MONROE — A jury determined the state Department of Children Youth and Families must pay $3 million to the woman who was groomed as a child by former Monroe police Sgt. Carlos Martinez.
The woman's tort lawsuit against the state says a social worker who was mandated by law to report child sex abuse failed to do so when Martinez was grooming her in the early 2000s.
The verdict on the negligence lawsuit came Nov. 2. It had been filed in 2019.
The employee, a Child Protective Services investigator, was friends with Martinez’s wife at the time and had met the female victim. She was intimately familiar with Martinez.
Key to the case against the state is that the CPS worker once approached the girl’s school counselor about her suspicions about Martinez.
In 2015, Martinez was convicted to 14 months in prison for having pictures of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct.
Fourteen months was the maximum allowable sentence by law at the time.
The young woman had met Martinez in junior high when he did drug-prevention presentations in schools. He also was a school resource officer.
The then-teen girl became his and his wife’s babysitter and occasional home farm laborer. Later, he began inappropriately touching her and secretly recording her in his family’s home bathroom when she showered after working the farm.
Around when she turned 20, she and he relocated to Texas in a relationship after Martinez exited the police force. She turned Martinez in to Texas authorities in 2011.
The state’s mandatory reporter law requires people in specific job fields to always immediately report suspected physical or sexual abuse. These mandatory reporters include public school employees, state Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) employees and health care providers.
The state’s attorneys had argued that the department was clear of negligence because although its employee suspected inappropriate relations between the child and the man, the employee was never explicitly told it was happening. The child was not a ward of the state.
The Tribune is not naming the woman because the incidents occurred when she was a minor.
— This story includes past Tribune reporting
