Accused administrator could have been sidetracked much earlier

Brookins kept job despite polygraph results.

State officials had many chances to detour former Texas Youth Commission administrator Ray Brookins before allegations of sexual improprieties with incarcerated youths exploded into a statewide scandal.

Twelve years ago, similar accusations were made against Brookins while he was a Texas prison guard. He denied them and kept his job, though he failed two polygraph tests. Two of his accusers — prisoners at the Cotulla Unit south of San Antonio — passed theirs, according to newly disclosed investigative reports obtained by the American-Statesman.

(enlarge photo) Ray Brookins Allegations in 1995 were similar to current accusations.

Yet when Brookins went to work for the Texas Youth Commission four years later, the allegations never came up, his personnel file shows.

Fast-forward to 2003. By then Brookins was an assistant superintendent at the West Texas State School in Pyote, where talk had surfaced about staff members soliciting sexual favors from incarcerated youths. Kids who had served time at that facility talked about improprieties to their counselors at the Marlin Orientation and Assessment Unit, halfway across the state, identifying an assistant superintendent as a perpetrator.

Staff members at both lockups reported the allegations of abuse to their bosses. Nothing changed until a Texas Ranger opened a criminal investigation of Brookins and John Paul Hernandez, the Pyote school principal, in February 2005. Both have been indicted on charges of sexually abusing youths, and have pleaded not guilty.

Brookins' case in particular is instructive for what it reveals about how things worked, not only in youth lockups but the adult prison system.

For Youth Commission officials to have learned about the 1995 investigation of Brookins, they needed to ask the prison system's inspector general for information not in Brookins' personnel file, which was kept by another office.

Youth Commission officials ask "only to verify employment. They didn't ask anything else," said John Moriarty, the inspector general who was dispatched two months ago to lead a task force of officers investigating the agency scandal. "Had they asked, we would have passed that information along."

Copies of the reports show that in June 1995, while Brookins was a guard captain at Cotulla, an inmate accused him of engaging in oral sex in the prison barber shop. Four others claimed Brookins had made sexual overtures to them.

Polygraph tests were administered to the convicts. Two registered as untruthful and one was inconclusive, according to the report. But two others were shown as truthful: the prisoner who alleged he had exchanged oral sex with Brookins and another who said Brookins asked him to watch videotapes with him. A prison investigator dismissed the case, citing Brookins' denials and the lack of witnesses.

The incidents are alleged to have occurred before a change in state law that makes it a felony for guards to have sex with someone in their custody. At the time, such accusations were not usually confirmed without witnesses or corroborating evidence other than polygraph exams.

"Now, we would have probably tried to make a criminal case — and worked an administrative case on (Brookins) for sure," Moriarty said. "With those kinds of allegations, we'd have tried to get him out."

Amid the current flurry of investigations, the 1995 reports have garnered new interest. Copies were recently forwarded to prosecutors in the West Texas case against Brookins.