Sex abuse charged in state facility

Kim Smith

Monday, Aug. 7, 2000 | 11:29 a.m.

A 37-year-old Las Vegas resident has been indicted on charges he sexually abused five boys at a state-run home for emotionally handicapped children.

Rick Taylor is being held in the Clark County Detention Center on $360,000 bail for 18 counts of sexual assault of a minor and lewdness with a child. He is scheduled to be arraigned Thursday.

Taylor worked at the Oasis Residential Treatment Center, 6171 W. Charleston Blvd., from July 1998 until June of this year, when he resigned, Chief Deputy District Attorney Teresa Lowry said.

During that time Taylor is accused of abusing five boys between 11 and 15 years old.

Taylor has told police that he worked at youth facilities all over Utah and in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City.

Although Taylor apparently doesn't have a criminal record, Lowry said, investigators are contacting all of those facilities to check for other potential victims. They also have interviewed other youths at the Oasis center.

Lowry said a staff member contacted police when a boy told her that Taylor had made advances toward him while he was taking a bath. The same staff member had heard the boy order Taylor out of the bathroom.

The treatment center is operated by the state's Division of Child and Family Services. According to literature provided by the state, the children who live on the campus have severe emotional and behavioral problems and some have been physically or sexually abused.

According to state records, Taylor was a teaching parent at one of seven on-campus treatment homes. Teaching parents are responsible for, among other things, teaching, training and supervising children in self-care skills, social skills and academic skills.

Teaching parents also conduct individual therapy sessions, provide daily group sessions and "provide a safe, clean, healthy home-like environment," according to the literature provided by the state.

Although Christa Peterson, deputy administrator of the Division of Child and Family Services, declined to speak about Taylor's case, she said all staff members are required to undergo a background check.

"In general, I can say we make every effort to hire competent staff who are going to treat our children well," Peterson said.

The case is reminiscent of the Larry Wisenbaker case last year, Lowry said.

Wisenbaker, 34, pleaded guilty in November to molesting 16 boys while working as a caretaker at St. Jude's Ranch, a residential treatment center for children in Boulder City.

He was sentenced in February to five life sentences with parole possible after 75 years.

A criminal background check done on Wisenbaker turned up no problems, but Georgia officials had failed to enter his 1996 cruelty-to-children conviction into a national crime database.

Officials at St. Jude's also didn't know that Wisenbaker was suspected of molesting at least six boys at a Texas youth home because Wisenbaker didn't put the home on his resume. Moreover, Texas officials let their investigation of Wisenbaker drop after he fled the state.