Amid the allegations regarding incomplete criminal investigations in reference to children at The Refuge Ranch, the director of the Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS)’s Child Care Investigations Division has abruptly resigned.
In a letter to the DFPS on Sunday, Justin Lewis, the now-former director of the division, announced his resignation.
Lewis stated he could no longer “acquiesce to the political nature of this job.”
The resignation comes after emails containing personal texts from Lewis were sent to a federal court in Corpus Christi. In the messages, Lewis allegedly called U.S. District Judge Graham Jack a slur and wished harm on her.
Lewis reportedly made the comments after Jack called an emergency court hearing on March 10 in response to allegations of assault against employees of The Refuge Ranch, a residential treatment program in Bastrop County for girls traumatized by sex traffickers.
In the hearing, Judge Jack expressed outrage that children had not been immediately removed from the facility when the allegations surfaced and called the incident another system failure.
“Politics make me sick,” Lewis reportedly texted former department employee Lisa Drain on March 12, two days after Jack called for the emergency hearing. “The judge turned it into that quickly.”
He then allegedly commented that he hoped Jack became a traffic-fatality victim.
On March 19, Drain sent screenshots of Lewis’ texts to Lori Purifoy, a case manager for Judge Jack.
Drain then contacted Purifoy again on Sunday, stating Lewis was remorseful and that his use of a slur in the email he sent her eight days before had been “wildly out of character.”
Lewis, a former police officer, also expressed in his resignation letter that he was unhappy about Texas’ top child welfare officer, DFPS Commissioner Jaime Masters, publicly reprimanding his Child Care Investigations division employees at a further hearing on March 17.
Masters told Senators that both a supervisor and her manager in the DFPS’s investigative division had been fired for their failings relating to the situation at The Refuge.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, seven juveniles ages 11 to 17 were allegedly the victims of assault, exploitation, and neglect by nine personnel at The Refuge Ranch.
On January 24, a current employee reported the alleged abuse to the DFPS, The Refuge’s contracting agency. After the report was received, the children remained at the Bastrop County recovery center for more than a month.
Between January 24 and March 4, more accusations of abuse were received, including negligent supervision, physical and sexual assault, and medical neglect.
According to The Refuge’s founder, Brooke Crowder, one such accusation involved two teenage victims of sex trafficking that were allegedly instructed by a staff member to take nude “selfies” while living at the center.
Crowder said the nighttime worker “groomed” the two girls into taking the nude images using the employee’s “burner phone,” sold them online, and “rewarded” the minors with controlled narcotics like opioids and sedatives.
Masters testified in the hearing on March 17 that four other state employees have been dismissed or will be fired shortly for failing to actively investigate and inform higher-ups about the problems at the facility.
According to a statement the DFPS commissioner made on February 1, “It’s reported that [The Refuge] staff member that was alone with the kids was also the sister of the alleged perpetrator. And so the (DFPS) director of Residential Care was also aware of the private internal investigation, and my notes say that she did not report that until after the fact … She did not actually call it into statewide intake.”
In his letter of resignation, Lewis said Masters’ denouncement of the DFPS personnel members was political and that the wrong people were being punished.
Lewis claimed these state employees were terminated, “Yet staff in other divisions — the actual divisions responsible for the placement and movement of the children in our care — sit quietly in the shadows while the public political flogging goes on.”
He added that his family and personal health have suffered as a result of his five-year stint at the parent agency of Child Protective Services.
Masters said she intends to have her department’s pending investigations into whether girls were abused at The Refuge completed as soon as possible.
Jordan Dixon, the director of the commission’s separate office that licenses and regulates foster care providers, said the agency needs “more evidence” before deciding whether to lift The Refuge’s license suspension by April 12.