A Texas man, who called himself a “mentor to youth,” was arrested this week on charges of sexually molesting some of the young male members in his youth group. The “youth mentor” is currently serving on parole in connection with a violent felony in connection to aggravated assault on a police officer.
Ernest Donnell Green, 61, was booked on Wednesday and sits at the Dallas County Jail on two counts of indecent sexual contact with a child and one count of continuous sexual abuse of a child under 14. Bail was set at $150,000.
Dallas Police Department (DPD) records state that detectives in the Child Exploitation Unit arrested Green on August 5, after an investigation was opened by an alleged teenage victim (“complainant”) on August 2. The complainant told police that the suspect touched him in a sexual manner. Officers served Green a search warrant before they seized property from the residence.
Tactical police raided the Dallas Housing Authority (DHA) operated Lakeview Townhomes property where Green ran the apparently bogus mentoring program, United Youth Core. The DPD noted that the male juvenile complainants range in age from 13 to 16 years of age.
According to the Dallas Morning News, in 2010 filings with the Texas Secretary of State, Green wrote that the group was founded in 1976 to help youth aged 9-17 and was “designed for the sole purpose of facilitating our youth and providing a voice for them.” In 2012, the organization officially ceased to exist.
On the United Youth Core Facebook page, Green posted a fundraising letter dated February 20, 2012 in which he described the group as a non-profit youth mentor program dedicated to helping youth who have “faced many difficulties in their young lives” and “change their life’s forever.”
In poorly written grammar he wrote, “We only operant on donations from the community with the goal to help youth reach their potential and we are committed to doing the most good with your donations and your donations are completely tax deductible.”
Stock images of children and photographs of male youth are posted. Some appear to be at the apartment complex, others at area amusement venues. Green took the boys to the grocery store and on Dallas area outings to Hurricane Harbor, Six Flags and Chuck E. Cheese. He played video games with them. Some of the boys said he bought them tennis shoes. Some spent the night.
The heavily redacted investigative police report released on Thursday documents the purported instances of sexual assault. One of the juveniles, now age 16, said he met Green in 2010 when he was 11-years-old. Green presented himself as role model. Many of the male minors were fatherless.
The complainant started going over to Green’s apartment. He said, there were always “many young boys at the suspect’s apartment and they all would spend the night with him on weekends and during the summer.”
He said Green allegedly fondled him from the time he was 11 until he was 13. Green got mad if the boys did not sleep in his room with him, he added. Most of the alleged inappropriate sexual touching happened while the boys slept in Green’s bed.
WFAA-8, the Dallas ABC affiliate, reported that the complainant said he and the other boys were particularly afraid to sleep in “the spot” – next to Green in his king-sized bed. He said they knew if they did that “Green would fondle or attempt to fondle them.”
The boy also told police that Green fondled him and masturbated him on several occasions.
“He also told police that one night, while he was laying in “the spot,” Green attempted to have sex with him, but the boy got up and slept in the living room. He said he told Green not to touch him again or he would tell his mother. He said Green continued to buy him things because he feared he would expose the truth to his mother, according to WFAA-8.
In the police report, the complainant said he witnessed other similar sexual abuses including Green fondling one of his younger brothers. The boy woke up the brother, removed him from the room and called their mother. He recalled Green told their mother that the boy had been dreaming.
Another brother told police that Green molested him during the summer of 2014. He awoke in Green’s bed to find the suspect touching him.
DPD records stated that this boy was “afraid to say anything so he allowed the suspect to continue to touch him on his genitals.” The next day, he “avoided looking at the suspect or talking to him.” The arrest records depict Green as 6 foot 1 inch tall and 285 lbs.
Another incident happened in a car. The teenaged male victim told Green he did not like being touched. “The complainant stated the suspect just laughed at him,” the DPD document states. After this, Green never touched the boy again.
Other juvenile complainants were identified and interviewed. They corroborated the allegations made by the complainant. Green denied ever sexually abusing any of the boys in a call secretly record by police, the records state.
A neighbor said she knew something was not right. “I found it very strange and odd for the boys to be going in and out of his house,” the unidentified woman told WFAA-8. She added that one boy told her of an occasion last year when he felt very sleepy at Green’s apartment and thought he might have been drugged. She said the boy said he saw Green masturbating.
On the other hand, another neighbor told the local TV news outlet that she thought Green was doing something positive for the boys “so I didn’t think nothing of it.”
She added: “He said he was trying to be a mentor to the kids, and that he was trying to be a positive role model to the kids, because some of them don’t have dads. Some of them don’t have a parent in their life that’s positive.”
It turns out that Green was a convicted felon who was in and out of prison for almost 40 years. In 1976, he served a three-year sentence in Jefferson County for writing bad checks. In 1981, he spent seven years in prison for the aggravated assault of a Jefferson County police officer. He was paroled in 1984. Then, in 1994, Green was arrested on a felony theft charge that resulted in probation, which he violated in 2002 and returned to prison on a 25-year sentence. In 2006, Green was released to Dallas County after serving four years. His parole expires in 2027.
Dallas Housing Authority chief MaryAnn Russ issued a statement on Friday. “When we did our criminal record check before Mr. Green was admitted, he was not listed on the State Sexual Predatory registry nor did he have any arrests or convictions for violent, drug-related or sex-related crimes,” she said.
Russ also said that Green’s youth mentoring program was neither “endorsed nor approved” but added, given these events, the suspect was “immediately served with a notice to vacate his apartment following his arrest.”
Follow Merrill Hope on Twitter @OutOfTheBoxMom.
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