Texas Child Exploitation Unit Arrests Man For Sexual Assault Of A Child

Staff Report

Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton is the lawyer for the State of Texas and is charged by the Texas Constitution to:

• defend the laws and the Constitution of the State of Texas
• represent the State in litigation
• approve public bond issues

To fulfill these responsibilities, the Office of the Attorney General serves as legal counsel to all boards and agencies of state government, issues legal opinions when requested by the Governor, heads of state agencies and other officials and agencies as provided by Texas statutes.

The Texas AG sits as an ex-officio member of state committees and commissions and defends challenges to state laws and suits against both state agencies and individual employees of the State.

Many Texans look to the Office of the Attorney General for guidance with disputes and legal issues. The agency receives hundreds of letters, phone calls and visits each week about crime victims’ compensation, child support, abuse in nursing homes, possible consumer fraud and other topics. To find out more about the Texas Attorney General, visit the official website at https://texasattorneygeneral.gov/.

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AG Paxton’s Child Exploitation Unit Arrests El Campo Man for Sexual Assault of a Child

AUSTIN – Attorney General Ken Paxton today announced that the Child Exploitation Unit of his office arrested 42-year-old Robert Lee Gonzales, of El Campo, Texas, pursuant to three warrants for sexual assault of a child.

A CyberTipline report from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) alerted the Child Exploitation Unit (CEU) to Gonzales, who reportedly uploaded child pornography to a social media account.

Following a search warrant at his residence, Gonzales was interviewed by CEU investigators and denied possessing child pornography.

Investigators seized several digital storage devices for examination by the Digital Forensics Unit of the attorney general’s office.

As the investigation continued, a subsequent search warrant for Gonzales’ social media accounts revealed communications with two children, detailing sexual assaults, as well as images of child pornography.

The two children were identified and interviewed, both confirming that Gonzales sexually assaulted them.

Attorney General Paxton’s office works to protect children by using the latest technology to track down some of the most profoundly evil predators online. Since its inception, the Child Exploitation Unit has made 334 arrests and obtained 589 convictions on charges for possession of child pornography.

Attorney General Paxton urges all parents and teachers to become aware of the risks children face on the internet and take steps to help ensure their safety. If you suspect someone is producing or downloading child pornography, you can report it to NCMEC.

For more information on cyber safety, please visit https://texasattorneygeneral.gov/initiatives/ cyber-safety/.

AG Paxton Files Multistate Amicus Brief with Supreme Court Supporting Trump Administration Effort to Rescind Unlawful DACA Program

AUSTIN – Attorney General Ken Paxton today led a multistate coalition in an amicus brief filed with the United States Supreme Court opposing the unlawful Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and supporting the Trump administration’s decision to rescind the program.

When created via executive memo in 2014, DACA unilaterally granted lawful presence and access to work permits to over 1.7 million unlawfully-present aliens in defiance of laws enacted by Congress.

“The DACA program was a lawless exercise of executive power, and the Trump administration’s decision to rescind DACA was absolutely necessary to uphold the rule of law. By creating DACA and DAPA, the Obama administration attempted to bypass Congress and unilaterally amend our immigration laws,” said Attorney General Paxton. “The President’s duty is to ensure that the law is faithfully executed, not to unilaterally re-write the law anytime the President disagrees with Congress’ decision.”

The Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized that the power to establish when aliens are lawfully present is “entrusted exclusively to Congress.” Congress has never given the executive branch the ability to grant lawful presence to an entire class of aliens, let alone work authorization, health care, unemployment, and a pathway to citizenship.

The unlawful program also puts an undue financial strain on states. Under DACA, states bear the cost of providing social services including healthcare, education, and law enforcement to non-citizens. Texas alone incurs more than $250,000,000 in total direct costs from DACA recipients each year.

Texas has a proven track record in protecting liberty and taking on abuse of federal power.

When former President Obama sought to grant lawful presence to more than four million unlawfully present aliens, Attorney General Paxton led a 26-state coalition all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to stop his unlawful immigration plan, known as Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA).

President Trump revoked the 2014 Obama-era policy memo that created DAPA in June 2017 and announced his decision to phase out DACA in September 2017.

States joining Texas in the amicus brief are Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota, West Virginia, and Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant.

To view today’s amicus brief, click here.

AG Paxton Leads Multistate Coalition Urging Supreme Court to Allow Faith-Based Organizations to Continue Caring for Foster Children

AUSTIN – Attorney General Ken Paxton led a multistate coalition in an amicus brief filed with the United States Supreme Court in support of faith-based child welfare organizations. Discriminating against faith-based organizations that partner with state agencies based on their religious beliefs would not only be a blatant violation of the Constitution’s religious liberty protections, but it would also greatly diminish the number of child-placement agencies available to children and limit placement and care options across the nation.

“Foster care and adoption programs should be focused on the best interest of children, and those interests are not served when the government excludes faith-based organizations from participating based solely on their religious beliefs. Allowing qualified faith-based organizations to place and care for children in need increases the chances of finding those children a safe home where they will receive the love and care every child deserves,” Attorney General Paxton said. “Cooperation between states and faith-based groups is fundamental to child welfare, just as religious liberty is to our Constitution.”

In Sharonell Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, the City refused to continue working with Catholic Social Services and foster care families like Fulton because of their religious views.

Catholic Social Services has been serving the children of Philadelphia for over a century and Fulton has fostered 40 children for more than 25 years.

Unlike Philadelphia, the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services welcomes the opportunity to work with both faith-based and secular private child-placing agencies to find homes for children in the foster care system.

In 2017, Texas enacted House Bill 3859, which protects the religious liberty of child-placing agencies and prohibits the State from granting or denying funding to such organizations based on their religious beliefs.

It also prohibits government entities from discriminating or taking adverse action against a child-placing agency if that provider declines to provide, facilitate, or refer a person for child welfare services that conflict with the provider’s sincerely held religious beliefs.

Texas is joined in this amicus brief by Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, West Virginia, and Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin.

To view a copy of the amicus brief, click here.

AG Paxton Co-Leads Amicus Brief Urging the Supreme Court to Overturn Judicial Expansion of Title VII

AUSTIN – Co-leading a coalition of 15 states, Attorney General Ken Paxton today filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the United States Supreme Court urging the court to overturn attempts by lower federal courts to bypass Congress and to judicially expand provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that prohibit discrimination based on a person’s sex to include sexual orientation and gender identity. The brief was co-authored by the Attorneys General of Tennessee and Nebraska.

“This is a case about whether federal courts can simply re-write a federal statute when they disagree with the policy choices of the peoples’ elected representatives in Congress,” Attorney General Paxton said. “Congress has repeatedly declined to expand Title VII to cover these characteristics, so unelected federal judges took it upon themselves to do so. It is the duty of the judicial department to say what the law is, not what it ought to be. The Supreme Court must reverse all judges who attempt to do the latter.”

The brief points out that the plain meaning of the word “sex” in the statute refers only to biological status as male or female, and no ordinary reading of that term includes sexual orientation or gender identity.

The fact that Congress has considered proposals to add sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of characteristics covered by Title VII further shows that the current language of the statute does not include those terms.

The attempt by several federal courts to read the statute to include those terms lacks any real basis in the law and is based on the policy preferences of the judges. Our Constitution entrusts such policy decisions exclusively to Congress.

The State of Texas previously won two injunctions against the Obama Administration over similar attempts to expansively re-define sex discrimination in healthcare and education.

Texas is joined in the amicus brief by Tennessee, Nebraska, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Louisiana, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, West Virginia, and Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin.

Read a copy of the brief here.

Attorney General Paxton Co-Leads 51 Attorney General Coalition in Securing Nationwide Agreement with Voice Service Providers to Address Robocalls

AUSTIN – Attorney General Ken Paxton, co-leading a coalition of 51 attorneys general, secured a nationwide agreement with 12 of the nation’s premier voice service providers to implement principles that take the fight directly to robocallers and scammers and empower citizens to take back their privacy.

“If you have been guilty of leaving your phone turned on, you know it is getting hard to participate in a worship service, watch a movie, or talk to your loved ones without being interrupted by a call from a fake phone number. Texans’ private phones are being taken over by constant calls, invading their privacy and all too often defrauding them of their hard-earned money,” said Attorney General Paxton. “My office has a history of aggressively pursuing illegal telemarketers through litigation. And now we look forward to working with voice service providers to squash scammers’ access to Texans. We won’t stop until the robocalls do.”

Under the principles announced today, voice service providers will:

• Implement call-blocking technology at the network level at no cost to customers
• Make additional call-blocking and labeling tools available to customers for free
• Implement technology to authenticate that callers are coming from a valid source
• Monitor their networks for robocall traffic, and take appropriate action if suspicious activity is detected

The phone companies will also assist anti-robocall enforcement by:

• Knowing who their customers are so bad actors can be identified and investigated
• Investigating and taking action against suspicious callers – including notifying law enforcement and state attorneys general
• Working with law enforcement, including state attorneys general, to trace the origins of illegal robocalls
• Requiring telephone companies with which they contract to cooperate in traceback identification

Robocalls and telemarketing calls are consistently the number one source of consumer complaints at many state Attorneys General offices, the Federal Communications Commission, and the Federal Trade Commission.

For more information about illegal robocalls and caller ID spoofing, visit the attorney general’s website at https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/consumer-protection/phone-mail-and-fax-scams/how-spot-and-report-phone-scams.

To view the anti-robocall principles, click here.

AG Paxton: Joint Statement on Thomas Brown Investigation in Canadian, Texas

AUSTIN – This joint statement is regarding the investigation into the disappearance of Thomas Kelly Brown. The Office of the Attorney General, FBI, and the Texas Rangers briefed the 31^st District Attorney’s Office on the findings of this case, and all parties concur with the investigative findings. Specific details have been withheld for the integrity of the case and the dignity of the family.

On November 23, 2016, Thomas Kelly Brown was last seen in Canadian, Texas, at approximately 11:30 p.m. by several of Thomas’s friends.

Thomas was reported to have missed his curfew and was subsequently reported missing. The Hemphill County Sheriff’s Office responded to the report, and an attempt to locate Thomas was initiated.

This investigation has been a collaborative effort between the Hemphill County Sheriff’s Office, Texas Attorney General’s Criminal Investigations Division, the Texas Rangers, and the Federal Bureau of Investigations.

Throughout the investigation, evidence has been discovered and obtained by various agencies and thoroughly analyzed. There is no viable evidence that would lead a reasonable person to conclude that foul play led to the death of Thomas Kelly Brown.

This includes evidence related to the manner of death, cause of death, or evidence of a specific suspect.

Investigators have exhausted all resources available and have spent thousands of hours dedicated to Thomas Brown. Several additional agencies and hundreds of individual citizens have also assisted in this case.

Therefore, this investigation has been suspended pending any newly discovered credible evidence.

Notification of Opinion

Original Request RQ-0301-KP: Whether section 11.060(d) of the Education Code, regarding filling a vacancy on the board of trustees of an independent school district, applies to the Harris County Department of Education

Received: Wednesday, Aug. 21, 2019

Requestor:
The Honorable Vince Ryan
Harris County Attorney
1019 Congress, 15th Floor
Houston, Texas 77002