PALESTINE — A former Texas Department of Criminal Justice correctional officer was sentenced last week to five life sentences for sexual assault of a child in Anderson County.

David Wayne Green, 42, of Palestine, was sentenced to prison Nov. 7 by District Judge Deborah Oakes Evans for multiple counts of sexual assault of a child that occurred over a two-year period.

“There is no other sentence but life, and I am sentencing you to life on each of the five counts of sexual assault. The sentences are to run consecutively,” Evans said during the sentencing.

The former TDCJ correctional officer had admitted to Judge Evans at a hearing on July 27 to sexually assaulting a female child beginning when the victim was 12 and ending when the girl, then 14, discovered she was pregnant by Green.    

Green’s guilty plea avoided a trial by a jury.

The Nov. 7 hearing was for punishment and allowed the Anderson County District Attorney’s Office and Green to present evidence to the judge on an appropriate sentence.

Sexual assault of a child under age 14 is a first degree felony with a range of punishment of a minimum five years to 99 years or life.

Because the sentences are consecutive or “stacked,” Green will theoretically have to serve each life sentence before beginning the next.     

Green was employed at the Coffield Unit as a property officer prior to his arrest on Dec. 10, 2011, according to Investigator Kevin Hanes with the Office of Investigator General, TDCJ.

According to Hanes, Green confided in an inmate at the Coffield Unit about the pregnancy and sought advice as to what to do. The inmate reported the conversation to Lt. John Marcum who forwarded the information up his chain of command to Coffield Warden John Rupert and the warden called law enforcement.  

Prior to his employment with the Inspector General, Hanes had worked as an investigator with several law enforcement agencies including the Henderson County Sheriff’s Office where he has been assigned to children sexual abuse investigations.

“I’ve investigated over 2,500 child abuse cases, but this case will be one that haunts me,” Hanes said.

The state’s case was presented by Anderson County Assistant District Attorney Elizabeth Watkins.

When Watkins asked the victim what happened after finding out she was pregnant, the victim said, “I missed my period a couple of months and I told him (Green) that I thought I was pregnant. He freaked out and started crying and when he stopped crying he went and bought me a pregnancy test.

“It was positive so he bought me some small white pills that he told me were birth control pills. I took them, but they didn’t work,” the victim’s testimony continued.

Hanes scheduled a sexual assault exam for the victim with Jessie Jones, R.N., who is certified as sexual assault nurse examiner by the Texas Attorney General’s Office.      

 The exam was done at Palestine Regional Medical Center where the victim told Jones that she had been sexually assaulted by Green “too many times to count.”

When I confirmed the pregnancy,” said Jones, “the victim broke down, cried and laid down on a couch in the fetal position. I cried with her.”

Green who is legally blind, but has limited sight, did not testify in his punishment hearing.

His attorney Colin McFall asked the court not to sentence his client to a long prison sentence, saying that his client “developed an inappropriate relationship with the victim because of his physical condition and financial worries about losing his job at the prison.”

“He (Green) became dependent on the victim for emotional support and the relationship went too far,” McFall said in his final arguments to Judge Evans.

In response, Watkins told the judge “to call what Mr. Green did with the victim ‘a relationship’ is abhorrent; that’s just ridiculous. He took from her the ability to have a normal relationship with a man, he took her normal life, and, so he deserves life.”

When Judge Evans sentenced Green he looked down and cried softly. Through much of the trial, Green rocked in his chair and openly sobbed, according to the DA’s office.

Anderson County District Attorney Doug Lowe also commented on the verdict.

“This is as bad a case as I have seen involving a young girl who trusted the perpetrator. I am completely satisfied with Judge Evans’ ruling,” Lowe said.