The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth logo and building front | Images by The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth/Facebook; Porn? added by Tiffany Chartier/DX
Months after the Fort Worth Police Department seized photographs from a Modern Art Museum exhibit amid allegations of child pornography, Tarrant County District Attorney Phil Sorrells confirmed that two reports related to the investigation have been submitted to his office.
The district attorney’s office has not disclosed whether charges will be filed but noted that they do not comment on ongoing cases, per Fort Worth Report. The investigation was prompted by political pressure, including calls from Tarrant County Judge Tim O’Hare and other Republican officials to scrutinize the images.
The seized photographs were part of a collection by photographer Sally Mann, which included sensitive images of her young children, as reported by The Dallas Express.
Here is more on this developing story as reported by Fort Worth Report:
Months after Fort Worth police seized photographs featured in a Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth exhibit to investigate allegations of child pornography, Tarrant County District Attorney Phil Sorrells confirmed two reports connected to the case have been presented to his office.
Whether charges will be filed remains unknown.
“The Fort Worth Police Department submitted two incident reports with our office. We don’t comment on pending litigation,” district attorney’s office spokesperson Anna Tinsley Williams said in a March 14 email.
Williams said the reports were submitted “recently.” No further information was provided.
In early January, the Fort Worth Police Department confirmed it had launched an investigation into decades-old images by Virginia-born photographer Sally Mann that were featured as part of the “Diaries of Home” exhibition, which closed Feb. 2. The investigation followed publication of a series of Dallas Express articles that quoted County Judge Tim O’Hare, among other Republican leaders, calling for the photographs to be investigated and removed.
Mann had 21 pieces included in the “Diaries of Home” exhibition co-curated by Chief Curator Andrea Karnes and Assistant Curator Clare Milliken, including a handful from her 1992 book “Immediate Family” that featured the artist’s then-young children. The images removed from the exhibit by police included a photo centered on Mann’s naked daughter jumping onto a picnic table and a portrait of her son with popsicle drips running down his torso, legs and genitals.
Several civil liberties groups have demanded Fort Worth police close its investigation, citing First Amendment protections.
During the review process, the Tarrant County district attorney’s office reads reports that detail the results of an investigation to determine if there is sufficient evidence that an offense has been committed, an appropriate charge and if there is an identifiable person responsible for the offense. The office’s intake attorneys may accept the case as presented or return it to Fort Worth police with comments or questions.
If a case is accepted, an assistant district attorney drafts the pleadings and forwards misdemeanor cases to the court and felony cases to a grand jury. If the intake attorney determines that there is not enough evidence to support a conclusion that an offense has occurred, then that case is rejected.
The Modern declined to comment on the latest update into the investigation. A Fort Worth police spokesperson did not respond by publication time.
Since January, the Fort Worth Police Department has declined to release incident reports related to the investigation after the Fort Worth Report filed a public information request. The department, which closed the request Jan. 15 without seeking an opinion from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, cited its right to withhold records related to alleged or suspected child abuse or neglect under Texas family code.
The Report has sought an opinion from the attorney general, arguing that the code does not apply in this instance. The city of Fort Worth submitted its own brief to the attorney general asking for the information to be withheld, City Attorney Leann Guzman told the Report in January.
On March 7, the Report discovered a brief incident report related to the investigation was publicly available online in the police department’s records portal.
The incident report did not identify who made the complaint about the Modern exhibit, but said police first investigated the allegations about 3 p.m. Dec. 24. The person who contacted police said they first heard about “pictures of minor children displayed naked” Dec. 19. The report provided few other details on the case.
After a reporter contacted the police department about the incident report in early March, it was removed from the online portal. Bradley Perez, a Fort Worth police spokesperson, said the report was removed because “it was an error that it was made accessible to the public.”
Some reports, when listed under the category of “other offense,” may not be flagged for nonpublic disclosure even if they contain sensitive information. The incident report, which was assigned to the multiagency Internet Crimes Against Children unit, fell into that category when it was entered into the system, Perez said.
“IT has since looked into this discrepancy/error and added more safety measures to hopefully prevent something like this from happening again when reports are entered into the system,” he said in a March 13 statement. “Apologies for any confusion this may have created.”
Guzman said the report uploaded online only included “basic information,” which is commonly uploaded by the police department for the public’s viewing even when the city requests to withhold an entire report. What is available online is not the full report, she added.
“The city’s brief to the AG with the request to withhold the full report remains in place,” she told the Report.
The Report had not received a response about its open records request from the attorney general’s office as of March 14.
