MARLIN, Texas - The first thing a kid sees as he is taken, handcuffed, into the dimly lit holding cell of this remote facility - the front door to the Texas Youth Commission system - is a white sign hanging on the drab walls.

Photos by MICHAEL AINSWORTH/DMNState Rep. Paula Pierson of Arlington and other members of the Texas House Democratic Caucus on Friday toured the Marlin Orientation and Assessment Unit, the only building in the TYC system that every youth offender sees at least once.

A group of House Democrats and reporters toured the facility Friday to get a look at the building and speak with staff members about the sexual-abuse scandal facing the system.

The TYC's intake facility - the only building in the system that every youth offender sees at least once - sits in the middle of pastoral green hills in a tiny, impoverished town of 6,600.

So isolated are they that several of the kids who had been at the Marlin unit for weeks had never heard of the scandal rocking the system that incarcerates them. They didn't know that anyone had been fired or had resigned and that lawmakers are angry about how kids like them across the state have been treated.

They're not allowed to watch the news. One girl saw a headline and asked the staff about it, she said, but "they just said we're not supposed to be reading the newspapers."

"I overheard someone telling a story about it, but they haven't really informed us," one 14-year-old girl said. "They told us, 'Y'all know as much as we do.' "

Inside the building, the long, off-white halls, shiny tile floors and big windows between rooms - where guards sit or where staff members dispense medications - make the building look like a cross between a YMCA and an elementary school.

Everywhere, lines of kids in bright-orange jumpsuits and white tennis shoes march single-file, hands behind their backs, their footsteps tramping quickly - not unlike a military unit doing drills. The shouts of their officer in charge ring off the stark, empty, cinder-block walls.

And perhaps the military feel is no coincidence. A lot of the guards are veterans. Mr. Nix is a 47-year-old U.S. Navy veteran who spent some time in a state school himself as a kid.

From drug dealers to murderers, from kids who punched a teacher to kids who killed their parents, convicted offenders have to spend 45 days to two months here while authorities figure out where to send them.

Most of the 50 kids who come through here every week are between the ages of 10 and 17, and most are boys. While they're in the holding cell, waiting to be assigned a bed, 11-year-old boys mix with 15-year-old girls, rapists wait with car thieves, and severely psychotic offenders mix with first-time drug dealers.

During their time, the kids are often dealing with addiction, undergoing mental health tests, or working on their GED. They're being counseled as sex offenders, or waiting for medication, or getting ready to be shipped off to adult prison to serve the remainder of their sentences.

When the weather's nice, they go outside to play kickball and basketball in an area surrounded with double razor wire. When it rains, it's sports and weightlifting in the gym.

In the dorms, 24 bunk beds sit in an open room with concrete floors and - at night - one guard on duty. The kids are separated by age, gender and whether the person is a repeat offender.

But it also comes in the threat of which facility they'll be sent to. Several inmates told of one teen who broke into a house and was sentenced to nine months - but because she kept getting into fights, she was sent to the Giddings facility with murderers, rapists and other violent offenders.

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