Edgar Walters

Texas State Fraud Investigator Resigns Following Revelations He Was Moonlighting As Lobbyist

Stuart Bowen, the inspector general for the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, resigned amid revelations that he was moonlighting for a private firm that provided services to the government of Iraq.

Edgar Walters
By Edgar Walters
Stuart Bowen testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington before the Wartime Contracting Commission. (AP/J. Scott Applewhite)

Texas’ top health care fraud investigator resigned Wednesday night under pressure from the governor, the result of media inquiries that revealed Texas Health and Human Services Inspector General Stuart Bowen was moonlighting for a private firm that provided services to the government of Iraq. An unsigned contract found in Bowen’s government

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Texas Couldn’t Help This Sex-Trafficked Teen, So Authorities Sent Her To Jail

No one wanted Lena behind bars. She was not a prostitute; she was a child who had been sexually exploited. But teenage sex-trafficking victims in Texas end up in jail for one simple reason: There’s nowhere else for them to go.

Neena Satija
Morgan Smith
Edgar Walters
By Neena Satija
And Morgan Smith
And Edgar Walters
17-year-old Lena waits to be released from the Harris County Jail, with a small bag of her possessions. Her mentor gave her a blue jumpsuit to wear over her skimpy clothes. (Photo: Callie Richmond/The Texas Tribune)

HOUSTON (REPORT) — For three months in the fall of 2016, Lena was one of the youngest inmates in the Harris County Jail. The 17-year-old lived with two dozen women in a single room. She slept on a metal bunk and wore an oversized orange jumpsuit every day. She went to the bathroom with no privacy, using a toilet attached to the wall. Yet compared

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