A Tarrant County judge called into question the decision to drastically lower the bond of a White Settlement man charged with child sex crimes.
Steven Skalij, 39, voluntarily turned himself in at the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office in the early hours of February 3 after White Settlement police called on the public to assist in tracking him down. Skalij was arrested on a felony charge of child sexual assault last October but was released on a $100,000 bond, which had been lowered from $500,000 by a Tarrant County judge.
Two new felony charges of child sexual assault were filed against Skalij, leading to his most recent arrest. All three charges appear to involve two female victims, a 14-year-old and a 15-year-old. However, White Settlement Police Chief Christopher Cook said there is a strong likelihood that other victims are out there, according to NBC 5 DFW.
Skalij’s bond on the two latest charges has also been reduced from $1 million and $500,000 to $100,000 each.
He allegedly resided in the home where the alleged assaults took place, with one of the victim’s mothers telling police that her daughter lived with him for a time.
“There were multiple locations at the property, living locations. There were multiple teenagers, there were multiple other adults staying at the location,” Cook said.
When questioned about video footage obtained from one of the victim’s phones that purportedly showed him sexually assaulting her, Skalij allegedly admitted to having sexual relations with both teens on multiple occasions.
“What’s concerning is, I think, in his mind, teenagers can consent, and that is not factual, not correct,” Cook said.
The initial bond amount was set by Judge Christopher Gregory, a Tarrant County justice of the peace for Precinct 4.
“Me setting the bond was due to the heinous [nature] of the crime, and even in one of them, how the warrant was based out … there was actually video footage,” Gregory explained, according to NBC 5. He admitted to being shocked that another judge lowered the bond amount to $100,000 per charge.
Cook is currently working with Tarrant County’s bond desk to stop the “revolving door” and keep Skalij behind bars until his trial.
“I get it. Judges can do that. But what happened is as soon as he bonded out, he picked up one of the victims in these cases,” he said.
In another case, as reported recently by The Dallas Express, a Dallas County judge drastically cut Cameron Turner’s bond from $1.6 million to $350,000. The 22-year-old faces three second-degree felony counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and one third-degree felony count of unlawful carrying of a weapon in a prohibited place. He was arrested in connection with the shooting that occurred during the Texas State Fair last year.
Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson and Dallas Police Chief Eddie Garcia have been highly critical of such steep bond reductions. Just recently, Johnson stressed the need for more local judges and District Attorney John Creuzot, who has previously been called out for allegedly being soft on crime, to do a better job of ensuring that potentially violent suspects that pose a risk to the community are held in jail pending dispositions in their criminal cases, as covered by The Dallas Express.
Multiple sex offenses against children have been reported across North Texas this past year, as covered by The Dallas Express.
Sex crimes in Dallas were high throughout 2023, with a total of 756 reports made. The victims of these crimes were predominantly black and Hispanic women and girls. As of February 4, 46 reports of rape, fondling, sodomy, and sexual assault with an object had been logged in 2024, according to the City’s crime analytics dashboard.
The Dallas Police Department has struggled to reduce crime amid a significant staffing shortage, with only 3,000 officers within its ranks despite a City report calling for a force of 4,000. City officials also budgeted DPD just $654 million this fiscal year, considerably less than the law enforcement spending in other high-crime municipalities, such as New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago.
