Howard Witt
Chicago Tribune
October 9, 2007
When the Chicago Tribune
published the story last March of Shaquanda Cotton, the 14-year-old black girl
from Paris, Texas, who was imprisoned for shoving a hall monitor at her high
school, the article quickly provoked a national civil rights scandal because of
apparent racial disparities in the way justice was administered in the small
east Texas town.
Shaquanda had no prior arrest record, and the hall monitor was not seriously
injured. Yet the teenager was convicted in March 2006 of assault and sentenced
by Lamar County Judge Chuck Superville to prison for up to 7 years.
Just three months earlier, Superville sentenced a 14-year-old white girl,
convicted of the more serious crime of arson, to probation.
The furor that erupted over the disparity in how the two girls were treated
prompted Texas authorities to release Shaquanda from prison three weeks after
the Tribune article appeared.
This is the story of what happened to the white girl in that saga.
It appears she has suffered a fate far worse than Shaquanda's.
The emotionally troubled teenager, who has been diagnosed with depression and
bipolar disorder, was sent to the same youth prison in Brownwood, Texas, where
Shaquanda was incarcerated, because she subsequently violated her probation
twice.
While there, the teenager—whom the Tribune is not identifying—was allegedly
sexually molested by a male prison guard, who then threatened her to keep her
quiet, according to documents and witness statements examined by the Tribune.
The girl self-mutilated her arms with a knife, carving the word "Why" into her
flesh, her mother said.
Last spring, the girl attempted suicide by swallowing a handful of pills
prescribed for another inmate. When a guard rushed into her cell to rescue her,
authorities allege, the girl knocked the officer to the ground—an assault that
tacked another 6 months onto her sentence.
Even worse, officials at the Ron Jackson State Juvenile Correctional Complex
knew of allegations that the guard was sexually abusing the girl but did not
remove him from contact with female inmates until four months later.
In a letter to the girl's parents dated Oct. 18, 2006, prison Supt. Teresa
Stroud wrote that "a formal investigation has been initiated" into allegations
that a prison guard "touched [the girl's] buttocks and made comments about her
anatomy."
The girl would later tell authorities that she was too frightened to talk to
investigators about the incident, and prison officials ruled that the allegation
was "unconfirmed," according to Tim Savoy, a spokesman for the Texas Youth
Commission, the state's juvenile corrections agency.
But on Feb. 24, 2007, another abuse allegation against the same guard surfaced,
and he was suspended with pay the same day.
In August, a Brown County, Texas, grand jury indicted the guard, Jaime Segura,
30, on multiple felony counts including sexual assault, indecency with a child,
improper sexual activity with a person in custody and official oppression.
Authorities allege that Segura molested other female inmates at the Brownwood
youth prison in addition to the Paris teenager. Officials in the Texas attorney
general's office were unable to clarify Monday whether the Paris girl's case was
among those cited in the indictment.
Segura's arrest came six months after a series of abuse incidents at other Texas
Youth Commission facilities exploded into public view in a scandal that rocked
the agency and forced the resignation or firing of all of its top leaders.
Segura is the fifth guard at the Brownwood facility to face felony charges for
allegedly molesting youths incarcerated there as part of this investigation.
Stroud declined to answer questions from the Tribune about why she did not
immediately remove Segura from contact with youthful prisoners after he was
first alleged to have molested the girl from Paris.
"I can't explain or try to
justify what happened back then," Savoy, the youth commission spokesman, said.
"I can tell you what we do now: If there's an allegation, they will pull the
person away from the kids, either put the guard on suspension or in an area
where they will not be around the kids."
But today, even as the youth commission moves forward with administrative
reforms and the abuse scandal recedes into history, the Paris girl, who turned
16 in July, remains locked up in the Brownwood prison, where she has been for
the past year. The girl's assault on the prison guard pushed her earliest
possible release date to June of next year; she was originally due to be
released Dec. 15.
That assault—and the suicide attempt, the self-mutilation and the girl's
deepened depression—would never have happened if she had not been victimized by
a prison guard, the girl's mother believes.
"I understand there are processes and procedures they need to go through," said
the mother, whom the Tribune is not identifying to protect her daughter's
identity. "I understand [my daughter] needed to take responsibility for her
actions and learn from them. But what is happening now is punishment, not
rehabilitation. She's being punished for something that should never have
happened to her."
Last July, during an interview conducted by an investigator from the Texas
attorney general's office, the girl related the details of what she said Segura
had done to her, starting just a few days after she arrived at the Brownwood
prison in October 2006 at the age of 15.
Among other things, the girl alleged that Segura watched her while she showered,
offered her extra food if she would show him her breasts and threatened that she
"was not going to like the outcome of it" if she revealed what the guard was
doing to her.
"Mr. Segura put his hands up my shirt and grabbed both of my breasts," the girl
wrote in her witness statement. "Mr. Segura rubbed my breasts. I was scared and
did not know what to say or do."
Long before she arrived at the Brownwood youth prison, the Paris girl was
emotionally troubled, her mother said. She takes medication for depression and
bipolar disorder and has been in and out of alternative schools and special
facilities for emotionally disturbed children.
In
December 2005, the girl set fire to her family's Paris home and watched it burn
to the ground without calling for help—the crime for which Superville initially
sentenced her to probation. The girl violated that probation twice, first by
skipping school and later by kicking a baby at the home of a relative. The baby
was not injured, the girl's mother said, but the relative filed a complaint,
causing Superville to revoke the girl's probation and send her to the Brownwood
prison on an indeterminate sentence.
The abuse the girl allegedly suffered once she got to Brownwood deepened her
despondency, her mother said—a point she tried to make when she appealed her
daughter's sentence extension for knocking down the guard who interrupted her
suicide attempt.
Texas Youth Commission officials denied that appeal last week, without ever
considering the alleged sexual molestation as a potentially mitigating
circumstance.
"The information in the file I have does not state what the alleged act of abuse
was, who the alleged abuser was, or when the alleged abuse took place," Doug
Wise, an attorney for the Texas Youth Commission, wrote to the girl in a letter
explaining the denial of the appeal.
"I don't want it looking like we're trying to copycat the attention that
Shaquanda got, but I think my daughter's story needs to be told," the mother
said. "They should take into consideration that she has tried to take her life
over this issue. She's really despondent. She blames herself for what the guard
did. She just cannot forgive herself. And she is not receiving any counseling
for what the guard did to her."
Late Monday, after the Tribune published this story on its Web site, state Rep.
Harold Dutton, chairman of the Texas Legislature's juvenile justice committee,
said he had contacted Texas Youth Commission officials "to seek an early remedy
to this young lady's situation."