Harris County sex assault cases lag despite more investigators, report says

Harris County is adding investigators to sexual-assault cases, but the system is still struggling to turn reports into arrests. The county Sexual Assault Response Team said clearance rates remain about half the average for other crimes, while arrest rates have stayed low for four years, leaving a wide gap between reporting and justice.

The report released Tuesday, June 9, shows the Harris County Sheriff’s Office doubled its adult sex crimes unit from six investigators to 12 over the past two years. The Harris County District Attorney’s Office also expanded its sex-crimes unit, growing from five prosecutors to nine. Even with that staffing increase, the county still is not solving these cases at a pace that matches other violent or property crimes.

The numbers matter because sexual assault is widely undercounted before police ever see a case. The Houston Area Women’s Center says roughly half of sexual assaults go unreported, meaning official totals likely capture only part of the problem. A survivor interviewed by the center described how many people are dismissed or accused of lying, and that fear continues to keep survivors from coming forward.

The county’s own earlier report showed how much the structure has changed, and how much remains familiar. When Harris County published its first SART biennial report on December 1, 2023, the Harris County Sheriff’s Office Adult Sex Crimes Unit had a sergeant and five deputy investigators handling adult sexual assault complaints in unincorporated Harris County. That same report pushed survivor-centered response, privacy protections, and closer information-sharing among law enforcement, health care providers, advocates, labs, and criminal justice agencies.

Those same themes sit at the center of the latest report. Sonia Corrales, the SART presiding CEO, said the goal is to present a more realistic landscape of sexual violence in the community and to show that the issue belongs to everyone, not just one law-enforcement unit. Harris County’s SART exists because Texas Senate Bill 476, enacted in 2021, requires every county to form an adult Sexual Assault Response Team as part of a statewide coordination system.

The pressure on the county is not just administrative. Houston Area Women’s Center says it helps thousands of women, children and families each year escaping domestic violence, sexual assault or sex trafficking, which makes reporting barriers a public safety issue as well as a criminal-justice one. And the stakes were underscored by an ABC13 Houston report from November 7, 2025, which found that only 60 of more than 2,200 sexual assaults reported to Harris County’s largest law-enforcement agencies over nearly two years ended in convictions.

Taken together, the reports show a county that has added staff and coordination, but has not yet closed the distance between trauma, reporting and accountability. For survivors in Harris County, the question remains whether the system is becoming safer enough to trust.