KUT: A new report finds almost one in five juvenile offenders in Texas say they’ve been sexually abused in custody. The Justice Department study says two Texas juvenile centers have some of the highest rates of sexual abuse in the nation. The findings come three years after widespread abuse was exposed at the Texas Youth Commission.
About 2.6% of youth (700 nationwide) reported an incident involving another youth, and 10.3% (2,730) reported an inci- dent involving facility staff.
About 4.3% of youth (1,150) reported having sex or other sex- ual contact with facility staff as a result of some type of force; 6.4% of youth (1,710) reported sexual contact with facility staff without any force, threat, or other explicit form of coercion.
Approximately 95% of all youth reporting staff sexual miscon- duct said they had been victimized by female staff. In 2008, 42% of staff in state juvenile facilities were female. (DOJ report [PDF])
