(March 23, 2007)—Texas Rangers arrested the superintendent of the Texas Youth Commission’s Marlin Orientation and Assessment Unit Friday morning.

Authorities led Superintendent Jerome Parsee from the unit’s administration building in handcuffs to a waiting patrol car late Friday morning.

The arrest came shortly after a Falls County official issued a warrant naming Parsee.

The warrant charged making a false statement to investigators, but details of the specific allegations against Parsee were not immediately available.

Officials said they would be released Friday afternoon.

Parsee was in the Falls County Jail late Friday morning.

The offense is a class B misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail and a $2,000 fine.

The arrest was the first of a top TYC official since the scandal surfaced.

It comes a little more than two weeks after teams of investigators including Texas Rangers and representatives of the Texas Attorney General’s Office fanned out to all 22 TYC facilities across the state in the wake of a scandal involving allegations of sexual abuse of juvenile inmates at a unit in West Texas.

The Marlin Unit is the first stop for all juveniles committed to the TYC.

It has a capacity of 436 inmates.

Parsee told the Brownsville Herald earlier this week that he accepted responsibility for failing to detect youth abuse at the facility, where the paper reports rates were higher in 2005 than at any of a dozen other high security TYC facilities, but he dismissed employee complaints that TYC policies made it impossible to control inmates.

“Our staff are complaining, and they say they have nothing, but they aren’t using all their tools,” Parsee told the paper.

“I can beat my dogs, and they’ll go in the corner, but that’s not what we want. We want freethinking beings,” he told the paper.

The TYC operates 13 institutions and nine halfway houses including the Marlin unit, the McLennan County State Juvenile Correctional Facility in Mart and the John Shero State Juvenile Correctional Facility in San Saba.

The abuse scandal erupted last month after media reports of an agency internal investigation that found that many prison staffers at the West Texas State School in Pyote had complained about sex abuse of inmates by employees to their immediate bosses and to officials in Austin, but for more than a year, no one in charge did anything to stop it.

A Texas Rangers investigation in early 2005 found that the prison's assistant superintendent and the school's principal had repeated sexual contact with inmates.

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Information About Central Texas TYC Units
(Source: Texas Youth Commission)
The Marlin Orientation & Assessment Unit is the gateway facility for all youth - male and female - committed to the Texas Youth Commission by juvenile courts across the state of Texas. The facility is located on approximately 60 acres in historic Marlin, Texas, southeast of Waco. The facility's budgeted capacity is 436 students. The staff compliment is 404 employees and is comprised of clinicians, diagnosticians, educators, professional child-care and correctional staff, licensed counselors, medical staff, and administration and support staff.

McLennan County State Juvenile Correctional Facility (MCSJCF) is located in McLennan County on 107 acres, and is adjacent to the town of Mart, Texas, a small rural farming and ranching community about 20 miles southeast of Waco. MCSJCF is the largest young offender rehabilitation complex in the state of Texas with over 680 employees. This high-security facility of the Texas Youth Commission has the capacity to accommodate 656 boys.

John Shero State Juvenile Correctional Facility (formerly San Saba State School) is a secure, high-restriction juvenile correctional facility operated by the Texas Youth Commission (TYC) in the rural community of San Saba, Texas. It originally opened as an adult facility for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice in June of 1992 and remained a part of that agency until its transfer to TYC in September of 1995. After renovations and expansion to accommodate the needs of a juvenile population, it received its first youth on February 5, 1996. There are now more than 300 staff employed with a budgeted bed capacity of 356 male youth committed by juvenile courts across Texas.

Other TYC Facilitites

Institutions
Al Price State Juvenile Correctional Facility (Beaumont, Texas), moderate security, houses 312 inmates.
Corsicana Residential Treatment Center (Corsicana, Texas), high security, specialty facility, houses 170 inmates.
Crockett State School (Crockett, Texas), moderate security, houses 265 inmates.
Evins Regional Juvenile Center (Edinburg, Texas), high security, houses 240 inmates.
Gainesville State School (Gainesville, Texas), fenced, maximum-security, houses 316 inmates.
Giddings State School (Giddings, Texas), high security, houses 380 inmates.
Ron Jackson State Juvenile Correctional Complex Units I & II (Brownwood, Texas), high security.
Sheffield Boot Camp (Sheffield, Texas), military-style security, houses 128 inmates.
Victory Field Correctional Academy (Vernon, Texas), military-style security, houses 336 inmates.
West Texas State School (Pyote, Texas), high security,houses 250 inmates.

Halfway Houses
Ayres House (San Antonio), moderate security, houses 24 males.
Beto House, moderate security (McAllen, Texas), houses 24 males.
Cottrell House (Dallas), community-based, serves, males 16 to 21.
McFadden Ranch (Roanoke, Texas), moderate security, houses 48 males.
Schaeffer House (El Paso, Texas), medium restriction security, houses 24 males.
Edna Tamayo House (Harlingen, Texas), moderate security, houses 24 males.
Turman House (Austin, Texas), community-based, serves males from 16 to 21.
Willoughby House (Fort Worth, Texas), community-based, serves females from 14 to 21.
York House (Corpus Christi, Texas), community-based, serves males from 16 to 21.

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