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A caretaker accused of selling nude photos of two victims of sexual abuse at a refugee contracted by the state of Bastrop had previously had an improper relationship with the children taking care of her. State records show that he was fired from a nearby state juvenile training school.

Iesha M. Greene was dismissed by the Texas Juvenile Justice Department in April 2020 after working for seven months at a Giddings State School employee in Lee County. She was hired 16 months later by The Refuge, a private bastrop facility for sexually abused girls.

In January, Green solicited and sold nude photos of two girls under the control of the facility, according to Texas officials. The incident resulted in the closure of a 50-acre ranch while the authorities were conducting an investigation.

Evacuation shelter officials have conducted state-required background checks on all future employees and testified that green screening revealed no criminal record.

Shelter spokesman Stephen Phoenix said the facility “did not know at all” that Green had been fired from Giddings and prevented her from being hired at the Bastrop facility.

Phoenix said Green revealed her employment at Giddings, but the shelter employment staff had never contacted her ex-boss there. The Texas Tribune has obtained a publicly available Green personnel file through a request for record.

This incident has strengthened The Refuge’s employment practices.

“We have enacted requirements that go beyond state requirements to further reduce the chances of such employment being re-established,” he said. He described Green as a “criminal perpetrator.”

Green was hired as a youth development coach in September 2019 at Giddings, a juvenile correctional facility, according to juvenile justice ministry records. Six months later, the department began a green investigation into her behavior during the shift on February 23, 2020.

The assigned investigators reviewed the surveillance footage from that day, and in the report, Green was a young man, contrary to the policy of accessing social media and pornography and printing some of it on staff printers. He said he allowed the staff to use the phone and computer.

Green also left the boys for 90 minutes that day, the report said, and some teenagers at the facility said Green was “capricious” with them. The report concluded that Green behaved improperly with the children she was caring for, and that her behavior had “a significant risk of causing substantial emotional harm” to them.

The agency fired Green in April 2020, banning future employment there.

I couldn’t ask Green for comment on Thursday. She has not been charged with crimes related to her alleged conduct at The Refuge. An investigation by the Bastrop County Sheriff’s Office is underway.Stephen McLaugh, Director of Public Safety, Texas I told a member of the Diet At a hearing last month, he believes Green will be charged with sexual exploitation of children and possession of child pornography.

The shelter claimed to have previously worked in childcare facilities licensed by six other countries before Green was hired. Shelter staff refused to share Green’s resume.

Greene was the overnight supervisor of The Refuge and was tasked with monitoring the youth while the caretaker of the main staff was asleep. After her accusations against Green surfaced, shelter leaders say she also learned that she allowed residents to use her smartphone, violated her policy, and slept at her job. ..

The shelter, which was closed from March 11, wants to convince state regulators to allow it to reopen. Of the 324 residential care facilities in Texas, the Refuge is the only one whose license has been forcibly suspended since 2021, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services said.

The outage was caused by Green’s alleged actions and a previous incident in which two shelter residents fled on February 20 with the help of other employees. The shelter fired two employees who were found to be the cause of the latter incident, and the teenagers involved were returned to the facility.

The state is currently requesting a facility to work with children like The Refuge to conduct background checks for all future employers. However, these checks only notify the employer if the job seeker has a criminal record and do not include information about the previous dismissal or the reason for the dismissal.

Shelter leaders say they are strengthening the background check process and enlisting PrecidiumThird party services Scrutinize public records In addition to what was found in traditional background checks. This tool has been recommended by the government. Greg AbbottThe office after the evacuation case was announced. It’s unclear if the service has flagged Green’s fraud reports and termination at Giddings State School.

Shelter officials reported allegations of sexual abuse to Green to the state and fired her on January 24, the same day they said they were aware of the incident. Since then, the situation has been under investigation.

The state took away all the children taking care of the shelter on March 9, five weeks after the facility reported the allegations against Green. A day later, Judge Janice Jack of the US District Court called an emergency court hearing.

Jack was particularly worried about the situation, as the youth in the shelter were not taken away after it was revealed that some of Green’s relatives were working there. The other four shelter employees were associated with Green. None of them remain employed by shelters.

State officials and federal courts also accused the state nursery of handling and escalating reports of evacuation cases weeks after the facility reported the case. Neither high-ranking Texas Family Protection Services officials nor federal courts overseeing the state’s foster care system were informed about the situation until a few weeks later, they say. DFPS Commissioner Jaime Masters “Unbelievable” cultural issues in small teams within DFPS.. As a result, two employees were dismissed.

However, Justin Lewis, a former director of childcare research at the Texas Conservation Services Agency, said: DFPS was scapegoating those employees Before he submits his resignation. He said decades of systematic problems and complex processes have led to the disruption of communication in troubled institutions, keeping DFPS executives out of the loop.

After the situation was announced by federal court, the Texas House and Senate each held a hearing to examine the details of the case at the shelter and to see the foster parent system as a whole.