© 2010 The Associated Press
June 15, 2010, 11:36AM

HOUSTON — A residential treatment center where staffers allegedly pushed some developmentally disabled girls into a "fight club" will be assigned a state monitor and will not house more foster children.

The Houston Chronicle and The Texas Tribune, an online news site, reported Tuesday that Texas officials have stopped placing children at Daystar Residential Inc. in Manvel. The center currently has 55 foster-care youngsters.

Two workers at the center allegedly provoked a fight involving seven developmentally disabled girls in 2008, according to the news organizations. A review conducted by the news organizations found the fight was one of 250 incidents of serious abuse at residential treatment centers in the past two years. {Texas Solution: Build More!}

Details on the review, publicized June 6, led the state to appoint a state monitor and suspended new placements at the center.

"Clearly, this is a troubled facility that needs immediate improvement," said Patrick Crimmins, spokesman for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.

The April 24, 2008, fight allegedly started after a Daystar supervisor and another worker told the girls, ages 12 to 17, that the winners of the fight would get after-school snacks. At least four of the girls suffered bite marks, bruises and scratches, records indicated. The supervisor and other worker were later fired.

Records showed other incidents at Daystar resulted in a child's arm being broken and another attempting suicide, the news organizations reported.

A message The Associated Press left at Daystar seeking comment was not immediately returned Tuesday.

The state signs contracts with privately owned Daystar and nearly 80 other centers to care for troubled children and teens in foster care. Daystar also was assigned a "service monitor," to watch over young residents, in 2005.

Information from: Houston Chronicle, http://www.houstonchronicle.com

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/7054146.html

Emphasis added by H4K Editor