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Disabled in Danger: Six-year WFAA investigation highlights abuses of the intellectually disabled, leads to new laws

Special report highlights investigation into how people with intellectually disabilities were stabbed, starved and shot while being cared for by state-paid workers.

DALLAS — In the summer of 2018, a frustrated mother sent WFAA’s investigative team an email. 

She told us that her 27-year-old intellectually disabled son, Paul, had been stabbed more than 90 times by someone he lived with at an adult foster care home. 

Their caretaker was nowhere around. 

Paul survived, but his mother’s email took us into the world few know about -- a system that, our reporting found, puts the disabled in danger, over and over again. 

This special report includes the story of Paul Taylor, plus two other young men who, unlike Paul, did not survive their encounters with the state’s community foster care system for the intellectually disabled. 

All three of their stories highlight deficiencies in the state’s oversight of residential care homes, which are all funded with taxpayer dollars to house some of society’s most vulnerable people. 

As a result of our reporting, new laws were passed to strengthen oversight of caretakers of these men and women through tougher background checks, and to introduce new procedures allowing for the state to suspend people facing credible allegations of abuse and neglect while authorities investigate. 

Here is some of our original reporting on these three young men, and three others, which together make up our "Disabled in Danger" investigation. 

Paul Taylor 

Raul Olguin 

Joshua Moore 

Leroy Anderson Jr. 

Mina Iskander and Shannon Hunt 

Joshua Robinson and Conner Smith 

Got a tip for the WFAA Investigates team? Contact them here

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