Perversion of Justice

As the most powerful jurist in Galveston, Judge Samuel Kent intimidated everyone: the lawyers who argued cases before him, the defendants and plaintiffs who appeared in his courtroom—and the female courthouse employees he groped, kissed, and forced himself on when no one was looking. Imperious, charismatic, and seemingly above the law, he almost got away with it. Until one woman decided to fight back.

by Skip Hollandsworth

December 2009

(Page 5 of 5)

Months passed, and Cathy and Hardin wondered if their case would be dropped. But in January 2009, Hardin got a phone call. The grand jury was handing down an amended indictment. Judge Kent, stated the new charge, had abused another court employee and lied about it to the Fifth Circuit. The indictment accused him of forcing this employee to repeatedly “engage in a sexual act”—including oral sex—and of using his hands to “penetrate or attempt to penetrate” her.

“My God,” gasped Cathy when she heard the news. “That has to be Donna.”

Just before Thanksgiving, the prosecutors, desperate to get more evidence against Kent, had started squeezing the lawyer who was involved in the sale of the judge’s home, pressing him for everything he knew. The lawyer happened to be one of the two close friends that Donna had confided in about Kent’s abuse. After getting him to confess what he knew, the FBI agents soon found Donna—at the mall, Christmas shopping with her kids—and served her a subpoena to appear before the grand jury once again.

A few days later Donna was in her garage when she saw Kent pull up in his car. He had heard, he said as he walked up, that her friend had been speaking to the FBI. “Donna,” he said in a serious tone, “he told them that we had been together”—Kent made quote marks with his fingers—“a few more times. But all you have to do is repeat our original story, and everything will be okay.”

He drew himself to his full height. Giving her his most confident look, he said, “Donna, we need to circle the wagons. Everything’s going to be fine. I don’t want you to worry.”

Donna could barely stand to look at him. “I’m so sick of all of this!” she screamed.

Trembling, she marched into the kitchen, where she saw her fourteen-year-old daughter doing homework at the table. For the first time, she wondered what her daughter would think if she learned that her mother had been sexually abused for so long and done nothing about it.

Donna decided to tell her husband. The conversation lasted through the night. They talked the next day, and then the next. As she had predicted, he was furious. How, he asked, had she allowed this to go on for so long without telling him? At one point he became so upset that he got in his car and drove off, leaving Donna in the driveway, screaming hysterically. She was terrified he would head to Kent’s house with his gun to shoot him. He returned the next morning, saying he would do his best to support her.

A few days later, Donna slipped away from the courthouse and, accompanied by a lawyer she had hired, drove to the FBI’s Houston office to confess the truth. When the revised indictment was publicly announced, DeGuerin stuck to his same tactics: Kent and his secretary, he told the press, had had a longtime consensual relationship, and Kent had failed to reveal the affair to the Fifth Circuit’s investigatory committee because he was a gentleman. Donna, he said, had turned on the judge only to save her marriage.

Kent, however, was a different man. One person who saw him in those days described him as “looking mortally wounded.” A law clerk at the courthouse called Donna at home. “Donna, he can’t believe you’ve turned against him. I really think he’s going to kill himself if you testify. He’s even asked me to check to see if his life insurance policy has a suicide exclusion clause.”

“If he does kill himself,” Donna replied, “it’s not my fault, and it’s not your fault. He’s done to himself what he’s done.” Shaking, she hung up the phone, stunned that for once she had not bowed to the judge.

A rumor began circulating that the FBI had found at least six other women who had agreed to testify against Kent. In the face of the mounting evidence, DeGuerin met with prosecutors and arranged what, by all accounts, was a splendid plea bargain: 33 months in prison on a simple obstruction of justice charge for Kent’s lying to the Fifth Circuit about the extent of his sexual contact with Donna. As part of the agreement, Kent would sign a rather toothless statement in which he acknowledged having “nonconsensual sexual contact” with Cathy on two occasions and “nonconsensual sexual contact” with Donna from 2004 through at least 2005. (Kent has neither confirmed nor denied the other incidents related in this story.) He would not be required to say a single word about his actions in open court—and because the assault charges would be dropped, he would never have to register as a sex offender.

Still, it was the most spectacular downfall the justice system had seen in decades. A federal judge, who in nineteen years on the bench had presided over more than 12,000 cases, had been caught himself in a flagrant abuse of power. In February 2009 the courtroom was packed as Kent stood before a visiting federal judge and, in a voice that barely rose above a whisper, pleaded guilty. “Gone was the thunderous voice, the swelling, megalomaniacal demeanor, the vehement proclamations of innocence,” wrote a Houston Chronicle reporter. Donna sat in the courtroom and watched, a row in front of Cathy. Stricken with guilt, she still had not spoken to her former co-worker. But after the hearing, she asked Cathy to meet her in an empty jury room.

“I know you hate me because I stuck with him,” she said. “All I can say was that my life was a living hell. I thought he would destroy me if I fought back.”

“Donna, I don’t care what it took. You did it,” Cathy said. “Who could have imagined that we would get this far?”

At his sentencing a few months later, Kent described himself as “completely broken,” and he apologized to his family and to his staff. Cathy and Donna, sitting in the courtroom, waited for him to also acknowledge them, but no apology came. The judge overseeing the case, however, had agreed to allow the women to make statements of their own. As Kent looked at the floor, Cathy stood at the lectern and, trying to keep her voice from cracking, called Kent a “drunken giant” who “used his incredible power to his own benefit and hurt so many people in the process.” Donna followed with her statement. “He abused those around him and misused the power that his position brought him,” she said. “How sad is it that he, himself, is the biggest bully of them all.”

As he walked out of the courthouse to his car, Kent gently held his wife’s hand. He did indeed seem broken. But he hadn’t given up the fight entirely. Before being sent to a federal facility in Massachusetts, he attempted to retire by claiming he was disabled due to serious health problems, which would have given him his full salary for life. When the Fifth Circuit denied his disability status, he then submitted a written letter of resignation to President Barack Obama, effective June 1, 2010, which would have allowed him to receive a full year’s salary while in prison. Members of the House Judiciary Committee Task Force on Impeachment were so outraged by his impudence that they fast-tracked impeachment proceedings against him. Cathy and Donna were flown to Washington, D.C., to testify, and their statements were broadcast on CNN and printed in newspapers around the country. Kent, finally realizing that there was no way to beat the two women he had nearly destroyed, agreed to write another resignation letter, effective June 30, 2009.

He has not been heard from since. No one is sure what he will do when he gets out, which could be as early as November 2010. The deposed king of Galveston will be broke and without a law license. According to DeGuerin, Kent’s wife is very ill, and with Kent’s resignation, she no longer has health insurance. “She is a victim too,” added a close friend. “She continued to stand by him even when she learned what he had been doing to his employees. How does she ever get over that?”

The judges on the Fifth Circuit have since decided to shut down the Galveston bench altogether and move its cases to other federal courts. Donna and Cathy, meanwhile, continue to work at the Houston federal courthouse. Donna, who is a secretary for an auxiliary judge, has managed to remain with her husband, despite what she says are “some difficult moments.” She regularly sees Cathy, who is a case manager for a Houston federal judge. Now divorced, Cathy continues to live in the same little town house she moved into after filing her complaint with the Fifth Circuit, sharing custody of her son. She’s training to run a marathon in February, and every now and then, she goes out on a date. “I’m very, very careful about who I agree to see,” she said recently with a laugh.

When Cathy and Donna have lunch, they don’t talk much about the old days. They discuss what they’ve learned about themselves that week in their separate therapy sessions, then swap the usual courthouse gossip. “For years, we were afraid of saying anything to anyone,” says Donna. “Now it’s nice to lean back and relax.”

They still notice when people in the courthouse hallways give them second glances. “It’s like they are not sure, despite all that’s come out, that we’ve really told the whole truth,” says Cathy, shaking her head. “After all this time, we’re still being judged.”

But the other day, a woman came up to Cathy and said, “I want to shake your hand.” For a moment, Cathy didn’t recognize her. Then she realized: It was the Houston paralegal who years ago had begged her boss not to send her back to the sixth floor of Galveston’s federal building. “Thank you for what you’ve done for all of us,” she said to Cathy. “Thank you.”

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