law roadblocks.

The impact on people of color and the profession

AWHONN board member Suzanne Baird was working at Texas Children’s Pavilion for Women in Houston when the state’s so-called sonogram law went into effect in 2012.

The law required women who wanted an abortion to first get a sonogram 24 hours before the procedure and have the doctor make the fetal heartbeat audible to the patient.

Baird said she saw firsthand as women, who were told they had a nonviable pregnancy and that the fetus would not survive, were made to see their unborn child one more time.

“It was just cruel,” Baird said, who was assistant director of nursing clinic program development at the hospital.

She was also in Texas in 2013 when the Legislature passed a law requiring doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at hospitals within 30 miles of an abortion clinic — a move that she said resulted in many clinics closing.

But back then, even as those restrictions went into effect, Baird said she couldn’t imagine that one day Roe v. Wade would be overturned — and the huge impact the decision would have on patients in Texas.

Baird was one of roughly 2,200 people attending the AWHONN conference just outside Denver. She was sitting in a board meeting Friday morning when the Supreme Court announced its decision to overturn the law. With Roe’s end, nurses anticipate an even more difficult world for their patients who face high-risk pregnancies in which the mother or fetus’ survival is in danger. Doctors and nurses will face even more difficult decisions about when to intervene and recommend terminating a high-risk pregnancy for fear of criminalization. Birth rates will likely go up and Baird fears maternal mortality rates will follow, she said.

The United States has the highest maternal mortality rate of all developed countries, with significant racial and ethnic disparities. Texas has among the highest pregnancy-related deaths in the nation.

And unsafe abortions will increase because of the ban, said Sandra K. Cesario, AWHONN board president and the doctorate program director at Texas Woman’s University in Houston.

Abortion opponents have presented adoption as the solution for unwanted pregnancies, but abortion stops pregnancy, while adoption requires pregnant people to give birth, which comes with a host of potential complications that disproportionately affect people of color and low-income people.

“People of color often don’t have adequate access to health care anyway — and now will have their options completely eliminated,” McDonald said.

With Roe revoked, inequities about who can and can’t control their reproductive health care will only increase, Baird said. Tennessee, where she now works, has a trigger ban in effect that will make abortion illegal in the state within a minimum of 30 days after Roe is overturned. She anticipates surrounding states will pursue more abortion restrictions, which means patients may have to travel across at least two states to get abortion care if they so choose.

“Not all women will be able to do that,” she said. “The wealthy will be able to do that.”

Cesario reflected back on some of the actions she’s taken as a nurse that helped end a patient’s pregnancy to save their life — and that would now be criminalized.

“I guess I could be put in jail for things I did,” Cesario said.

McDonald, who is a nurse manager at an outpatient setting in Central Texas, said the end of Roe has complicated a lot, including her plans for her career.

Both McDonald and Phillips fear that the repercussions of the Supreme Court’s ruling could exacerbate the ongoing shortage of nursing staff. Many nurses have been deeply affected by burnout from the COVID-19 pandemic, and the pair believes Texas’ looming abortion ban will send further doubts into practicing and would-be caregivers.

“This makes the future so scary. We don’t know what the decisions will be,” McDonald said. “We don’t want to withhold care from people.”

While discussing the future of women’s and maternal health care, AWHONN members found some solace in each other this weekend. Phillips and McDonald said it was emotionally draining and difficult to learn about the Supreme Court’s decision, but it did help to be surrounded by a community of health workers — all of whom just want what’s best for their patients’ health.

“I can’t imagine having to learn about it with anyone else,” Phillips said.

Uncertainty for the future of health care hovered over the planned programming for the nurse’s conference. Attendees were soon asking if there was anything they could do. Hours after the Supreme Court announcement, those who arrived to the conference a day early began looking for any protests they could attend in nearby Denver.

Baird said she knew what her sign would say: “I can’t believe we still have to march for this.”

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This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2022/06/29/texas-nurses-abortion-womens-health/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

By Reese Oxner, The Texas Tribune

Texas is planning to add enough electric vehicle charging stations throughout the state to support 1 million electric vehicles with dozens of new stations to allow for easier long-distance travel.

In a draft plan released this month, the Texas Department of Transportation broke down a five-year plan to create a network of chargers throughout the state, starting along main corridors and interstate highways before building stations in rural areas.

The plan is to have charging stations every 50 miles along most non-business interstate routes.

In most other areas in the state, there will be charging stations within 70 miles, according to the plan. Each station is designed to have multiple stalls so there will likely be one available whenever someone stops to charge.

The chargers will be high-powered at 150kW, able to bring most electric vehicles from 10% to 80% in about half an hour, according to the report.

The funding is coming from the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act passed last year, which is estimated to allocate about $408 million over five years to Texas for the purpose of expanding its electric vehicle charging network. No funds from the state budget will be used. Nationally, the goal is to create a network of 500,000 convenient and reliable electric vehicle chargers by 2030. In total from the infrastructure act, Texas is expected to receive about $35.44 billion over five years for roads, bridges, pipes, ports, broadband access and other projects.

Less than 1% of Texans’ registered vehicles are electric. As of May 31, there were 129,010 electric vehicles registered in Texas, according to the report.

“However, since 2020, the total number of electric vehicles across Texas has nearly tripled as more people adopt the technology,” TxDOT stated in its report. “With rapidly growing adoption rates, it is necessary to ensure Texas will be able to meet the demand of these new vehicles on the road.”

The state is gathering public comment on the plan, after which it will be finalized. To receive the funds, TxDOT must submit a finalized plan by Aug. 1 to the Federal Highway Administration.

Officials plan to award contracts for construction starting in January.

During the first year of implementation, Texas plans to add around 48 new locations to satisfy the 50-mile FHWA requirement. This is in addition to 27 existing private sector locations and 26 planned locations funded by a separate grant.

The next year, the focus will turn to stations in rural counties, small urban areas and areas advised by metropolitan planning organizations.

After that, during the third through fifth year of implementation, Texas will continue building out charging infrastructure in smaller and rural areas. The report states that charging stations might be equipped with a combination of solar and battery equipment to supplement their power supplies.

Gov. Greg Abbott stressed the importance of including rural areas in TxDOT’s plan in a March 22 letter.

“Texas’ sheer volume of roadway miles leaves ample opportunity for EV charging deployment. The plan should ensure that every Texan can access the infrastructure they need to charge an EV,” Abbott wrote. “Additionally, I direct TxDOT and stakeholders to include in the plan a way for Texans to easily get from Beaumont to El Paso and Texline to Brownsville in an EV–with a focus on rural placement and connectivity.”

Chandra Bhat, a University of Texas transportation engineering professor and the director of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Center on Data-Supported Transportation Operations and Planning, said the additional charging stations are a welcome upgrade to Texas transportation. Some of Bhat’s research has been funded by TxDOT.

Bhat said there are several barriers to electric vehicle adoption by consumers: the upfront cost, anxiety over how far a driver can travel and the wait times for charging.

This new plan addresses range anxiety by providing many options only 50 miles apart — however, it doesn’t address cost or fully address wait times, he said. Although the planned chargers will be high speed, it still takes around half an hour, he said. A driver might not know how long they may have to wait if someone else is already using the stalls.

That uncertainty can cause consumers to pass on purchasing electric vehicles altogether, he said.

Bhat said he thinks allowing drivers to reserve charging stations at specific times might help reduce that uncertainty. But still, Bhat said he is optimistic that more people will adopt electric vehicles in Texas due to the planned infrastructure upgrades. He also hopes the state will invest in putting information in front of consumers about the increased availability of chargers.

“We will see a clear uptick in the next two or three years, I believe,” Bhat said. “And if we get an announcement that batteries are going to be lasting longer and are going to be less expensive, you're gonna see them bought by the droves.”

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This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2022/06/20/texas-electric-vehicle-charging-stations/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

State Sen. Roland Gutierrez, D-San Antonio, said during a press conference the Uvalde school district’s police chief, Pete Arredondo, wasn’t made aware of 911 calls that students inside Robb Elementary School made around 30 minutes after the gunman entered, including a student begging for police to take action. The shooter killed 19 students and two teachers during his siege on the school.

Instead, Gutierrez said 911 calls were relayed to the Uvalde Police Department, which operates separately from the school district's police, and Arredondo — who was leading law enforcement’s response on the scene — was left in the dark.

Gutierrez described the lack of coordination as a “system failure.”

Arredondo has been widely criticized by state leaders and safety experts in the days after the shooting for his handling of the situation. It took more than an hour to breach the classroom where the gunman was holed up. The delay was contrary to the way law enforcement is trained based on best practices that were widely adopted after the 1999 school shooting in Columbine, Colorado, which recommend engaging with active shooters as soon as possible.

Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw condemned Arredondo’s response, saying he treated the situation as a “barricaded suspect” rather than an active shooter situation. McCraw said Arredondo believed no children were in danger, presumably because he did not know any survived inside the classroom.

In modern active shooter tactics, police are trained to immediately take down gunmen instead of waiting for backup or additional resources in order to save as many lives as possible. Instead, law enforcement at the scene of the Uvalde shooting requested “specialty equipment” and body armor and organized a tactical team to reenter the school, taking over an hour to take out the gunman despite having arrived at the scene within minutes after the shooter entered the school.

A key question in the days after the shooting has been whether Arredondo was informed of the multiple calls made by students inside the classrooms. Gutierrez on Thursday claimed he was not.

“There is blame enough to go around,” Gutierrez said during the news conference. “There was human error and there was system error.”

Other recent revelations have raised the question of what law enforcement knew about the situation inside the school while officers were stationed outside. The New York Times reported that Ruben Ruiz, a school district police officer serving under Arredondo, had a heartbreaking conversation with his wife, Eva Mireles, a teacher who was inside Robb Elementary, just a few minutes before she was killed.

And Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin said while these events were unfolding, a would-be negotiator sat across the street in a nearby funeral home frantically trying to reach the gunman via cellphone, but they were never able to talk to him, according to The Washington Post.

“We need to know what law enforcement was doing, what radio procedures were followed or not followed, who were the 911 operators and such,” Gutierrez said, emphasizing he doesn’t blame just one individual or entity for the situation.

Zach Despart contributed to this story.

Disclosure: New York Times has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2022/06/02/uvalde-shooting-roland-gutierrez-911-calls/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

The Uvalde school district’s police chief — who made the decision to wait for more resources rather than confront the gunman sooner — had stopped cooperating with state investigators and had not responded to requests for information for over two days, the Texas Department of Public Safety said.

And the agency walked back an assertion that a teacher at Robb Elementary School propped open a back door prior to the shooting, allowing the gunman to enter and kill 19 students and two teachers. Earlier Tuesday the teacher’s lawyer had pushed back on the state’s account.

Texas Rangers investigating the response to the shooting want to continue talking to Pete Arredondo, chief of police at Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District. But he hasn’t answered a request made two days ago for a follow-up interview, according to two DPS spokespeople.

The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District’s police department and the Uvalde Police Department have otherwise been cooperating with the Rangers’ investigation, DPS spokesperson Travis Considine said.

Arredondo did not immediately return a call requesting comment.

Amid the turmoil, Texas’ largest police union — the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas, or CLEAT — urged its members Tuesday in a statement to “cooperate fully” with investigations into the police response to the Uvalde massacre — though they didn’t name Arredondo.

Both the police chief and the school teacher had been implicated by DPS officials as, in effect, having failed at their jobs. The change in narrative is likely to deepen the mistrust surrounding the investigation. Already, as in other mass shootings, conspiracy theories and misinformation have begun to proliferate online.

While the U.S. Department of Justice has agreed to review the response to the mass shooting, the ultimate responsibility for carrying out a credible, thorough and transparent investigation rests with the state — and so far, state officials have not offered much confidence in their abilities to carry out such a probe.

In the school teacher’s case, Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw said Friday that the unnamed teacher had propped open the door through which the gunman entered the school. DPS now says a teacher shut that door but its automatic lock malfunctioned. Considine said DPS is investigating why the lock didn’t work.

The reversal came hours after a lawyer representing the teacher told the San Antonio Express-News that the teacher closed the door before the shooter entered the building.

“She remembers pulling the door closed while telling 911 that he was shooting,” Don Flanary, the teacher’s lawyer, told the Express-News. “She thought the door would lock because that door is always supposed to be locked.”

Flanary did not return requests for comment from The Texas Tribune on Tuesday.

The revelation was the latest addition to what has become an almost daily need to clean up past statements by state leaders. DPS officials and Gov. Greg Abbott have walked back several of their initial statements about the shooting and the authorities’ response to the call after contradictory information came to light.

For example, Abbott and McCraw said the gunman encountered a police officer before he entered the school. McCraw later said the shooter went inside unopposed. When asked about the discrepancy, Abbott said he was “livid” to have been “misled” in some of his earliest briefings on the massacre.

CLEAT, the police union, blamed state officials Tuesday for “a great deal of false and misleading information in the aftermath of this tragedy,” some of which “came from the very highest levels of government and law enforcement.”

“Sources that Texans once saw as iron-clad and completely reliable have now been proven false,” the union said in a statement.

Police officers who responded to the shooting at Robb Elementary have faced heated criticism from parents who said officers did not act quickly enough to stop the 18-year-old gunman.

That criticism reached a new level on Friday when McCraw told reporters that officers did not try to stop the shooter sooner because the district’s police chief wanted to wait for backup and equipment before confronting the gunman — even though 911 calls confirmed that students were still trapped inside with the shooter.

McCraw said Arredondo, who he did not name, treated the gunman as a “barricaded suspect” rather than an active shooter and believed children were no longer at risk — which McCraw called a mistake.

A tactical unit made up of U.S. Border Patrol agents eventually breached the classroom and killed the gunman — more than an hour after the gunman first arrived on campus.

Arredondo, who has been chief of police since March 2020, was set to be sworn in as a Uvalde city council member Tuesday, but the event was postponed. Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin said in a press release that nothing in city law prevented him from taking his seat.

Arredondo’s law enforcement career spans nearly three decades, including 15 years at the Uvalde Police Department. He completed an active shooter response training in December, according to Texas Commission on Law Enforcement records.

The first funeral for one of the victims of the attack was held Tuesday, for Amerie Jo Garza. She was 10.

Disclosure: CLEAT has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2022/05/31/uvalde-school-police-chief-investigation/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

Texas’ top law enforcement official admitted Friday that police officers made key errors when responding to a shooting that left 19 children and two teachers dead at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde.

Police officers did not act sooner to stop the 18-year-old gunman because a supervising officer at the scene wanted to wait for backup and equipment, said Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety. By the time a specialized team of federal officers arrived and entered the school — they had to get keys from a janitor to open locked classroom doors — more than an hour had passed since the shooter arrived at the school, McCraw said.

That was a mistake, McCraw said at a Friday press conference.

"Of course it was not the right decision,” McCraw said. “It was the wrong decision."

“When it comes to an active shooter, you don't have to wait on tactical gear, plain and simple,” he said.

McCraw gave more details about the shooting Friday, revealing that the gunman entered the school through a back door that minutes before had been propped open by a teacher. He said a police officer employed by the school district responded to an initial 911 call about an armed man near the school but drove past the gunman and mistook a teacher for the shooter.

McCraw also detailed harrowing 911 calls by teachers and students trapped inside with the gunman, including one at 12:47 p.m. — more than an hour after the shooter entered the school — when a student begged the 911 operator: “Please send the police now.”

Weeks before the shooting, the gunman discussed his plans to buy a gun with others on Instagram, McCraw said.

Law enforcement officials have faced increasing questions in the days since the shooting about whether officers on the scene could have acted more quickly to stop the gunman. Videos circulated on social media show desperate parents begging officers to enter the school, and parents have reported being handcuffed and Tased by law enforcement officers when they implored officers to act or tried to retrieve their children.

At the same time, DPS officials — who are leading the shooting investigation along with local police — have often given conflicting details about how the police response played out.

For example, DPS officials initially said the 18-year-old gunman encountered a school district police officer when he arrived on school grounds — and gave conflicting accounts about whether the officer fired at the gunman.

On Thursday, the agency reversed course, saying that no campus police officer confronted the gunman when he stepped onto the premises.

Uvalde police received the first call around 11:20 a.m. Tuesday, when the gunman’s grandmother called 911 to report that he had shot her in the face at her home about two minutes from Robb Elementary. The shooter fled in his grandmother’s pickup truck and crashed it in a ditch near the school at 11:28 a.m.

McCraw said the gunman fired at two passersby on the street, then went to the school, where he fired shots at the building from outside before entering the building at 11:33 a.m. through the back door that a teacher had left propped open.

Once inside, the gunman entered a pair of connected classrooms — Rooms 111 and 112 — where he killed 19 children and two teachers and wounded 17 others. McCraw said the gunman fired more than 100 rounds at that point.

Local police officers arrived at the school and entered at 11:35 a.m., McCraw said, but fell back after two officers were shot and wounded by the gunman. Officers tried to negotiate with the shooter, officials have said, but the man “did not respond.”

McCraw said the commander on site at that point treated the situation as a “barricaded suspect” and thought children were no longer at risk, which he also called a mistake.

“There was plenty of officers [at the scene] to do what needed to be done,” McCraw said.

By Reese Oxner, The Texas Tribune

"Child welfare monitors say there’s “ample evidence” kids were abused at Bastrop foster care facility, disputing Texas Rangers" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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Court-appointed watchdogs of Texas’ troubled foster care system found "ample evidence" that former sex trafficking victims were abused at a foster care facility, contradicting the Texas Rangers’ findings earlier this month.

After reviewing thousands of documents and recordings, the monitors said in a court filing Monday there is evidence to substantiate allegations of child sex abuse, exploitation, neglectful supervision and physical abuse at The Refuge Ranch in Bastrop. The monitors also called a letter from Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw to Gov. Greg Abbott, which said there was no evidence kids at the shelter were sexually abused or trafficked, “was, at best, premature.”

Two of the Refuge’s residents told shelter leaders in late January that one of their caretakers offered them drugs in exchange for them to take nude pictures of themselves. The alleged perpetrator was fired after the initial report, according to Refuge leaders, and is under criminal investigation, according to McCraw’s March 16 letter to Abbott.

Abbott ordered the Texas Rangers to investigate the situation shortly after it became public in a federal court hearing. The shelter has been temporarily ordered to close.

Staff members also were accused of helping children to run away from the facility. Four employees were fired and are also being investigated, McCraw said in his letter. One has also been arrested for lying to the FBI, he wrote. Details of both incidents came out in previous reports and hearings.

“There were no allegations or evidence that these residents were sexually abused or assaulted by anyone,” McCraw wrote in initial findings released less than a week after The Texas Rangers started its investigation.

At least one child victim was not interviewed by a Texas Ranger “until well after the DPS letter became public, and that the child was upset by the Rangers’ conclusions,” according to the monitors’ report.

DPS and the governor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment late Monday. The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services declined to comment.

The monitors’ report was filed as part of a yearslong lawsuit over foster care in Texas. Paul Yetter, the attorney representing foster care children in the federal lawsuit, previously disputed the Texas Rangers’ assertion that there was no evidence of sexual abuse or assault when it first came out, calling it “surprising and extremely troubling” since the investigation is ongoing.

A court hearing is scheduled for 9 a.m. Wednesday in which state leaders, attorneys and U.S. District Court Judge Janis Jack will discuss the situation at The Refuge. Jack ordered state officials to provide the recorded interviews of the children who were placed at the shelter. In 2015, Jack had ruled that the state was violating foster children’s constitutional right to be free from an unreasonable risk of harm, saying that children “often age out of care more damaged than when they entered.”

The monitors wrote in Monday’s report that there were repetitive “managerial lapses” and serious risks to the children’s safety.

“The monitoring team’s review revealed evidence that numerous children were denied a safe placement while at The Refuge,” the monitors wrote. “There is ample evidence of violations of high and medium-high standards related to child safety, and of child abuse, neglect or exploitation. The evidence of serious risks to child safety at The Refuge includes, but is not limited to, a strong possibility of human trafficking based on staff’s inducement of children to sell nude photographs in exchange for drugs.”

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This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2022/03/28/texas-foster-care-child-abuse/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

A state district judge on Wednesday morning will hear arguments from abortion providers challenging Texas' restrictive abortion law in what could be the first court hearing over the statute's constitutionality.

David Peeples, a retired state magistrate judge, will preside over the hearing, which starts at 9 a.m. and is expected to last all day. Peeples will hear over a dozen cases filed in state court challenging Texas' law, which effectively bans abortions after about six weeks.

These lawsuits — filed by Planned Parenthood, doctors, social workers, abortion fund organizations, practical support networks and lawyers — were consolidated by Texas' multidistrict litigation panel and will be heard together. The plaintiffs have asked that the court declare Texas' new law unconstitutional.

"In short, SB8's enforcement mechanism, created to subvert one constitutional right, violates the Texas and United States Constitutions," wrote attorneys representing the plaintiffs.

It's unclear what the outcome of the hearing will be or what weight it could hold overall, but it's the latest challenge against the controversial law to make the courts.

The lawsuits target Texas Right to Life, a prominent anti-abortion organization that helped draft Texas' law and has vowed to sue violators — although the group has not yet filed suits against anyone.

Texas Right to Life, in an October statement on its website, said it believes these lawsuits will not affect the overall way the law is enforced in the state.

"These lawsuits do nothing towards preventing the Texas Heartbeat Act from being enforced against other individuals and groups within the abortion industry, should they violate the law," the organization said.

The U.S. Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments in two other cases challenging the abortion law, is also expected to rule soon on whether to allow the challenges to proceed. During those hearings, the majority of justices expressed concerns with the way the Texas law is enforced. The statute forbids state or law officials from enforcing it, instead relying on private citizens to sue those who violate it.

Wednesday's hearing can be viewed live on this YouTube channel.

This is a developing story; check back for more.

A federal judge temporarily blocked Texas' near-total abortion ban Wednesday as part of a lawsuit the Biden administration launched against the state over its new law that bars abortions as early as six weeks of pregnancy.

U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman in Austin — a 2014 Obama nominee — issued a temporary restraining order to block enforcement of the law after the court held arguments from federal and state attorneys on Friday.

It's unclear how Pitman's order may affect access to abortions in the state. The law forced all major abortion clinics to stop offering abortions barred under the law and some have stopped offering the procedure altogether — out of fear of litigation. The law is constructed in a way where people who violate the law, even while it is being temporarily blocked, could be liable to litigation if the law's enforcement was reinstated and any existing suits could continue.

Despite the threat of retroactive lawsuits, the Center for Reproductive Rights said the clinics and doctors it represents "hope to resume full abortion services as soon as they are able." The organization acknowledged that the order is temporary and that the state will likely appeal — but called it a "critical first step."

"For 36 days, patients have been living in a state of panic, not knowing where or when they'd be able to get abortion care," Nancy Northup, president & CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a statement Wednesday. "The cruelty of this law is endless."

It's also unclear how long the order will stand. Pitman's ruling almost certainly will be appealed to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which is known as perhaps the nation's most conservative appellate court. The court has already paused court proceedings in another lawsuit Pitman is overseeing that was lodged by abortion providers over the state's law. The U.S. Supreme Court could eventually be asked to step in on this case.

The ruling is the strongest judicial action so far against Texas' abortion law, which went into effect more than a month ago.

Pitman's order primarily forbids state court judges and court clerks from accepting suits that the law, passed as Senate Bill 8, allows. Pitman ordered the state to publish his order on all "public-facing court websites with a visible, easy-to-understand instruction to the public that S.B. 8 lawsuits will not be accepted by Texas courts."

He called the case "exceptional" and ordered that the state and "any other persons or entities acting on its behalf" be blocked from enforcing the statute. Pitman gave a scathing response to Texas' request that the court allow it to seek an appeal prior to blocking the law's enforcement.

"The State has forfeited the right to any such accommodation by pursuing an unprecedented and aggressive scheme to deprive its citizens of a significant and well-established constitutional right," Pitman wrote in his order. "From the moment S.B. 8 went into effect, women have been unlawfully prevented from exercising control over their lives in ways that are protected by the Constitution."

He acknowledged that his order could be appealed in another court and added: "this Court will not sanction one more day of this offensive deprivation of such an important right."

The Department of Justice sued Texas on Sept. 9 and alleged the law was deliberately constructed to flout constitutional rights by making it difficult to challenge in court. But the state responded that just because the law is difficult to challenge judicially doesn't mean it should be overturned.

The statute bars abortions in the state as early as six weeks — a period before many know they're pregnant. It has been able to survive legal challenges unscathed before Friday because of the novel way the law was written.

By empowering anyone in the nation to file lawsuits against a provider or person who aids someone in getting an abortion and barring state enforcement, SB 8 makes it difficult to name the correct defendants in the lawsuits that would block enforcement of the law.

Earlier this year, the Supreme Court decided to not block the law in a late-night 5-4 vote — on the day it went into effect. The court cited procedural difficulties and tossed that legal case back to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where it currently sits. But justices stressed that the court was not ruling on the statute's constitutionality, namely not overruling Roe v. Wade, which helped established a constitutional right to an abortion.

The Department of Justice's case is one of many lawsuits filed in an effort to block the enforcement of Texas' abortion law.

Texas abortion providers made a last-minute plea to the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to overturn the state's new abortion restrictions law, which is set to come into effect Wednesday and would ban the procedure as early as six weeks of pregnancy — a period when many women are unaware that they are pregnant.

Providers and abortion advocacy groups say this would affect at least 85% of the abortions taking place in the state. The law would allow members of the general public to sue those who might have violated the restrictions, which providers call a bounty hunting scheme. In the Supreme Court emergency filing, attorneys for providers said the law would likely close clinics across the state and "immediately and catastrophically reduce abortion access in Texas."

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on Sunday denied a request to block the bill and canceled a hearing scheduled for Monday where at least 20 abortion providers hoped to testify against the measures, which would be some of the strictest in the country. Many providers had sued in an attempt to overturn the law.

"In less than two days, Texas politicians will have effectively overturned Roe v. Wade," Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a statement Monday. "We have filed an emergency motion in the Supreme Court to block this law before clinics are forced to turn patients away. Patients will have to travel out of state – in the middle of a pandemic – to receive constitutionally guaranteed healthcare. And many will not have the means to do so. It's cruel, unconscionable, and unlawful."

Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, echoed Northup's statements and said her organization would exhaust every avenue to fight the law from coming into effect.

"The harm this law will cause will be insurmountable for far too many Texans, particularly Black, Latino, Indigenous people, those with low incomes, and Texans in rural areas who already face significant barriers to care," Johnson said in a statement. "We are asking the Supreme Court to uphold fifty years of precedent and ensure Texans won't be denied their constitutional right to abortion."

Kim Schwartz, media and communication director for the anti-abortion organization Texas Right to Life, said the providers' request to the Supreme Court is not surprising but her organization is confident that the law will be upheld. Her organization helped draft the abortion restrictions bill, dubbed by supporters the "Texas Heartbeat Act," and praised the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals for denying the providers' request to block the law.

"The Texas Heartbeat Act is the strongest pro-life legislation to pass the Texas Legislature since Roe v. Wade," Schwartz said in an interview. "This is a huge victory and could save thousands upon thousands of preborn babies. We look forward to the day that it's going to be enforced — hopefully very soon."

Whole Woman's Health and Planned Parenthood said in statements they would continue offering all of its abortion services up until the moment that the law comes into effect.

Disclosure: Planned Parenthood has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton will no longer block users from his personal account for expressing "First Amendment-protected viewpoints" as part of an agreement to end a lawsuit where plaintiffs say they were unconstitutionally blocked for criticizing him or his policies on the platform, according to a filing late Friday in a federal court in Austin.

Paxton had already unblocked the named plaintiffs of the lawsuit in May, a month after the lawsuit was filed, but the latest filing confirmed he has now unblocked any other accounts. The ACLU of Texas, a freedom of speech organization that represented the plaintiffs in the lawsuit along with the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University called the agreement "an important victory for Texans' First Amendment rights."

"We're pleased that Attorney General Paxton has agreed to stop blocking people from his Twitter account simply because he doesn't like what they have to say," Katie Fallow, a senior staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute, said in a prepared statement. "Multiple courts have recognized that government officials who use their social media accounts for official purposes violate the First Amendment if they block people from those accounts on the basis of viewpoint. What Paxton was doing was unconstitutional."

Paxton's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Though Paxton blocked the plaintiffs on his personal account — not the official attorney general account — attorneys for the plaintiffs said he used the account to make official announcements, comment on local issues and defend his policies. The plaintiffs argued that being blocked from viewing Paxton's tweets from his @KenPaxtonTX account limited the rights of people to participate in a public forum and access statements made by the public official, therefore violating the First Amendment.

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The Biden administration is threatening to sue Texas over its plans to stop state-licensed facilities that are contracted with the federal government from housing migrant children, with a federal attorney calling the state's move a "direct attack" on federal refugee resettlement efforts.

The federal response comes after Gov. Greg Abbott ordered last week that Texas child care regulators revoke the licenses of state-licensed facilities that house migrant children. The move, the latest by the Republican governor as he spars with President Joe Biden over immigration policies, would force the facilities to stop serving unaccompanied minors or lose their license to serve any children.

Texas officials have already begun instructing the 52 state-licensed facilities serving migrant children to wind down operations by Aug. 30, following Abbott's order, according to a notice sent to shelters by the Texas Health and Human Services Commission.

In a letter sent Monday to Abbott and other Texas officials, Paul Rodriguez, a top attorney for the federal Department of Health and Human Services, said Texas' move violates the U.S. Constitution's Supremacy Clause, which says federal law supersedes state laws. He asked the recipients to clarify whether they intended that the order be applied to those shelters, which are overseen by HHS and its refugee resettlement branch, the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

He wrote that the federally contracted shelters "comprise a significant portion of ORR's total operational footprint, and represent an indispensable component of the Federal immigration system."

If Abbott's May 31 order includes those ORR facilities, it "would be a direct attack on this system," Rodriguez said in the letter. He gave the state until Friday to clarify whether the order will affect those facilities.

If so, he said legal action could follow.

"Although we prefer to resolve this matter amicably, in light of the legal issues outlined above, HHS is consulting the U.S. Department of Justice and intends to pursue whatever appropriate legal action is necessary to ensure the safety and wellbeing of the vulnerable youth that Congress entrusted to ORR," he said.

Abbott's order affects only the state-licensed shelters — which collectively house around 8,600 children, according to state data. Federal emergency intake centers — which aren't licensed by the state — house the majority of immigrant children in the state and have seen the largest population growth in recent months. State data shows that the population in Texas-licensed agencies has remained relatively static.

A snapshot of federal data shows that 8,700 children were moved through the federal emergency intake shelters in Texas on May 10 — more than 10 times the number of children recorded in a previous snapshot on March 15, according to data obtained and cross-checked by the Associated Press. State-licensed facilities have reported monthly headcount snapshots of around 4,200 to 4,400 over the last three months, hovering near half of their combined capacity.

Federal law requires that U.S. border officials move unaccompanied immigrant children to an HHS facility within three days of taking them into custody, except under extraordinary circumstances.

A statement from Abbott's office Tuesday echoed claims from his executive order that the federal government is commandeering state resources.

"The Biden Administration is yet again pressuring Texas to aid its illegal immigration program and force our state to do its job. Commandeering state resources to fulfill the federal government's responsibility is a violation of the U.S. Constitution. Here in Texas, we will follow that law," Abbott said in the statement.

"The federal government caused this problem and should be solely responsible for the care of these children. No child will be uncared for. Texas will remain focused on doing our job — protecting Texans," the statement concluded.

The governor's office did not respond to questions about the potential relocation of children who are housed in the state-licensed shelters or whether the state was considering backing down on its order in light of the HHS letter.

Abbott pointed to the state's foster care capacity woes as one of the reasons for his order. Hundreds of foster children have spent nights in hotels, community organizations or Child Protective Services offices because there weren't enough suitable placements as dozens of foster care providers relinquished their contracts with the state due largely to higher scrutiny on the system.

"The unabated influx of individuals resulting from federal government policies threatens to negatively impact state-licensed residential facilities, including those that serve Texas children in foster care," Abbott wrote in the order.

Only 134 migrant children were housed in federally contracted Texas facilities that also serve foster children as of May 10, according to the data gathered by the Associated Press.

Patrick Crimmins, a Texas Department of Family and Protective Services spokesperson, said unaccompanied immigrant children don't enter the state's foster care system directly. They would only be in the system if they had to be removed from family members with whom federal employees placed them.

"There are no children in foster care simply because they are an unaccompanied minor. Children are only in foster care because of abuse or neglect that is reported to us and investigated by us," Crimmins said.

Asked how Abbott's order might affect the foster system's placement shortages, Crimmins replied, "We don't know that yet."

Abbott's executive order also instructed the Texas Department of Public Safety to enforce all state and federal laws on trespassing, smuggling and human trafficking and ordered two state criminal justice commissions to provide guidance and request "any necessary" waivers to give counties "the flexibility needed to establish adequate alternative detention facilities."

Border apprehensions continue to soar in the state, continuing a sharp uptick that began in 2020. Abbott blames Biden for the increases, and for an increase in fentanyl seizures on the Texas-Mexico border, and has deployed more than 1,000 DPS troopers and hundreds of Texas National Guard soldiers to the border this year.

Jennifer Nagda, policy director for the Young Center for Immigrant Children's Rights, called Abbott's order an attempt to score political points in the ongoing feud.

"Children should never be made pawns in political fights. And there should be no debate about guaranteeing that every child who arrives at our border is recognized and treated as a child," Nagda said in a written statement. "That means access to safe care, to family reunification, and to a fair legal process."

Mandi Cai contributed to this report.

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Texas lawmakers are asking the federal government to remove the term "Negro" from dozens of places across the state where the word appears in the location's name.

The move by the Legislature comes three decades after Texas passed a law that was supposed to rename the places after Black Americans who made a "significant contribution" to Texas. But the U.S. Board for Geographic Names, the federal entity with the final say over any natural place name in the country, blocked the changes, saying there was a lack of demonstrated local support for the proposed new names or opposition to current ones.

The proposals were dismissed and the issue remained dormant — with the bill's strongest supporters not realizing the legislation had no effect.

Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis — a former Texas lawmaker who sponsored the bill in 1991 — said he was not aware the name changes hadn't been made until he was contacted by NPR for a story last year.

After he found out, he began writing letters and reaching out to state agencies to take action. His efforts prompted lawmakers to draft Senate Concurrent Resolution 29 — a formal display of the unified will of the Texas Legislature to urge the federal board to take action. The resolution passed the House on Monday 146-0. The Senate unanimously passed the resolution last month, with all state senators of both parties signed on as coauthors.

"The perpetuation of racially offensive language is a stain on the Lone Star State, and it is vital that the names of these geographic features be changed in order to reflect and honor the diversity of the population," Sen. Borris Miles, D-Houston, wrote in the resolution.

Miles said he was first made aware of the issue by Ellis and immediately wanted to get the Legislature to take action.

"The word Negro is derivative of [the N word], which is a very offensive word to people of color," he said.

There are at least 25 place names in the state that contain the term "Negro," according to the geographic board's database — not counting names that appear to be referencing the Spanish word for the color black.

The natural features — such as lakes, summits and valleys — are scattered across the state with names including "Negrohead," "Negro Hollow" and "Negro Creek," among others. The 1991 bill identified 19 Texas sites containing the word but called for all instances to be removed.

Many of the locations in Texas referencing the racial slur were once the pejorative N-word but were changed to "Negro" in 1963 by the federal board.

The resolution, if signed by Gov. Greg Abbott, will be forwarded to the geographic names board. It doesn't have legal force, but rather is urging the board to approve requests in accordance with the 1991 bill.

"It sends a message to other stakeholders involved in the process, that the state Legislature, along with our governor — we're engaged in this, we're supporting this. And we want to work constructively with all the stakeholders to get to the place we need," Rep. James White, R-Hillister, said, who filed the House's version of the resolution.

As a part of the renewed effort to rename these places, 16 proposals for places detailed in the 1991 bill have been resubmitted to the federal board and are set to be voted on at its June 10 meeting.

All these years later, Ellis is hopeful that these names will finally be changed.

"I'm very pleased," he said of the resolution. "After the George Floyd killing, people are looking at and finding opportunities to go and right past wrongs."

Outside of the state, there are still hundreds of places across the U.S. with the term in their names. Ellis hopes Texas can lead the charge on changing these names.

"I'm hopeful that on the federal level, they will simply pass legislation to change all of these racially insensitive and offensive names," Ellis said.

In the meantime, Ellis suggested to the board that it take all instances where "Negro" appears in a name to replace it "with 'Black' or another term that is not racially offensive," while a new name can be selected by the local community.

"Despite efforts to change these names, our processes and systems have failed," Ellis told the geographic board during a virtual meeting on May 13. "These names have stood, even as the times have changed… We cannot take a passive approach and let the localities wait until they can find a replacement name, [it] is unacceptable."

"During this moment of racial reckoning in our nation," he added, "we must take concrete action to ensure that these offensive, racist names are finally erased from the public domain."

Texas state officials, including those in Gov. Greg Abbott's office, knew for months that foster children were being illegally housed in an emergency shelter cited hundreds of times for dangerous conditions — but failed to report the violation to court-appointed watchdogs tasked with monitoring the state's foster care system, according to court records.

The Whataburger Center, a shelter for foster children in San Antonio named after the restaurant chain because of a one-time donation, was cited 239 times for not meeting state minimum standards between 2016 and 2020. Some of the reports identified abuse or neglect. In September, the shelter was put on probation by the Texas Health and Human Services Commission and placed on an admissions hold — blocking children from being housed there — after the department said it found "a continued pattern of deficiencies in the area of supervision, medication, and reports/record keeping."

After being placed on probation, shelter officials told the state it would move the children to other placements and surrendered its license in January, according to court records. However, Family Tapestry, the state-appointed provider for the region which also runs the center, continued to illegally place children in the Whataburger Center and its own office — which is only separated from the shelter by a door — until ordered to vacate children in March.

The Department of Family and Protective Services and HHSC were aware of the situation for months, but did not notify the court, despite a federal judge mandating that the court monitors be updated daily by the state on these types of placements as part of a decade-long class action lawsuit against the state on the behalf of foster children.

Elizabeth Farley, a policy adviser for Abbott, said under oath last month during a court hearing that the governor's office was first notified in October about the allegations that children were illegally sleeping in the offices connected to the Whataburger Center, according to court records.

But it wasn't until a whistleblower notified the court monitors in March that the federal court became aware of the situation at Family Tapestry and the Whataburger Center — nearly five months after the HHSC first became aware of the illegal placements, according to court records. Five days after the monitors became aware of the situation and contacted DFPS, the department told Family Tapestry to vacate all children the center and its office by March 25, which they did, according to DFPS.

"We were shocked when we learned what the whistleblower revealed to the monitors. The state, including top officials at DFPS, HHSC and even the governor's office, was aware of children being placed in illegal operations for months," said Paul Yetter, the attorney representing foster children in the lawsuit against the state. "Keeping secrets is not how this broken system is going to get fixed. It puts children at risk."

U.S. District Judge Janis Jack ruled in 2015 that Texas was violating foster children's constitutional rights to be free from an unreasonable risk of harm, saying that children "often age out of care more damaged than when they entered." Jack has issued several orders aiming at widespread reform. Abbott's office, HHSC and DFPS are all named in the court order.

The judge appointed two monitors who serve as watchdogs to observe the state's compliance to the court orders. The court mandated that the monitors be updated with daily reports on children placed in unlicensed facilities, including the Whataburger Center or in case workers' offices.

"The Court ordered the State to provide daily reports to the Monitors regarding information on the number of children without placements, the identity of these children, and the location of the children, effective April 2, 2020," according to court documents.

Abbott's office declined to provide a statement or interview, and HHSC declined to comment due to "pending litigation."

Patrick Crimmins, Texas DFPS spokesperson, said no placements of foster care children in unlicensed facilities managed by the state's five community-based care providers were reported to the monitors for months because of an "oversight" by the department, because it did not track that data for those contractors. But the issue was corrected in March and DFPS staff began tracking those numbers as well, he said.

Crimmins said the blame for not informing the court of the violations lies within DFPS — not the governor's office.

But Yetter thinks it's the responsibility of all those named in the lawsuit — including the governor's office — to notify the monitors.

"The state made repeated visits to Family Tapestry into the Whataburger Center and found children sleeping overnight at a facility that was not supposed to have these children — so, the state knew about this on an ongoing basis," he said. "There's no reason why they hadn't shared the information with the monitors."

Crimmins said while the Whataburger Center was unlicensed, it's not unusual for children without placements to spend time in places like CPS offices and motels, which are also unlicensed. It's an ongoing problem all over the state, he said.

"Unlicensed placements, also known as Children Without Placements (CWOP), unfortunately have become very common for a variety of reasons. We have been under orders from the Governor's office for several years to eliminate CWOP, particularly kids staying in CPS offices, but have been unable to do so," he said.

The number of children without placements has surged to the highest point in at least four years.

Last month, 282 children spent at least two consecutive nights in unlicensed placements last month, usually sleeping in offices, hotels or community organizations, because no beds were available in licensed facilities, according to DFPS data.

"The Texas foster care system is privatized and the State cannot increase or generate new capacity – it is the function of the private sector to do that, with help and incentives of course from the State, including higher foster care rates, which has happened regularly," Crimmins said.

Yetter said reporting the children housed at the Whataburger Center was urgent, compared to other children in unlicensed placements, given the "history of serious reports of abuse and neglect that raised real risk to these children."

"The situation was chaotic," Yetter said. "Family Tapestry also knew and had been told by DFPS more than once that they were not to place children there, and yet they did... And then everyone kept the secret from the monitors in the judge."

The court monitors noted that the situation at the Whataburger Center was especially disturbing, saying their concerns "are magnified by the [Whataburger Center's] history of confirmed findings of abuse, neglect or exploitation and safety violations during the time that it was licensed."

Annette Rodriguez, chief executive officer of Family Tapestry, said last week in court the center was "overwhelmed and inundated with more youth than what we originally planned."

Court documents detail "substantiated" findings including at least one of physical abuse, one for sexual abuse, 10 for neglectful supervision and three for medical neglect.

Children at the Whataburger Center often ran away, staff inconsistently gave children their prescribed medicine — even in the case of serious, life-threatening medical conditions — and the facility suffered from poor cleanliness in areas, the report said. Some of the foster children with a history of self-harm got access to sharp objects or cords while under supervision.

Fights broke out among the children and there are allegations that some were instigated by a staff member, who reportedly kicked a child in the back while they were fighting another child. One staff member allegedly carried a taser and threatened children with it — later claiming he was kidding.

There were also several reports of foster children having sex with each other on shelter grounds or instances where one foster child inappropriately touched another child. One report alleged that a 16-year-old male foster child was having a sexual relationship with a female staff member at the shelter.

"The situation there was complete chaos for months — frankly, for almost two years. And no one knew about it, other than state officials. Not the monitors and not the court," said Ketter, the attorney representing foster children. "Children were not safe there. And the facility was not prepared to take care of them… the state is in charge of keeping these children safe and should never allow them to be put in unlicensed facilities."

Disclosure: Effectiv has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

A U.S. Army investigation found that Spc. Vanessa Guillén reported being sexually harassed two times by a fellow soldier at Fort Hood before she was killed, a finding that contradicts the Army's previous claims that there was no evidence Guillén experienced harassment.

Guillén's supervisor and other officials failed to report the harassment up the chain, according to a report released Friday which provided new details about the investigation following Guillén's disappearance on April 22, 2020.

Investigators did not find "credible evidence" that Spc. Aaron Robinson, the man accused of killing Guillén, sexually harassed her or that they had a relationship outside of their professional one, the report said. However, Robinson was reported for sexually harassing another female soldier. Robinson shot and killed himself after being confronted by the police.

As a result of the investigation, Army officials removed five current or former leaders in the 3rd Cavalry Regiment, where Guillén also worked, from their leadership positions. Three of those officers will also be reprimanded. Garrett also referred disciplinary action against eight other officers — all of whom will receive reprimands and one who will be relieved.

As of Friday, 21 officers in total have been suspended, relieved of their positions or given official reprimands following Guillén's murder.

REFERENCE

Read the full redacted investigation The Army released on Friday.(10.2 MB) DOWNLOAD

Guillén was found in a shallow grave outside Fort Hood after being bludgeoned to death last year. She was 20 years old. Her killing sparked national outrage and calls for reform in the military against sexual harassment and violence.

"I have a daughter who is 23 — the same age as Vanessa, if she was here with us today," Maj. Gen. Gene LeBoeuf said in a press call with reporters Friday. "I keep a picture of my daughter on my desk. When I speak with the Guillén family I can see my daughter there. And each time I imagine the grief of the entire Guillén family."

The secretary of the army said in August that Fort Hood had "the most cases for sexual assault and harassment and murders for our entire formation of the U.S. Army." At least 159 Fort Hood soldiers died out of combat between 2016 and last year, including seven homicides and 71 suicides, according to an analysis by The New York Times.But advocates for military sexual assault victims say the problem is bigger than just Fort Hood. They say the military creates a siloed environment allowing sexual harassment and sexual violence to occur, many times unnoticed and unreported. And when there are reports, the military handles the investigation itself. Her family continues to call for widespread reform.A Pentagon panel recently recommended that decisions to prosecute service members for sexual assault be made by independent authorities, instead of military officials — a reversal of the longstanding practice of handling these cases internally.The report released Friday is separate from the investigation overseen by the U.S. Attorney's Office and in collaboration with FBI and did not consider criminal allegations.

According to the report, Guillén told a supervisor that another supervisor had made sexual comments toward her in the summer of 2019, according to the report. That supervisor made comments in Spanish suggesting they wanted to have "a threesome" with her, Guillén said. Two other soldiers also reported the incident to supervisors, who failed to initiate an investigation.

Another time, Guillén said the same soldier approached her while she was washing herself in the field and said they tried to "watch her wash up." The Army investigator discovered a pattern of mistreatment from the supervisor but said it did not appear related to her killing.

The Army has not released the name of the individual accused of sexually harassing Guillén, which LeBoeuf said was because they were not a high-ranking officer and to allow for "due process."

"We found many inconsistencies in this report. Vanessa's case was severely mishandled, and therefore this report reflects a lot of damage control," Guillén family attorney Natalie Khawam said in a statement to The Texas Tribune. "We are troubled that the names of the soldiers that sexually harassed Vanessa are being omitted. It's heart breaking and frustrating for all of us."

Khawam said the report shows why reform from the I Am Vanessa Guillen Act is necessary. The act, introduced last year, would create a confidential reporting system for sexual harassment in the military and explicitly list sexual harassment as a crime in the military law constitution. Lawmakers plan on reintroducing the bill this year.

"This all should have never happened and our soldiers deserve to be treated like human beings," Khawam said.

The report also detailed a timeline of when Guillén went missing and of attempts to locate her. Robinson was put under observation but was able to slip away on June 30. LeBoeuf said no additional details could be released because of the criminal investigation that is ongoing.

Investigators concluded that Army officials failed to effectively communicate with the community, the media and Guillén's family — but said officials appropriately jumped into action when she went missing. The Army also needed a better way to classify her disappearance, the report said. Army officials temporarily labeled her as AWOL — absent without official leave — because "they lacked sufficient evidence to support a missing status determination," according to the report, even though officials knew the circumstances of her disappearance were suspicious.

"However, the Army's policy requiring an AWOL duty status sent the wrong message, creating an inaccurate perception that she had voluntarily abandoned her unit and limiting the command's access to certain resources, such as casualty assistance officer to liaise with the family," a statement accompanying Friday's report said. "The Army has since published a new policy on duty status of missing Soldiers to correct these gaps and ambiguities."

The Army previously announced it is restructuring its criminal investigation command, as well as redesigning its sexual harassment and assault response and prevention program as part of an initial swath of adopted changes.

Officials have updated policies to require full investigations of off-post soldier drug overdoses, including of the source of the drugs, and investigations of all suspected solider deaths by suicide. Last year, the Army updated guidance on how to respond when a soldier goes missing. Officials also are requiring changes to improve the climate and requiring regular welfare checks at Fort Hood.

More changes are to come as investigations continue, LeBoeuf said.

"None of this will bring Spc. Guillen back," LeBoeuf said. "[But] her memory drives us to be better."

If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, you can receive confidential help by calling the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network's 24/7 toll-free support line at 800-656-4673. You can also visit their online hotline here.