Former Texas Youth Commission guard indicted

Brownwood man accused of sexual assault of inmate girls.

A former Texas Youth Commission guard who earlier avoided criminal charges of sexual attacks on incarcerated girls has been indicted in Brownwood.

Officials confirmed this morning that Allen James Sullivan, 41, a Brownwood resident, was named in a 15-count indictment on sexual assault charges, a second-degree felony.

Officials in the Brown County district attorney's office confirmed the indictment, but had no detail. The Austin American-Statesman obtained a copy of the indictment from other sources.

According to the indictment, Sullivan is accused of having sex on 15 occasions between October 2003 and May 2004 with the same girl, who was younger than 17 at the time. Bail has been set at $15,000, according to the court filing.

Sullivan, who resigned from the Youth Commission in 2005, could not be reached for comment. It could not immediately be determined whether he had surrendered to authorities.

The indictment came after a grand jury had declined to indict Sullivan last month. But a legislative aide for San. Juan Hinojosa, D-McAllen, discovered that a videotape showing Sullivan going into a closet with at least three girls had not been shown to the grand jury.

Investigators found the tape in the former Austin headquarters office of Ray Worsham, the Youth Commission's inspector general who had been fired earlier in the month.

In earlier reports, Youth Commission investigators accused Sullivan of giving drugs and candy to at least three female inmates in exchange for sex at the Ron Jackson State Juvenile Correctional Facility in Brownwood in 2004. One witness initially refused to confirm the allegations, but later accused Sullivan of sexual misconduct.

A criminal investigation into the case was sidetracked, officials said earlier, but was reopened earlier this year amid a scandal that involved two administrators at the West Texas State School who had been accused of having sex with incarcerated teenage boys. The two, Ray Brookins and John Paul Hernandez, were indicted by a grand jury in Monhans in early April.

Sullivan's indictment marks the third Youth Commission employee in Brownwood to be charged with a crime since the scandal broke.

Barry Ransberger was arrested March 14 on sex assault charges, and Dusty Ogle was arrested on March 15 on charges of tampering with a government record, official oppression and aggravated assault with serious bodily injury, and again on April 12 on charges of tampering with a witness in the earlier case.

In all, nine current and former Youth Commission employees and four incarcerated juveniles have been arrested on a variety of felony and misdemeanor charges since the scandal broke in February.