Sentence rendered for Hutto guard convicted of groping detained women

In September, we covered a story regarding Donald Charles Dunn, a guard employed by CCA at their T. Don Hutto facility in Taylor, TX who allegedly groped inmates while transporting them. On the 9th of this month, Dunn pleaded guilty to three counts of official oppression and two counts of unlawful restraint, and was sentenced to a year in jail--the maximum sentence for a Class A Misdemeanor in Texas--and two years of probation following his release.

Dunn also agreed to relinquish his private security license and not seek to get it back during his jail term or probation period, Hobbs said.

As part of his job as resident supervisor, Dunn drove men, women and children who were out on bail from the detention center, which is overseen by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, to Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, officials said...

...Dunn has not been charged with a crime related to the alleged Travis County incidents, said David Escamilla, the Travis County attorney. Escamilla said he has been waiting to see whether the U.S. attorney's office would charge Dunn with a federal crime related to the allegations.

Daryl Fields, spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office, said an investigation is ongoing.

Steve Owen, a spokesman for Corrections Corporation of America, which runs the facility for the immigration agency, said Tuesday in a statement that the company, "has a longstanding zero-tolerance policy for any form of staff-resident sexual misconduct." Dunn was fired from the company as soon as allegations surfaced, officials said. (Miguel Liscano, "Man gets jail for groping detention center residents," Austin American-Statesman, 9 November 2010).

For more details, be sure to read a more lengthy detail of the allegations in our September story. For more information on T. Don Hutto, visit the facility's page on our map.