Protasiewicz says she may sue over abuse, racism claims
Supreme Court candidate Judge Janet Protasiewicz says she’s considering a lawsuit over accusations made by her former stepson alleging abuse during her first marriage and the use of the Nword decades ago.
The unverified accusations have run on the conservative website Wisconsin Right Now.
The Journal Sentinel didn’t publish the claims earlier because they originated from a single source with a checkered past and some inconsistencies in his story. The news organization is addressing them now that the candidate discussed the allegations on the record, misinformation about them has circulated widely on social media and a second individual has stepped forward with similar claims.
Protasiewicz, a liberal, is squaring off against former state Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly, a conservative, in the April 4 election. The winner of the increasingly testy contest, marked by the influx of national money and outside TV ads, will determine the ideological direction of the state’s seven-member court.
“It’s an absolute lie, 100%. It smacks of some type of desperation by any media outlet that works to promote that.”
Judge Janet Protasiewicz, Supreme Court candidate
“It’s an absolute lie, 100%. It smacks of some type of desperation by any media outlet that works to promote that,” Protasiewicz said during a meeting with reporters and editors at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Asked if she planned to sue, she responded: “My family and I have been discussing that, and right now my focus is on winning this election. On April 5, we’re going to pivot and make a decision about that.”
Protasiewicz said she plans to contact an attorney on that date. She did not specify if she is considering litigation against her former stepson, the right-wing website or both. Wisconsin Right Now has openly promoted the Kelly campaign in this race.
“These claims are completely false, devoid of proof, and are only being made by a bitter, discredited, drug-dealing felon who will say anything to get attention,” said Sam Roecker, spokesman for the Protasiewicz campaign.
Michael Madden, Protasiewicz’s former stepson, has been convicted of two drug-related felonies, including one for conspiring to distribute 220 pounds of marijuana.
Reached Wednesday, Madden said he had no fear of any litigation.
“I invite her to sue me,” said Madden, the original source for the claims. “I’m an eyewitness. That’s not secondhand information. It’s not hearsay.”
In response to the candidate and her campaign, he said he has not sold drugs in three decades and has a clean drug history.
In a joint statement, Jessica McBride and Jim Piwowarczyk of Wisconsin Right Now said Protasiewicz was trying to keep these “serious allegations” from being made public.
“Janet Protasiewicz’s threat to sue is a tactic to intimidate the news media into continuing to censor these stories, which voters have a right to know about and which she is desperate to hide,” McBride and Piwowarczyk wrote. “She said in the debate yesterday that voters have a right to know her ‘values.’ These questions directly speak to her values.”
In the Monday meeting at the Journal Sentinel, Protasiewicz said she expected her former stepchildren to say she married her first husband for his money but nothing beyond that.
“When I first started thinking about this race, I thought — the biggest mistake I made in my life, my first marriage — I thought, will this come out in public?” she said she asked herself.
In 1997, Protasiewicz, then a 34-yearold assistant district attorney, married former Milwaukee County Judge Patrick J. Madden, who was 70. The marriage did not last long, with the two splitting up after 10 months.
In court records, Protasiewicz said she did not know there was a divorce clause in the prenuptial agreement, which she contended she never read. She said she didn’t know Madden’s adult son Michael would be living with them. Madden disputed both points.
Protasiewicz asked for a total of $115,145 in maintenance and divided assets if the judge threw out the prenuptial agreement. But the judge found it
valid and granted a divorce. In the end, she received $12,000 for furniture she disposed of to move in with Madden, $485 for a burial plot and a share of the wedding gifts.
There was no mention of abuse or racial slurs in the hefty divorce file. Madden died in 2018 at the age of 91. In recent weeks, Michael Madden has accused Protasiewicz of physically and mentally abusing his father during the brief marriage more than 25 years ago.
Michael Madden, 61, told the Journal Sentinel that she “slapped” his father in the head when she was frustrated with him or pushed him around when the pair disagreed. Michael Madden said he never called the police or any other authorities but simply sent the two to bed after an incident.
Michael Madden also accused Protasiewicz of using a racial slur when referring to Black individuals involved in cases at Milwaukee County Children’s Court while she was a prosecutor there in the 1990s.
Some details of the stepson’s story have changed, and his siblings did not confirm either allegation.
Late last week, Jonathan Ehr, a longtime Madden family friend, told the Journal Sentinel he witnessed Protasiewicz push Madden twice, neither time knocking him to the ground. Ehr said he saw Protasiewicz push Madden when he wasn’t moving fast enough and another time when they were standing in the dining room.
Ehr’s father was an attorney and friends with Patrick Madden for decades, Ehr said. Ehr was friendly with the Madden children growing up but said it wasn’t until the 1990s that he and Michael Madden became close.
“Not a love tap, nothing like that. It was a hard push,” Ehr told the Journal Sentinel. “I haven’t thought about that in a long, long time. But you know, it’s something you don’t really forget.”
Madden’s two other children — Mark Madden, 66, and Sheila Casey, 59 — said they didn’t have first-hand knowledge of abuse. Michael Madden initially told the Journal Sentinel he did not contact police, his siblings or anyone else about his accusations. On Monday, he changed his account to say that he did mention the alleged abuse to his brother around the time of the divorce. His brother declined to respond.
In interviews with the Journal Sentinel in recent weeks, all three adult children accused Protasiewicz of taking advantage of their father at a vulnerable time. The judge’s wife had died just five months before he and Protasiewicz started dating. Protasiewicz’s father was also gravely ill at the time.
The children said the pair lived a very active life while dating and during the marriage, traveling around the world, going whitewater rafting, riding roller coasters and attending blues concerts. They said their father told them that he didn’t always enjoy this activity.
Michael Madden also said Protasiewicz wasn’t the progressive she is now when she was married to his father, a staunch conservative. The other two children said they never heard Protasiewicz say she was opposed to abortion, but they said they would find it hard to believe that their father would marry someone who supported abortion rights.
All three children said they are antiabortion.
Earlier this month, Protasiewicz, who has made abortion rights the cornerstone of her campaign, disputed even discussing the issue with her former stepchildren: “I can’t even imagine that I would have had any substantive conversations with them about anything involving deep personal thoughts.”
She added that this was a “very strange time” in her life.
“My dad had just died, and somehow I ended up getting married to (Madden),” Protasiewicz said. “And it’s a period of my life that was so uncomfortable; I don’t even really talk about it.”
Protasiewicz stunned by accusations
Protasiewicz told the Journal Sentinel that she hadn’t expected “this level of lies by a twice-convicted felon who has never held a job,” a reference to Michael Madden. “I’m surprised that anybody’s even giving those the time of day, quite frankly,” she said.
Protasiewicz said she has never used the N-word, and her family and friends — including her assistant, who is Black — were stunned by the accusation.
Wisconsin Right Now claimed last week that the NAACP was concerned about Protasiewicz’s alleged use of a racial slur. But a review of the email exchange shows Clarence P. Nicholas, president the NAACP’s Milwaukee chapter, was highly skeptical of the claim and raised questions about its source.
Wisconsin Right Now’s pieces have relied on accusations made by Michael Madden and Ehr about events they said happened decades ago. But recently, anonymous pro-Kelly tweets viewed thousands of times show discussions of creating “misinformation ads” with doctored “videos or articles” relating to Protasiewicz using the N-word.
Over the weekend, Protasiewicz said she went to Racine to campaign at predominately Black churches. She said she called ahead to make sure they were still interested in her attending. Protasiewicz said she told one of the bishops that these types of accusations are why most people don’t run for office.
“He gave me a hug and said, ‘the truth will be known,’ and I didn’t even know him,” Protasiewicz said. “There is absolutely no truth to those statements. This has been incredibly hard for me and for my family.”
Erik Ugland, a libel law expert at Marquette University’s Diederich College of Communication, said a lawsuit by Protasiewicz would probably be a “losing battle” given the standards required to win a libel suit.
In libel cases, public figures have to meet a more stringent standard than do private citizens, even if a defendant has published false information. Courts have ruled that public figures, including government officials, have to prove the existence of actual malice “by clear and convincing proof.”
“WRN has at least one on-the-record source, buttressed (arguably) by the other anonymous sources, making it hard to show that WRN was reckless with the truth, even if the allegations turn out to be false,” Ugland said.
Protasiewicz could win, Ugland said, if she could prove that Wisconsin Right Now’s sources were plainly not credible, but she would also have to show that the conservative website knew these sources were not trustworthy.
In the end, Ugland said, “My guess is that she will not ultimately pursue the case, but she probably feels (the threat of a lawsuit is) her only politically viable option beyond simply a public denial.”