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Guard Arrested For Sexual Relationship With Minor Inmate

Louisa Jonas
/
Texas Public Radio
Aristides Jimenez, Deputy Chief of the Public Integrity Unit for the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office";

A guard in the Bexar County Juvenile Detention Facility has been arrested for a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old female inmate. Twenty-three-year old Jasqell Jamal Spell was fired from his job and is now being held in the Bexar County Jail.

 

Aristides Jimenez is Deputy Chief of the Public Integrity Unit for the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office.

 

“Even if it was somebody of age, an individual under custody as an inmate is in no position to consent to a guard, or a jailer,” Jimenez says. “Our job is to make sure that we provide safety and security. We are responsible for every individual under our custody. We’re here to protect them, not to victimize them.”

 

Spell faces charges of sexual assault of a minor.

Louisa Jonas is an independent public radio producer, environmental writer, and radio production teacher based in Baltimore. She is thrilled to have been a PRX STEM Story Project recipient for which she produced a piece about periodical cicadas. Her work includes documentaries about spawning horseshoe crabs and migratory shorebirds aired on NPR's Weekend All Things Considered. Louisa previously worked as the podcast producer at WYPR 88.1FM in Baltimore. There she created and produced two documentary podcast series: Natural Maryland and Ascending: Baltimore School for the Arts. The Nature Conservancy selected her documentaries for their podcast Nature Stories. She has also produced for the Chemical Heritage Foundation’s Distillations Podcast. Louisa is editor of the book Backyard Carolina: Two Decades of Public Radio Commentary. She holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from University of North Carolina Wilmington. Her training also includes journalism fellowships from the Science Literacy Project and the Knight Digital Media Center, both in Berkeley, CA. Most recently she received a journalism fellowship through Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution where she traveled to Toolik Field Station in Arctic Alaska to study climate change. In addition to her work as an independent producer, she teaches radio production classes at Howard Community College to a great group of budding journalists. She has worked as an environmental educator and canoe instructor but has yet to convince a great blue heron to squawk for her microphone…she remains undeterred.