Texas Child Abuse Defense Lawyer

If you are under investigation or have been charged with child abuse in Texas, the case against you is already moving. A CPS caseworker has likely opened a file. A forensic interview may already be recorded. Detectives may have spoken to your spouse, your other children, or your child’s doctor before anyone spoke to you.

An accusation is not a conviction. But these cases are built quietly and quickly, and what you do in the first days matters. At Varghese Summersett, our defense team includes four Board Certified criminal law specialists and former felony prosecutors who have handled the full range of crimes against children.

There is no Texas offense literally named child abuse. What people call child abuse is prosecuted under several different statutes, and which one the State picks drives everything: the punishment range, whether probation is available, and when a person becomes parole eligible.

That distinction matters more than most people realize. The same set of facts can be filed as a state jail felony or as a first degree felony depending largely on the mental state the prosecutor believes they can prove. Much of the defense work in these cases is fought over that single question.

Most of these cases do not begin with a police officer at the door. They begin with a report – from a teacher, a pediatrician, an emergency room nurse, a daycare worker, or an ex-spouse. Texas law requires any person who believes a child is being abused or neglected to report it, and professionals who work with children face criminal exposure if they do not.

Once a report is made, two investigations open at the same time and they do not stop for each other. Child Protective Services investigates whether the child is safe. Law enforcement investigates whether a crime occurred. They share information. A statement you give a caseworker to keep your children at home can be handed to a detective and used against you.

If the allegation involves a child old enough to talk, there will usually be a forensic interview at a children’s advocacy center. That recorded interview frequently becomes the centerpiece of the State’s case, which is why how it was conducted – the phrasing of the questions, who was in the room, what the child was told beforehand – is often where the defense begins.

A few things consistently help, and a few consistently hurt.

• Do not explain. Nearly every person accused of hurting a child wants to clear it up. The interview is not a chance to clear it up; it is evidence collection. Politely decline and call a lawyer.
• Do not consent to a polygraph requested by CPS or by police without counsel.
• Preserve everything. Photos, texts, call logs, medical records, daycare sign-in sheets, and calendars can establish who had the child and when. This evidence disappears fast.
• Write down the timeline while it is fresh – who was present, what was said, when the injury was noticed, and what medical care was sought.
• Do not discuss the case with family in recorded jail calls or in group texts.

The defense depends entirely on which statute is charged and what the evidence actually shows. Common approaches include:

• The injury was accidental. Children fall, climb, and collide. If the State cannot prove the required mental state, the offense level drops sharply or fails entirely.
• An alternative medical explanation. Bleeding disorders, bone fragility conditions, birth trauma, infections, and vitamin deficiencies can produce findings that look like inflicted injury to an untrained eye.
• Someone else caused it. Where multiple caregivers had access, the State must prove which one, and when.
• The timeline does not work. Dating an injury is far less precise than the State often suggests.
• Reasonable discipline. Texas law permits a parent to use non-deadly force to reasonably discipline a child, and that justification is a real defense where the force did not exceed what the law allows.
• The interview was suggestive. Children are highly suggestible. Leading questions and repeated interviews can produce accounts that are sincere and still unreliable.

Not every report is made in good faith. Allegations that surface for the first time during a divorce, a custody modification, or a relocation fight deserve hard examination of when the claim first appeared, who the child spoke to first, and what was happening in the family court case that week. These allegations are also devastating precisely because they are easy to make, which is why the documentary timeline matters so much.

Beyond prison and fines, a conviction can mean the loss or restriction of custody and visitation, a finding in the CPS central registry that follows you, disqualification from work involving children or vulnerable adults, loss of professional licenses in teaching, nursing, and childcare, immigration consequences, and firearm restrictions. Some child abuse offenses are also 3G offenses, which limits probation from a judge and delays parole eligibility.

Our criminal defense team includes four Board Certified criminal law specialists, and our lawyers have collectively tried more than 700 jury trials. Several of our attorneys are former felony prosecutors who handled crimes against children units, which means we know how these cases are screened, indicted, and valued before we ever walk into a courtroom.

We handle child abuse cases across Fort Worth and Tarrant County, Dallas, Southlake and the Mid-Cities, Denton County, Collin County, and Houston and Fort Bend County. Calls are answered 24 hours a day, and the first conversation is confidential and free.