How Could You? Hall of Shame-Nicholas Santos UPDATED
This will be an archive of heinous actions by those involved in child welfare, foster care and adoption. We forewarn you that these are deeply disturbing stories that may involve sex abuse, murder, kidnapping and other horrendous actions.
From Dallas, Texas, CPS worker Nicholas Santos, 34, “was arrested on a charge of sexual abuse of a child” on March 4, 2012 and is being “held in the Dallas County jail” on a $25,000 bond, records show.
“A man who identified himself as Santos’ roommate said police arrested Santos on Friday and seized his home computer.
CPS Investigator Charged With Sexual Assault of Child
[NBC Dallas Fort-Worth 3/6/12 by Scott Gordon]
The 34-year-old is charged with Sexual Assault of a Child; bond has been set at $25,000.
CPS issued this statement following the arrest:
“We have been notified by law enforcement that one of our employees, Nicholas Santos, has been arrested and charged with felony sexual assault. He is currently incarcerated. Mr. Santos has been suspended from his current job as CPS investigator,. He has been in that role since he joined the agency in March 2006. We are conducting an internal investigation. If we determine that these criminal charges are true, he will be fired immediately. There is no place in Child Protective Services for employees who betray the public’s trust, or who take advantage of young people we are supposed to protect.”
Nicholas Santos: CPS Investigator arrested for sexual assault
[CW33 3/6/12 by Jennifer Shrum]
“CBS 11 obtained the arrest warrant affidavit and according to the warrant, Santos paid his victim for sex.
Warrant: Cedar Hill CPS Agent Paid Teen For Sex
[CBS Dallas Fort worth 3/7/12 by Robbie Owens and Jay Gormley]
REFORM Puzzle Piece
Police have filed a second felony sexual assault of a child charge against Nicholas Roman Santos, 34. He remained in the Dallas County Jail Thursday on $50,000 bond.
The new charge alleges that he paid a 16-year-old girl for sex on numerous occasions at his Cedar Hillhome. The girl told police she initially told Santos that she was 19 or 21, but that he learned her true age within weeks, the documents said.
“He also immediately told her he was employed by CPS as a case investigator,” the documents said. “He told her that he accessed her CPS file and learned her age information and date of birth.”
CPS spokeswoman Marissa Gonzales said this via email this morning: “Nicholas Santos resigned his position with CPS last week in lieu of termination.”
I’ve asked specifically for a response to the allegations that Santos may have accessed CPS information on one of his alleged victims. We’ll update if and when we get more. ”
CPS case worker resigns amid Cedar Hill child sex assault probe that includes new accusations
[Dallas News 3/15/12 by Scott Goldstein]
Update 2:“A Dallas County jury convicted a former Child Protective Services investigator Friday of sexually assaulting two underage girls he met online in 2011. He was sentenced to eight years in prison.
Nicholas Santos, 38, found the girls, then 15 and 16 years old, through an advertisement placed on Backpage.com, a classifieds site.
He met the 16-year-old at a Wal-Mart in August 2011 and paid her $300 to have sex in his Cedar Hill home, according to police documents.
The girl told Santos that she was of legal age, but he quickly discovered she was lying when he accessed her CPS file.
But he met the other girl soon afterward and continued to have sex with them until mid-January 2012. Santos was arrested that March after one of the girls told police at the Tarrant County Juvenile Detention Center about the relationship and led them to his house.
The Dallas Morning News generally does not identify victims of sexual assault.
Santos, who appeared Friday in a purple sweater worn over a dress shirt and spent much of closing arguments with his hands folded in his lap or fidgeting with a ballpoint pen, admitted in testimony earlier this week to having sex with the women. But defense attorney Ray Jackson railed against the girls’ lies about their ages and characterized them as wily hustlers with long client lists rather than helpless victims.
“These were not children,” Jackson said. The 16-year-old “lied and lied and lied about her age and even about putting the ad on Backpage.com. She was doing this for money.”
He added that the 15-year-old showed Santos a fake ID she’d also used to work at a strip club and accused the 16-year-old of blackmailing his client when he learned her true age, threatening to reveal the relationship to CPS if he didn’t continue supporting her financially.
“What do you do when victims are the victimizers?” Jackson asked. “It just ain’t right.”
Dallas County assistant district attorney Hilary Wright wasn’t buying it. She described the girls as victims of poverty and family neglect driven to extreme measures to survive — the exact kind of person Santos was employed to serve.
“It’s not a choice to commit prostitution when there is no alternative,” she said. “Defense counsel came up up here and wanted to blame the victim. But this trial was about what he [Santos] did — not what he knew — but what he did to these children.”
The jury agreed, returning two guilty verdicts in less than two hours.
In the punishment phase, Wright quashed any hope of probation by showing the jury several pages of expletive-ridden Facebook posts Santos made threatening the Cedar Hill Police Department and its detectives.
“The Cedar Hill Police Department are a bunch of liars and corrupt [expletives] who destroy people’s lives,” he wrote in one. “I hope the (sic) burn in hell for what they’ve done.”
“I’m pretty much handcuffed until this legal [expletive] is over,” he wrote in another.
He’ll have eight years to wait.”
Former CPS worker gets eight years for sexual assault [Dallas News 7/1/16 by Austin Huguelet]
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