AUSTIN — A federal judge seized on last spring’s death of a teenage girl in a Houston-area foster care facility to blister the state Thursday for allegedly letting shoddy, for-profit providers endanger the lives of vulnerable kids.

“Children are dying,” U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack said at a hearing on whether to hold Texas in contempt of court in the long-running foster care lawsuit.

It’s “unbelievable” that Child Protective Services continued to place foster children at Prairie Harbor Residential Treatment Center in Wallis “up until yesterday,” Jack said.

The judge said that by using a simple Google search, she learned that the center’s owner and executive director have a new Corpus Christi facility that is receiving CPS kids, a development she called “very distressing.”

“I share your concerns, your honor,” said Jaime Masters, the new commissioner of the Department of Family and Protective Services.

When Jack noted that the department did not decide to begin removing foster children from Prairie Harbor until Wednesday — the same day her court-appointed monitors filed a court document with additional troubling information on the girl’s death — Masters said she assumed the two developments were connected.

However, Kaysie Taccetta, the department’s deputy associate commissioner for CPS, later testified that the state’s decision to yank the children from Prairie Harbor was not affected by Wednesday’s update by the monitors.

“You believe in coincidence, Ms. Gdula?” Jack erupted, questioning Kimberly Gdula, a lawyer from the office of Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is defending the state in the case. Gdula did not answer.

Prairie Harbor co-owner Rich DuBroc and his lawyer Norman Ladd of Tyler, who has represented foster care providers, did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment. Neither DuBroc nor Prairie Harbor’s current executive director, Alexandria Pritchard, returned calls by The Dallas Morning News.

Sanctions requested

Plaintiffs’ lawyers have asked Jack to levy big financial penalties on Gov. Greg Abbott, the department and the Health and Human Services Commission for failing to make improvements to long-term foster care the judge has ordered.

Jack, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, appears likely to order at least some sanctions. That could come as early as Friday, when the contempt hearing continues.

At Thursday’s hearing, Jack and plaintiffs’ lawyer Paul Yetter of Houston criticized the state for lacking credible data on the size of CPS workers’ caseloads, given that certain “exceptions” to new standards are granted, and doing a poor job of alerting children’s caregivers about sexual abuse of kids while in foster care.

On several occasions, Jack told Gdula that a state witness’s answer was inadequate — “a contempt issue,” as she called it.

Some of Jack’s most heated comments, though, centered on “K.C.,” a 14-year-old girl who collapsed and later died at Prairie Harbor on Feb. 9.

Her death, first reported on by The News in late February, illustrates systemic failures, argued Yetter, a Houston litigator who is representing 12,000 children for free. He pointed to Wednesday’s update on recent child deaths and facility closures by monitors Kevin Ryan and Deborah Fowler.

It detailed how more than six months after K.C. died from a pulmonary embolism, the state workers charged with investigating abuse and neglect of foster kids still had not interviewed 10 of her 17 caregivers.

The investigation was botched, handed off now to a third state worker and still incomplete, the monitors said.

Residential Child Care Investigations — or RCCI, the department’s unit that looks into maltreatment of foster children — failed to disclose a lack of medical care for the girl, as well as inadequate record keeping, the monitors said.

K.C. had reported to center staff members that she had pain in her right calf as early as Jan. 19 but her outcry was ignored, they wrote. She received no treatment.

The girl died of complications from a deep vein thrombosis in her leg, which included a blood clot in her brain, a forensic review by a physician for the state found.

CPS’ Taccetta said state child welfare officials met with Prairie Harbor’s management and lawyer on Wednesday. They told the provider they were terminating its contract and, within 30 days, would remove all foster children at the facility 45 minutes west of Houston, Taccetta recounted.

Yetter, the plaintiffs’ lawyer, expressed frustration that five days before K.C.’s death, Prairie Harbor was placed on “heightened monitoring” by Residential Child Care Licensing, a Health and Human Services Commission unit that regulates foster care providers.

Questions about staffing levels

Jack questioned why the center was granted “staffing variances,” allowing it to have fewer employees on duty than the state’s specified ratio of caregivers to children.

That was questionable leniency, she said. Between February 2017 and December 2019, the licensing unit cited Prairie Harbor more than 60 times for violating minimum standards, the judge noted.

Jack said she was troubled to learn from internet searches that an owner and former executive director at Prairie Harbor have started The Landing at Corpus Christi, another residential treatment center for emotionally troubled youths.

“They may have decided to open The Landing before the ax fell on Prairie Harbor and still make money off child placements,” Jack said. “Just sayin’ — because I have a suspicious nature.”

Mario Mendoza, The Landing’s executive director, declined to respond to Jack’s criticisms.

“We’re owned by the same owners, but we’re two different companies,” he said.

Mendoza confirmed he was executive director at Prairie Harbor until almost two years ago.

“I’m not too familiar with what’s going on at PH,” he said, referring to Prairie Harbor.