Sex Crimes Attorney in Fort Worth, Texas

A sex crimes attorney in Fort Worth defends allegations ranging from indecent exposure to aggravated sexual assault under Chapters 21, 22, 33, and 43 of the Texas Penal Code. Fort Worth is the seat of Tarrant County, so a case that begins with a Fort Worth police investigation is booked, magistrated, indicted, and tried without ever leaving downtown — at the Tim Curry Criminal Justice Center, 401 W. Belknap Street. L and L Law Group defends these cases from the first detective phone call, often before any arrest is made.

Accused in Fort Worth: The Whole Case Stays Downtown

Fort Worth is the county seat of Tarrant County and, with nearly a million residents, the largest city in the western half of the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. For someone accused of a sex offense, that has a practical meaning most people only discover after an arrest: the entire machinery of a Tarrant County felony prosecution sits inside Fort Worth city limits. The Fort Worth Police Department runs the investigation. The county’s central intake jail — the Tarrant County Corrections Center — books every felony arrestee a few blocks from the courthouse. The Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney’s Office screens and indicts the case. And the felony courts that will decide it sit in the Tim Curry Criminal Justice Center at 401 W. Belknap Street, in the same downtown grid.

Defendants from Arlington, Euless, Grapevine, or Mansfield are arrested in one city and prosecuted in another; their cases travel to Fort Worth. If you live or were arrested in Fort Worth, the case never leaves your city — your booking, your magistration, your indictment, and, if it comes to that, your trial all happen downtown. That concentration cuts both ways. The State’s apparatus is experienced and close-knit; but a defense lawyer who knows how that apparatus moves can work it efficiently, because the jail, the magistrate court, the grand-jury floor, and the trial courts are all under one roof or within walking distance of it.

Whether you found this page searching for a sex crimes lawyer in Fort Worth or a sexual assault attorney, the practical question is the same: who will stand between you and a system that is already moving? Because so much of a sex case is decided in the first days — the interview you do or do not give, the bond conditions set at magistration, the evidence preserved or lost — the time to involve counsel is now, not after indictment.

How a Fort Worth Sex-Crime Investigation Begins

Most Fort Worth sex-offense cases start quietly. A report is made — by a complainant, a family member, a school counselor, a therapist, or a mandatory reporter — and a Fort Worth Police Department detective opens a file. Nothing may seem to happen for weeks. That silence is misleading: the investigation is usually at its most productive before the accused knows it exists.

In child cases, the work-up follows a well-worn path. The child is scheduled for a single recorded forensic interview at the Alliance for Children, the children’s advocacy center serving Tarrant County, which operates child-friendly centers in Fort Worth, Arlington, and Hurst. The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services typically opens a parallel civil case, which can affect where the accused parent lives and whether they see their children. A medical exam by a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) may be performed — in Fort Worth, often at Cook Children’s Medical Center or JPS Health Network, both of which sit inside the city. In adult cases, the detective’s toolkit includes the SANE exam, phone downloads, and above all the pretext call: a recorded phone call, arranged by police, in which the complainant tries to draw the suspect into an apology or admission.

Then comes the invitation: “We’d like you to come in and tell your side.” It sounds reasonable. It is almost always the most dangerous moment in the case. Anything said in that interview — every hedge, every misremembered date, every polite concession — becomes the State’s exhibit. Retaining a sex crimes attorney during the Fort Worth investigation stage lets us take over contact with the detective, assert your right to remain silent, preserve the messages and records that support your account before they are lost, and in appropriate cases present reasons to decline charges before the file ever reaches a grand jury.

Arrest, Booking, and Bond in Downtown Fort Worth

If the detective concludes probable cause exists, an arrest warrant issues. What follows moves fast, and the decisions made in the first 48 hours shape the months ahead.

1. Arrest & Transport

   Fort Worth officers make the arrest — at home, at work, or during a traffic stop — and transport the person downtown. A brief municipal hold is possible, but felony sex-offense arrestees are processed into the county system.

2. County Book-In

   Intake happens at the Tarrant County Corrections Center on Lamar Street: fingerprints, photographs, medical screening, and warrant checks. Property is inventoried and phone access ends, which is one reason evidence preservation must start before arrest.

3. Magistration Within 48 Hours

   Under Tex. Code Crim. Proc. art. 15.17, a magistrate must warn the arrestee of the charge and rights and set bond without unnecessary delay, no later than 48 hours after arrest.

4. Conditions Attach

   In sex cases the conditions often hurt more than the bond amount: no contact with the complainant, no unsupervised contact with anyone under 17, internet and social-media restrictions, GPS monitoring, curfews, and sometimes an emergency protective order that removes the accused from their own home.

5. The Defense Responds

   We move for bond reduction where the amount is out of reach, ask the court to narrow conditions that separate a parent from their children or make work impossible, and begin the discovery clock immediately.

Families often learn of the arrest from a single phone call and have no idea where their person is being held. Because Fort Worth is the county seat, the answer is nearly always the same: downtown, in the county Corrections Center, awaiting magistration. Having counsel already engaged at that point — before the first bond is set, not after — is the single most effective way to keep the conditions livable.

Felony Sex Cases at the Tim Curry Criminal Justice Center

Every felony sex prosecution in Tarrant County funnels into one building: the Tim Curry Criminal Justice Center at 401 W. Belknap Street. The center houses the county’s felony trial courts — Criminal District Courts No. 1 through 4 along with the 213th, 297th, 371st, 372nd, 396th, and 432nd District Courts — plus ten County Criminal Courts at Law that hear misdemeanor offenses such as indecent exposure, and a magistrate court where newly arrested defendants first appear. For a Fort Worth defendant, that means the courthouse deciding your future is a few minutes from where you were booked.

The prosecution side is specialized. The Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney’s Office runs a Special Victims section that handles the physical and sexual abuse of children, child-pornography cases, and crimes against the elderly and persons with disabilities. Those prosecutors work inside a multidisciplinary team alongside Fort Worth police, Cook Children’s Medical Center, the Department of Family and Protective Services, and the Alliance for Children. They try these cases for a living — which is exactly why the defense cannot be generic. The forensic-interview methodology, the outcry timeline, the SANE findings, and the digital forensics each have known failure points, and a defense built around them is how close cases get declined, reduced, or won.

A felony charge must first survive a Tarrant County grand jury. That stage is an opportunity, not a formality: where the evidence is thin or the accusation has a documented motive behind it, we can submit a grand-jury packet — sworn statements, messages, timeline evidence — and argue for a no-bill before an indictment ever issues.

Sex Crime Charges We Defend in Fort Worth

“Sex crime” covers a wide band of Texas offenses, from a Class B misdemeanor to a first-degree felony with a 25-year floor. The defense starts the same way in every one of them: element by element, witness by witness. We defend Fort Worth clients against the full range, including:

• Sexual assault — Tex. Penal Code §22.011, generally a second-degree felony, covering non-consensual penetration or contact and sexual activity with a person younger than 17.
• Aggravated sexual assault — §22.021, a first-degree felony with a 25-year minimum for the youngest complainants.
• Indecency with a child — §21.11, contact and exposure variants, among the most commonly filed child sex charges in Tarrant County.
• Online solicitation of a minor — §33.021, including app and chat cases and stings where the “minor” is actually an officer.
• Possession of child pornography — §43.26, device-driven cases that rise or fall on digital forensics and attribution.
• Indecent exposure — §21.08, a misdemeanor with outsized stigma that can trigger registration on a second conviction.
• Improper relationship between educator and student — §21.12, a career-ending allegation for teachers and coaches that also draws SBEC certification action.
• Failure to register as a sex offender — CCP §62.102, a separate felony that often grows out of a paperwork lapse rather than any new offense.

For clients who completed their sentence years ago, we also pursue deregistration and early termination of the registration duty where the offense and an individualized risk assessment allow it. The firm’s statewide approach to these cases lives on our sex crimes defense hub.

Punishment Ranges at a Glance

Base ranges under Tex. Penal Code Ch. 12 and the sections cited. Prior convictions and statutory enhancements can raise them; possession of child pornography (§43.26) carries its own escalating grade structure. Confirm current text at statutes.capitol.texas.gov.

Sexual Assault and Aggravated Sexual Assault Charges in Fort Worth

The two statutes at the center of most Fort Worth sexual-assault prosecutions are Sections 22.011 and 22.021 of the Penal Code, and the distance between them is enormous. Sexual assault under §22.011 is generally a second-degree felony — 2 to 20 years and a fine up to $10,000. It reaches non-consensual acts against an adult and any sexual activity with a person younger than 17, who cannot legally consent. Aggravated sexual assault under §22.021 is a first-degree felony — 5 to 99 years or life — triggered by aggravating facts such as serious bodily injury, a deadly weapon, or a very young complainant. When the complainant is younger than six, or younger than 14 with certain aggravating conduct, subsection (f) imposes a 25-year minimum.

In the courtroom, these cases are rarely about forensic certainty. Under Code of Criminal Procedure article 38.07, a conviction can rest on the complainant’s uncorroborated word. Many Fort Worth files contain no DNA, no injury, and no eyewitness — just an account, a forensic interview, and a detective’s summary. A sexual assault lawyer in Fort Worth earns the fee in exactly that gap: documenting motive to fabricate, exposing inconsistencies across retellings, challenging a flawed outcry under article 38.072, and, where there is a SANE exam, making the jury understand that findings described as “consistent with” an allegation are frequently just as consistent with innocence. Where DNA exists, the question is rarely identity but consent — and consent cases turn on messages, prior relationship evidence, and timeline reconstruction, all of which must be preserved early.

Because the stakes climb so steeply between §22.011 and §22.021 — and because registration attaches to the offense of conviction — charge selection is itself a battlefield. Contesting the aggravating element, or resolving a case to a lesser, non-registerable offense where the facts allow, can change the rest of a client’s life. The statewide elements, defenses, and case law for each statute are covered in depth on our sexual assault and aggravated sexual assault charge pages.

Our Defense Process, From First Call to Verdict

Sex-offense files reward method. Every Fort Worth case we take runs through the same protocol, so that nothing is missed in the high-pressure early weeks and nothing is conceded by default later.

1. Confidential Assessment, Same Day

   Whether you are under investigation or already out on bond, we map the immediate risks: detective contact, protective orders, CPS involvement, and the conditions set at magistration.

2. Control the Investigation Stage

   We take over communication with the Fort Worth detective, assert your rights, and preserve the texts, photos, and location data that support your account before devices are seized or messages auto-delete.

3. Attack the Forensic Core

   The forensic-interview video is reviewed for leading and contaminating questions; SANE records and any DNA or device forensics go to qualified independent experts for review rather than being taken at face value.

4. Litigate Before Trial

   Suppression of statements taken without a valid waiver, challenges to phone and computer warrants, article 38.072 outcry hearings, and motions in limine on extraneous-offense evidence under Tex. R. Evid. 404(b).

5. Resolve From Strength

   We negotiate from trial readiness. Where the State will not move off a registerable felony and the evidence is weak, we try the case to a Tarrant County jury at the Tim Curry Criminal Justice Center.

Registration and the Rest of Your Life

For many clients the prison range is not the most frightening number on the page — the registry is. Most sex-offense convictions, and some deferred adjudications, require registration under Chapter 62 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. Depending on the offense, the duty runs ten years after discharge or for life, and it governs where you can live, the jobs you can hold, and how you use the internet. A separate felony under §62.102 punishes any failure to keep the registration current — which is how a missed address update becomes a new prison case.

The collateral reach goes further. A pending allegation alone can trigger a DFPS safety plan that moves a parent out of the house, a suspension for a licensed professional, and immigration consequences for non-citizens. Teachers and coaches face SBEC certification action on top of the criminal case. We treat those consequences as part of the defense from day one — negotiating charge language with registration in mind, timing pleas against licensing deadlines, and, for clients who registered years ago and have lived cleanly since, evaluating early termination and deregistration under the state’s risk-assessment process.

A Frisco Firm That Defends Fort Worth

L and L Law Group is based at 5899 Preston Rd, Suite 101 in Frisco, and we defend clients across North Texas — including Fort Worth and every city in Tarrant County. Distance is not a barrier: consultations happen the same day by phone or video, and when your case is filed we appear at the Tim Curry Criminal Justice Center for every setting that matters. Co-Founding Partners Reggie London and Njeri London work each sex-offense file as a two-attorney team, and both review the case before the first court date.

If your case arose elsewhere in the county — Arlington, the mid-cities, or the Tarrant side of Grand Prairie or Mansfield — our Tarrant County sex crimes page covers the countywide picture. For allegations on the eastern side of the metroplex, see our Dallas sex crimes attorney page.

Fort Worth Sex Crimes FAQ

Serving Fort Worth and All of Tarrant County

From our Frisco office we defend sex-crime and sexual-assault allegations throughout Fort Worth — downtown, the west side, the north side and Alliance corridor, and every neighborhood in between — as well as the rest of Tarrant County, with every felony case routed to the Tim Curry Criminal Justice Center. Same-day, confidential consultations are available seven days a week.

This page is attorney advertising and educational legal information. It is not legal advice and does not create an attorney-client relationship. Statutory references are current as of the date of publication; consult the Texas Penal Code and Code of Criminal Procedure at statutes.capitol.texas.gov for the latest text. Every case is different, and prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.