Keisha Bazley, a mother of nine, has a 14-year-old daughter that has trouble in school and keeps running away. One day, the 14-year-old girl, who was living in a hotel under foster care, told a Child Protective Services employee that she was hungry and needed food, in which the employee responded to the girl by telling her to be a prostitute.
"My daughter told me that the worker had been telling her she should do these things, so she said she decided to video her," Bazley said.
Bazley filed a formal complaint as a result of the recorded incident, resulting in the said employee being dismissed from her position as of 10 August. Marissa Gonzales, the spokesperson for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS), has said that all employees are trained beforehand in order for them to be capable of supervising youth. The heinous incident has came to a point where Jamie Masters, the commissioner for the Texas DFPS, has came to Houston to issue an apology to Bazley and her 14-year-old daughter.
"I've never seen that happen before where the commissioner of CPS comes in from Austin, just to apologize about something horrible that's been done to a child involved with CPS," [family law attorney Mike Schneider] said. "It's bad enough if it's just one bad rogue worker. It concerns me that it may be bigger than that, and they need to make sure it's not just one person, and they've got to find a way to protect these kids."
It’s not the first time controversy has surrounded Child Protective Services in Texas, given past issues with racial discrimination, sexual abuse and misconduct, and even death. Furthermore, Houston is a major hub for human trafficking; that horrifying fact is well highlighted in the infamous Bissonnet Track, located within the Sharpstown area of southwest Houston. The federal government even intervened in sex crimes committed there; recently, a “lavish” sex trafficker is facing life in prison.