A Texas sheriff is speaking out against the Child Protective Services after a foster dad who took in 180 young girls was arrested and charged with sexually assaulting at least five of them.
Medina County Sheriff Randy Brown said placing the children in the foster home wasn’t about their safety.
It was about profit.
“I’m aggravated at the whole system,” Brown said.
“I’m aggravated at the company that placed these girls. It was a money-making deal, the way they were running those girls through there like livestock. It wasn’t about making a better world for them. They were making a profit off them.”
Deputies arrested 58-year-old Miguel Briseno, who had two foster homes between 2005 to 2013, on five counts of sexual assault of a child Thursday after several girls came forward.
“He would have up to 10, 11, 12 girls there at one time that were staying there,” Sheriff Brown said.
“So it was a house full of girls.”
“Those girls were taken from some environment, and then you have some jackass like him [Briseno] abusing these girls that already have troubles,” Brown told the San Antonio Express this week.
A sixth girl also came forward with allegations since the story broke but he has not yet been charged yet in that case.
This isn’t the first time Brown and his investigators looked into Briseno’s history.
In 2013, a 15-year-old girl who lived with him came forward claiming Briseno asked her to have sex with him.
Deputies interviews eight girls between the ages 14 to 16 living in his home at the time, but none claimed abuse.
Briseno faced a felony soliciting of a minor charge, but the Medina District Attorney’s Office reduced the charge to a misdemeanor after the teen ran away shortly before his trial started.
He received six months probation and no jail time after pleading guilty.
Investigators have since interviewed several women who were teens under his care years ago.
Sheriff Brown says it’s personal.
“Those out there doing this thinking, ‘I’m going to do this and no one is ever going to know,’ you’re sadly mistaken,” he said.
“Whenever we get a little whisper about something like that, we’re going to turn every rock and go down every trail there is to prove or disprove it.”
The sheriff says other people could be charged at a later date depending on what additional evidence investigators are able to gather.
“I expect there will be more [victims]. Females will see this on the air and come forward.”
It’s not often law enforcement officials criticize the child welfare system for putting profit over children’s safety.
Many argue the criticism is warranted due to federal funding incentives local child protection departments across the country receive.
Under Title IV-E, local child protection departments receive federal funding based on how many children social workers remove from the custody of their families the prior year, which former Orange County CPS Director Michael Riley explains to civil rights attorney Shawn McMillan in a deposition for Fogarty-Hardwick v. County of Orange in the video below.
In that case, a jury awarded the plaintiff Deanna Fogarty $10.8 million after social workers lied to a judge, which resulted in Fogarty losing her children.
Briseno is being held on a $500,000 bond at the Medina County Jail.
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