This is another case where the parents also have some responsibility for his crimes.
Top VA Official Ignored Red Flags About His Disturbed Neo-Nazi Son, Judge Says
‘A SMALL ARSENAL’
The feds say Texas teen Franklin Barrett Sechriest set a synagogue on fire, robbed Black and Hispanic students, and kept a virulently antisemitic journal.
A teenage neo-Nazi accused of torching a Texas synagogue last Halloween suffers from “a myriad of mental health issues,” but his parents—one of whom is a well-respected physician now serving as a high-ranking Veterans Affairs official—never got him the treatment he desperately needed, according to a federal magistrate judge.
Further, the judge said, after doctors at a leading psychiatric hospital evaluated Franklin Barrett Sechriest in 2016 and warned his mother and father that their son “should not have access to firearms,” they subsequently “allowed [him] to acquire a small arsenal of firearms, including one shotgun, three rifles and three handguns.”
The explosive details are revealed in a detention order handed down in December by Judge Mark Lane of the U.S. District Court of Western Texas, and are now being reported for the first time by The Daily Beast.
Sechriest, 18, was arrested on arson charges last November for allegedly causing more than $150,000 in damage to Congregation Beth Israel in Austin. Criminal investigators with the Austin Fire Department identified the Texas State University freshman using surveillance footage from the temple’s parking lot that showed his Jeep’s license plate. The plate was traced back to Sechriest’s home in San Marcos, where he was living with his mother, Nicole. Sechriest’s father, Vernon Franklin Sechriest, is a U.S. Navy veteran and orthopedic surgeon who was appointed chief of staff for the VA Healthcare System in Loma Linda, California on Nov. 21, 2021—about three weeks after his son allegedly set Congregation Beth Israel ablaze.
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FBI agents seized numerous diaries from Sechriest, which they say contained virulently racist and bigoted entries about Jews and people of color. They also found stickers in Sechriest’s possession, one of which showed a migrant family and read, “No invader is innocent.” Another showed police officers, politicians, and doctors with Jewish stars over their faces. “Would you kill them all to seize your rights?” it said. “The price of freedom is paid in blood.” Other evidence discovered by investigators included “materials commonly used to make Molotov cocktails, signifying his intent to engage in more violent criminal conduct and escalate his dangerousness.”
Following the synagogue attack, Sechriest wrote in one of his journals, “I set a synagogue on fire,” according to prosecutors. Three months prior, Sechriest had been accused of carrying out “an armed robbery of 4 Black victims and a Hispanic victim,” they said in a court filing. Last week, Sechriest was indicted by a federal grand jury on one count each of damage to religious property, use of fire to commit a federal crime, and arson. If convicted, he faces up to 60 years in prison.
In the years leading up to the synagogue arson, Sechriest’s behavior had “dramatically escalated,” according to Lane’s Dec. 15 order.
“That escalation has centered on hatred for other people, an ever-increasing escalation of criminal behavior and a passion for firearms and weapons,” it states. “In June of 2016, [Sechriest] was evaluated at the Menninger Clinic in Houston, Texas. In the wake of that evaluation, a physician prepared a nine-page evaluation of [Sechriest]’s mental health. The physician noted that ‘Franklin does not have and should not have access to firearms.’ Despite that admonition, [Sechriest]’s parents allowed the Defendant to acquire a small arsenal of firearms, including one shotgun, three rifles and three handguns.”
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Vernon Sechriest, who goes by “V. Franklin Sechriest” in his professional life, earned roughly $1 million a year while working at the VA between 2015 and 2021, according to federal government procurement data. As a contractor, Sechriest—the chief of orthopedics and podiatry at the Minneapolis VA Healthcare System until last fall—was not subject to the same salary caps that govern the pay of federal employees. (For comparison’s sake, NIH Director Anthony Fauci earned $434,312 in 2020.)
more:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/veterans-affairs-doc-v-franklin-sechriest-ignored-red-flags-about-neo-nazi-son-franklin-sechriest-judge-says?via=newsletter&source=Weekend
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