By Nick Socias
Special Victims Prosecutor in Kendall County
On the evening of September 29, 2019, Richard Jay Dew-hirst, a 52-year-old Army veteran, put a gun to his head in a parking lot. Officers from multiple law enforcement agencies surrounded him. Hours earlier, years of sexual abuse suffered by his young stepdaughters had finally come to light, and Dewhirst was not ready to live with the world knowing who he really was: a serial sexual abuser of children.
Earlier that day, Dewhirst was in his truck with his 15-year-old stepdaughter; we’ll call her Marian. They went to the river and Dewhirst asked to perform oral sex on Marian and violate her in other ways. Marian brushed it off and suggested they go back home. On the ride back he pulled out a gun and placed it on the dashboard. For Marian, it was one thing to put up with his constant sexual abuse, but it was another to deal with his threats of violence. She had had enough. Even if it meant her death, she wanted out. She managed to escape from the truck and ran to a police station. Marian told the police everything, that her stepfather had sexually abused her and her older sister, Patrice, for years.
Wanting to bring Dewhirst in safely, a deputy reached out to him via text by pretending to be Dewhirst’s wife—Detective Lisa Rowe and Dewhirst’s wife worked together to make sure Rowe sounded like her. The deputy arranged to talk with Dewhirst in an empty parking lot, but he had one condition: “Don’t call the cops. Its (sic) called suicide by cop then.” But police quickly arrived on the scene. After a brief standoff when Dew-hirst pointed a gun at his own head, he surrendered. As they took him into custody, he cried out, “I’m not a pervert! I just wanted to make her feel good and loved.” Only after he was apprehended and interviews with his stepdaughters began did the true depth of his heinous crimes come to light.
He was booked that day and was charged with six different crimes, including continuous sexual abuse of a child.
Finally exposed
During the interview with his two stepdaughters, Marian and Patrice disclosed years of harmful, sexual abuse. There was evidence of intense grooming, starting when he first came into their lives when they were about 7 and 3 years old. The types of sexual abuse varied from unsolicited touching to drug-facilitated sexual assault and penetration. After a search warrant was executed at the home, hidden cameras were found everywhere. One was even located in an air vent right above the younger girl’s bed.
Dewhirst was always watching. He thought he was undetected, but his wife, Leslie Dewhirst, the girls’ mother, knew her husband liked to watch the girls. Her solution was to buy locks for her daughters’ doors and hide the key, frost their windows with white spray paint to keep him from seeing through the glass, and hang thick curtains over the windows. Over time, Dewhirst found the key to his stepdaughters’ bedrooms and discovered ways to watch them unbeknownst to their mother. For example, he scratched out eyeholes in the windows’ frosted paint so he could see inside the children’s room.
After the police standoff, Dewhirst gained his confidence back. He had an explanation for everything—it was always some misunderstanding, or someone had an agenda against him. His stepdaughters misunderstood his touches—he was a touchy-feely guy. He looked through the stepdaughters’ windows to make sure they were not wasting food. He installed cameras so the girls would be safe. The eye-shaped scratches in the frosting on the windows—the cat must have made them. And of course, he said the sexual assaults never happened—his mother-in-law made his stepdaughters lie. He offered to perform sexual acts only as a way of helping the children—to boost their confidence and make them feel good. He would never harm them. Dewhirst was a veteran who claimed to have suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), though no medical or Veterans Administration records support that claim, so he thought all of his erratic behavior could be explained–or at least forgiven. His lies flowed quickly and without hesitation, no matter how outlandish.
Our office’s involvement
As the Special Victims Prosecutor in Kendall County, I prosecute cases involving a child or an offense that is sexual in nature. While we are technically a rural county with a population of less than 45,000 people, I am lucky to have an incredible, highly experienced team that includes Investigator Billy Hunt and Victim Advocates Liz Jimenez and Glenda Wilke. Outside our office, we work closely with our local Children’s Advocacy Center, the Kids’ Advocacy Place. To seek and see justice done for child victims requires prosecutors to use every resource at our disposal.
Before joining Kendall County, I was privileged to develop my skills at the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, including in the child abuse division, until the end of 2016. From there, I went to the Bexar County Criminal District Attorney’s Office and then I landed in Boerne at the Kendall County Criminal District Attorney’s Office with fellow Harris County alumna Katherine McDaniel, our First Assistant.
Developing relationships with the kids
The first test for every child abuse case is meeting with the child victims. Whether the case is your first or your hundredth, prosecutors have to be approachable, confident, empathetic, and honest. As an attorney, I tell them the only promises I know I can deliver—justice. They need truthful, reliable allies.
In this case, Patrice, who was 21 years old by this time, was able to open up more quickly than her younger sister. In her mind, she wanted justice. She was able to tell her story even though it was hard for her to relive those experiences. Yet she was fiercely protective of her younger sister. I had to earn their trust.
I could immediately tell that the younger girl, Marian, would need multiple meetings for her to feel comfortable talking to me. She was 15 years old. To her, I was just another man who wanted her to relive her trauma. She did not want to talk at first.
I decided to spend the first few hours of meetings building trust and rapport. She needed to know that it was OK to share her story on her own time and to have reassurances that she was not in trouble. Eventually, she decided to go to counseling with one of our trauma counselors for help processing the abuse. She talked about the sexual abuse very matter-of-factly. What made her the most upset, she realized, was feeling stupid for loving Dewhirst and wanting a father figure, and in return for her love and trust, he had betrayed her in one the worst ways possible. After months of multiple pretrial meetings, Marian’s transformation was amazing. She was confident and ready for the courtroom. While she suffered from nerves and dread at having to recount her abuse in open court in front of the defendant and a room full of strangers, she knew she could face her fears and tell her story on the witness stand.
Typically, if I meet with child victims consistently and frequently, they eventually start to trust me. We prosecutors have to earn their trust by interacting with them, such as by playing games, building with Legos, working on puzzles, or coloring with them. With teenage victims, they want you to be real with them so they can trust you. Have a victim’s advocate with you so that person can help too. We also always promote counseling for child victims. I will often share with them that I see a counselor for dealing with my vicarious trauma. Unfortunately, there is a stigma about getting mental health help from a professional, especially in rural counties. Life is hard, and child victims often suffer from issues that only a mental health professional can help them with.
Building the case
While interviewing child victims can be challenging, the other hurdle was building a case against Dewhirst that could prove his child-predator relationships. In the past, prosecuting child abuse cases was not easy due to evidence rules. After the expansion of Article 38.37 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure, child-abuse prosecutors finally had a much-needed tool for presenting previously excluded evidence to a jury in the guilt-innocence phase to explain the child-predator relationship, which often includes Child Protective Services (CPS) records.
To start building our case, we subpoenaed CPS records. What came back shocked us. The only report we received was from CPS licensing about 20 years prior. We learned that Richard Dewhirst had been a licensed foster parent with several teenage girls placed in his care, always from 12 to 17 years of age. The girls made multiple complaints about him peeping under doors with mirrors, rubbing up against their legs at night, watching them, making inappropriate comments, and even having an “affair,” as Dewhirst called it, with a foster child after she aged out.
Unfortunately, no criminal charges came from his abuse of the foster children: no forensic interviews, no criminal investigation, nothing. Because CPS shut Dewhirst down as a foster parent and removed all the children, all the agencies just closed the case. One lone caseworker who handled CPS licensing fought for these children 20 years ago: Jevi Rodriguez. We were able to locate and meet with Jevi, who remembered Dewhirst well even after all these years. To make matters even more difficult, the children, who were now adults, were identified in the reports only by their first names and last initials.
Based on my own experiences fostering children, I knew that the placement agency—not CPS—had to keep records of the children placed in Dewhirst’s home. We drafted subpoenas, and our investigator, Billy Hunt, went to the placement agency to see what records on Dewhirst were archived from 20 years ago. We got lucky and found records with the names and identifying information for his six foster children.
The next step involved contacting these young women and explaining why I needed to talk to them. It was a difficult ask—they were vulnerable teenagers in the foster care system 20 years ago who were sexually abused by the person the State of Texas appointed to take care of them. The number of trust issues or trauma suffered by these young women cannot be overstated. By interviewing them, I knew I would be asking these women to dig up decades’ worth of horrific memories. All I had to offer in return was delayed justice for the crimes committed against them.
We went to their last known addresses, left voicemails, sent letters, everything. Out of the six potential victims, three of them responded to us. One victim, Donna (a pseudonym) explained it the best. She had bounced around from foster home to foster home, and each time she hoped for the best. Then she was placed with the Dew-hirst family in 1999. Soon afterward, she realized that Dewhirst was looking under the door to watch her shower. All of the children in the home noticed the mirrors placed under the large gap between the doors and the floor and nicknamed Dewhirst the “mirror man.” They knew if they were behind a closed door to undress, he would be trying to watch. Donna told the defendant’s then-wife, who insisted Donna misunderstood. Donna then asked to be removed from the home, tried to run away, and did anything she could to escape “the pervert.” She finally gave up and waited to age out of the system. When we asked why she did not contact the police or CPS earlier, she simply stated: “Who was going to believe me?”
Another foster child, Tara (also a pseudonym), explained how Dewhirst would come into her room at night, move the covers, and try rubbing up against her legs. When she woke up, he said he was just turning off the radio in her room—but she knew the radio was not on.
The last foster child victim-witness, Vivian (also a pseudonym), explained her fear of taking a shower or even changing clothes because she knew she was being watched. These foster children who craved safety and security never experienced it under Dewhirst’s roof.
This progression all made sense. Dewhirst’s abuse started the same way with all of them. He had clear voyeuristic and pedophilic kinks as he always tried to watch the children naked. He progressed to touching by rubbing up against their legs. Fast forward 10 to 20 years, and instead of a mirror, he used wireless cameras. Instead of foster children, he abused his own stepdaughters. Instead of touching only their legs, he had penetrative sex. Because he had always gotten away with the abuse, he had gotten more sophisticated and even bolder.
On the road to trial
Preparing child victims for trial is a huge undertaking that involves a delicate balance of building trust and asking them to share their stories of abuse. At first, the defendant refused to take a plea and wanted a jury trial. A few months before trial in February 2021, the younger girl, Marian, had a mental breakdown that landed her in the hospital. As someone who asked her to relive the trauma, I felt responsible. The task I was asking these survivors to undertake was monumental.
Eventually, though, a month before the trial, everything started clicking. Marian recovered and regained her confidence. Her older sister, Patrice, started opening up more and offered additional details about Dewhirst’s sexual abuse and life inside the home. I felt the evidence collected against Dewhirst was very strong, especially because the stepdaughters’ details were corroborated by the other victims’ experiences from two decades prior.
Once I felt confident that the guilt-innocence case was as strong as it could be, we focused on punishment. I knew we had to deal with Dewhirst’s claims of being a veteran with PTSD and claims of his own abuse as a child. Even after hearing about all the atrocities he committed, someone might have some sympathy for him due to his “PTSD” and his own childhood abuse. On the other hand, he was a serial child predator, so if he ever got out of prison, there would be another victim—it was not a question of “if,” but “when.” In my mind, justice for the victims could only be one thing: Dewhirst must never leave confinement.
At the final pretrial hearing, I had one last talk with the defendant’s attorney. I informed him about the other foster-care child victims; what the stepdaughters, the foster-care victims, and CPS investigator Jevi Rodriguez had said about Dewhirst; and that all the victims were ready to testify against him. Dewhirst was set to go to trial for the charge of Continuous Sexual Abuse of a Young Child or Children, which carries a punishment range of 25 years to life without any possibility of parole. On August 20, the defendant changed his plea from not guilty to guilty. We were no longer going to trial, and we were moving into the punishment phase.
The appropriate punishment for justice
After the defendant took a plea for the first-degree felony offense of Continuous Sexual Abuse of a Child, I let the victims know what happened and what the punishment process meant. Under the statute, the minimum sentence he could receive would be 25 years in prison, which meant he would be released when he was around 77 years old. For the maximum, he could remain in prison until his death. I informed the victims that I was asking the judge for the maximum punishment possible.
On November 1, during the hearing, I called Marian and Patrice to the stand to testify how their stepfather severely abused them and how they have healed in his absence. The three former foster children, now all adults, also testified regarding their horrific experiences with Dewhirst. One of them, Donna, saw testifying as the closure she needed after 21 years of no one believing her about the abuse. She would help put her abuser in prison. She testified to her life as a foster child, and most importantly, her life as a foster child in the home of Richard Dewhirst.
Before closing arguments began, the courtroom was filled with survivors, advocates, counselors, and support people. I gave the victims a warning ahead of time: Closing arguments could be very tough to hear. They would bring up the trauma these victims had experienced, but their stories needed to be told. They all gave me a thumbs up. Some were crying. I asked the judge for the only sentence I felt was justice for the victims: life in prison without the possibility of parole.
I should note that our jurisdiction has an odd procedure: The Community Supervision and Corrections Department (CSCD) can recommend a prison sentence on the pre-sentencing investigation (PSI) reports. Kendall County is one of the few counties in Texas that has probation officers prepare PSI reports prior to sentencing, although the law specifically says it is not required. In this case, the probation officer, to everyone’s shock, recommended 25 to 35 years in prison for the defendant, which was almost the minimum. The defense’s sad story seemed to have swayed the CSCD’s recommendation, much to the detriment of the experiences of a long line of victims. We were thankful that the judge returned with a verdict of 50 years in prison with no parole. Dewhirst would be eligible for release at around 102 years old. While it was not officially a life sentence, it might as well have been—no one ages that well in prison.
Supporting victims never stops
After sentencing, I sat in a room filled with the survivors of Richard Dewhirst. After almost two years of trial prep, I witnessed these women and children transform from traumatized victims to empowered survivors. I had such admiration for their strength and resolve. They found a bravery within themselves to voice their stories of abuse to absolute strangers. They helped send a child predator to prison so he will no longer harm any more children. The line of child victims was over. Justice was done.
Even though the case was closed, our team of advocates and counselors let the survivors know they are never alone. We do not stop advocating for victims. Like Dewhirst’s sentence, I will be an advocate for these survivors for the rest of my life.
Note: None of the survivors’ real names are used, but Dewhirst’s stepdaughters’ identities could be inferred from context. Both of them have granted permission for me to write this article, as they want other prosecutors to understand the struggles with these cases.