BRAZOS COUNTY, Texas — The Texas Commission on Jail Standards (TCJS) has filed a lawsuit against the Brazos County Jail for a reported physical and sexual assault against a minor that took place on Oct. 8, 2022.
The lawsuit claims that on that day, a minor pre-trial detainee was sexually and physically assaulted by three other minors in the Brazos County Jail over a period of five hours. Additionally, no jailers entered the area for over five hours while the assaults took place, according to the lawsuit.
Furthermore, after an investigation, Brazos County admitted that a computerized system to check on detainees was turned off at the time of the assaults, according to a news release.
Constitutional rights lawyer Dean Malone filed the lawsuit in Houston on the minor's behalf. Malone's statement can be found below:
"It is bad enough to see what happens to adults in jails across our state, when those required to protect pre-trial detainees fail to do so. It is beyond belief that a minor could be assaulted in such a horrific manner, over several hours, while jailers failed to conduct any security checks at all. This violated all known jail standards. If Brazos County had resolved issues with late detainee checks noted by the Texas Commission on Jail Standards just a few months before, these assaults would have never happened."
According to a release, Brazos County had also received a TCJS notice of non-compliance following an inspection in August 2022, just a few months before the October assaults took place.
KAGS has reached out to authorities, but have not received a response from officials at the time of publishing.