TYC Scandal: How Can The Governor Not Have Known What Was Going On

At this point in the investigation of abuse within the Texas Youth Commission, you need a flow chart to track who knew what and when they knew it, and more than a few five gallon buckets to get to the bottom of the giant pool that has been formed by nearly everyone in the executive branch of state government pouring blame on each other.

The Dallas Morning News has yet another story on the scandal. This one mentions the e-mail we discussed at length on Capitol Annex yesterday. Evidently, the DMN had the email at the same time we did, but we didn’t notice this story until now. However, the DMN didn’t really get into the meat of the email as we did (more on that in a moment).

The story is fairly lengthy and rehashes a lot of what we already knew. However, I want to point you to an important passage in the story. Emphasis in the below is mine:

By mid-March 2005, Mr. Harris had delivered a three-page status report to the Senate’s Criminal Justice Committee. And while he made vague mention of the West Texas case in remarks before that committee, he didn’t demand lawmakers’ attention on it and didn’t try to dissuade them when they said they would discuss it another day.

For the staffers on the receiving end, no alarm bells sounded. They’re notified of investigations all the time, they say, and they trusted the agency or its board to follow up.

“I use the analogy of cops in a city doing a routine drug bust,” said Ted Royer, spokesman for Gov. Rick Perry. “They don’t pick up the phone and call the mayor.”

The governor’s office confirmed Wednesday that it received an e-mail in 2004 from Randal Chance, a former TYC internal investigator, alleging abuse within the agency. His e-mail alleged that he was being threatened for writing a self-published book about the abuse, but the governor’s office forwarded the message to the TYC.

The governor has said he personally was unaware of the scandal until reading Dallas Morning News reports last month.

First off, Ted Royer’s line should win an award for “Biggest Steaming Pile Of Bull Feces” uttered so far in this saga.

What Royer is saying is that someone should have picked up the phone and called the big cheese, i.e., the governor, and let him know what was going on.

Evidently Royer isn’t reading any of the documents being released by Perry’s office or the Texas Youth Commission. And, he evidently hasn’t picked up a newspaper, looked at a television or been anywhere near an internet news site in the last month. I say this because there is no way that a Perry spokesperson could stand up and say, “well, no one called us.” Perhaps they didn’t call, but they sure as Hell were emailing.

This is the first major scandal of its kind in the modern era, and at the end of the day, the emails will tell its tale. The emails tell us that Perry’s office knew.

I also find it very, very, very difficult to believe that the Governor of the State of Texas or any state can say they weren’t aware of something that their staff was aware of that involved sexual abuse of children in a state facility before they read it on the front page of a major daily newspaper.

I find it difficult to believe that it wasn’t mentioned to the governor in a briefing, over coffee, on a plane ride to the Bahamas, or somewhere. That Perry would even say that makes it sound like he has no communication with his staff whatsoever.

If, however, it’s true, that’s even more telling. It means that Perry has ivory-towered himself and is shut off to far too great a degree from the day-to-day operations of both his office and the state agencies. State agencies, which, by the way, are ultimately required to answer to the Governor.

Seriously, let’s consider this: Dewhurst’s staff knew, Craddick’s staff knew, Perry’s staff knew, the U.S. Justice Department was involved, someone wrote a book about it, a Texas Ranger was investigating it, Dick Armey was writing his office about it, and still, Perry did not know?

I believe, eventually, documents will either incriminate or clear Perry on this one. If Perry was told about this by his staff, then it is likely documented on a briefing calendar, memo, Post-It Note or paper napkin in the files of the Governor’s Office, somewhere.

If Perry wasn’t told, then he needs to look within his own office and do a house cleaning. If you were the governor of Texas, would you not want to be notified if your staff was aware that there was even a remote possibility that young boys were being raped with state tax dollars? At the very least, that’s something that could be a major political disaster for your administration. Wouldn’t you want your staff to tell you, “Hey, governor, there’s some talk that perhaps some of the inmates in TYC are being abused. You think we ought to do something?”

Regardless of whether Perry knew or didn’t know, or that his staff didn’t tell him or that perhaps he didn’t want to know, this is a very telling tale about the focus of the Perry Administration.

The bottom line is that this administration has been about everything else except the real, human needs of Texas’ citizens. It’s been about bogus tax cuts, giving big business free reign to do whatever they desire, playing gerrymandered footsies with Tom DeLay, telling women what to do with their bodies, mandating morality, and slashing the budget.

And, this is so hypocritical. Perry wants to protect life as it “begins at conception,” yet the lives of youths in the state’s custody and care aren’t valuable. Sure, the youths at TYC include a lot of bad-ass punks who did terrible things, but the last time I checked the Texas Penal Code did not include “rape by state officials” in any sentencing guidelines.

But, the TYC situation isn’t the only example of this administration’s neglect of Texas’ young. Everyone knew the foster care and Child Protective Services system in Texas was screwed up when Perry got to office. But, it took front page news coverage before he and his fellow Republicans did anything to slap down even some token “reforms.” Plus, Perry stood by and did nothing while lawmakers ramroded thousands of children off health insurance.

It’s not just incarcerated children this administration has slighted, it’s all children. Fetuses get more protection from this administration than living, breathing children.

That’s sad. It’s very, very, very, sad.

Back to the TYC situation, it’s very interesting all of the top Republican officials who are quick to send a spokesman running to the nearest reporter to say, “oh, my boss didn’t know.”

Though it’s dangerous to delve into these waters, this is about the same line that top officials in the Roman Catholic Church used in the priest sex abuse scandal. They said they didn’t know or weren’t aware and then, suddenly as if by magic, documents and depositions surface that show that they did know.

Will documents surface that show that the state’s top leaders knew? If the leaders did know, then we can hope the documents will surface. However, that all depends upon how good a job the staffers of these leaders did of eating any breadcrumbs they might have left behind along the way.

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