Memo told Walker of prison f laws in ’12

Racine County quit sending youths after sex assault

Madison — Four years before abuse allegations put a state prison for youth in headlines, the institution botched its response to a sexual assault of an inmate so badly that an entire county stopped sending offenders there.

Their confidence shaken, Racine County officials pulled all their youth offenders from the state-run Lincoln Hills School for Boys in Irma and sharply criticized the handling of the 2012 incident to Gov. Scott Walker and high-ranking officials in the Department of Corrections.

Records of the incident show clearly that despite Walker’s repeated statements that he was surprised by more recent allegations of abuse, his office and his administration were told of troubling conduct at the prison in February 2012.

Then-Racine County Circuit Judge Richard Kreul sent a memo directly to Walker on Feb. 10, 2012, detailing the alleged sexual assault and the failure of Lincoln Hills staff to notify law enforcement, child protective services and county officials about it.

Another inmate was convicted of beating and sexually assaulting the victim in the prison about 30 miles north of Wausau, where most of the inmates are minorities. But there was no recorded discipline for the prison workers who ignored state rules and who waited for a basketball game to finish before taking the victim to the hospital.

“I’m sure reading the attached memo will shock you as much as it did me,” Kreul wrote to the governor. “Almost 50 years in the legal system and I’ve seen and heard a lot, so (I’m) not naive as to what ‘prison’ is about. But the indifference in this sordid tale is absolutely inexcusable. I’ll be thinking long and hard before sending another youth to that place!”

A Walker spokeswoman said he wasn’t shown the letter addressed to him or its allegations, which were left for the state Department of Corrections to handle.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel recently received documents on the case from Racine County under the state’s open records law. The governor’s office didn’t turn over the letter in a December response to the newspaper’s request for all records since January 2011 “related to allegations of unsafe conditions” at the school.

Walker spokeswoman Laurel Patrick said the letter

“. . . The indifference in this sordid tale is absolutely inexcusable. I’ll be thinking long and hard before sending another youth to that place!”

Richard Kreul, then Racine County circuit judge, writing in 2012

hadn’t been flagged because it “relates to an isolated youth-on-youth incident.”

State officials and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are probing alleged abuses at the prison and claims of crimes being covered up. Milwaukee County officials are considering pulling juveniles from the facility for similar reasons to those given by Racine County officials. In both cases, officials first learned that harm had come to youth inmates not from state officials, but from tipsters.

“In this case, there was concern on the part of the county that the matter was not addressed as promptly and thoroughly as warranted based upon the seriousness of the allegations,” Racine County Executive Jonathan Delagrave said in a statement.

Delagrave said the county now gets better results for less money with local sentencing programs that address offenders’ substance abuse, decision-making and mental health.

State officials in 2012 acknowledged to Racine County officials that Lincoln Hills workers hadn’t followed state rules and gave them more training about handling sexual assaults, according to the records and Corrections Department spokeswoman Joy Staab.

“Front-line staff did not follow DOC protocols to promptly notify law enforcement and Racine County. DOC conducted remedial training to reinforce the importance of reporting information on a timely basis,” Staab said in a statement.

The assault involved an unnamed youth who was convicted of car theft and credit card fraud and then failed the county’s alternative sentencing program, says a February 2012 Racine County memo.

The victim was placed with a roommate, a sexual predator who told the victim he would have him beaten and would send others to hurt the victim’s family at their home address if the victim didn’t agree to his advances.

On Jan. 13, 2012, the assailant forced the victim to perform oral sex on him and beat him on the back of the head and the ribs, the memo says. Lincoln Hills workers learned of the assault at 4 p.m. that day, with the victim saying he had been left unconscious for an hour after the assault.

It was 10:30 p.m. before the victim reached the emergency room and medical workers did what prison officials had not: notify the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Department.

“Though the incident was reported to Lincoln Hills staff at about 4 p.m., our office was not notified until almost 10:30 p.m., when the hospital called to notify us of the alleged assault. We were never directly notified by Lincoln Hills,” an incident report by Deputy Joshua Warren reads.

The assailant eventually pleaded no contest to charges of battery by a prisoner and fourth-degree sexual assault.

The day after the victim was sexually assaulted, Lincoln Hills staff transferred him to a security unit at the prison for “disruptive behavior and property damage or alteration.” They notified Racine County officials of that transfer on Jan. 17, 2012, prompting county officials to start repeatedly asking what had happened.

Racine County officials stepped up their inquiries after a Jan. 25 letter from another inmate alerted them about the assault.

It wasn’t until Feb. 1 — 15 days after Racine County had started asking about the victim — that then-Deputy Superintendent John Ourada acknowledged the sexual assault, telling a Racine County caseworker he was “very surprised” the county hadn’t been told.

The caseworker, Dan Dragic, questioned Ourada whether the victim had been disciplined for acting out the day after the crime because of the trauma.

That same day, Dragic, who had doggedly sought information about the victim, spoke with Lincoln Hills psychologist Paul Hesse about the assault. Hesse said that the delay in taking the victim to the hospital had happened because of a basketball game at Lincoln Hills, stating the sport was a “big deal” at the school, according to a Feb. 1, 2012, email from Dragic to other county officials.

“Dr. (Hesse) chuckled and asked me, ‘What did you want them to do, stop the basketball game?’ ” Dragic wrote.

Hesse is still listed as a prison employee. He did not respond to a phone message.

At the time of the incident, Paul Westerhaus was the superintendent of the school. He and Ourada were both later promoted — Ourada to superintendent and Westerhaus to a job in Madison as the state’s head of juvenile corrections.

They moved up their retirements late last year, as details about the massive probe became public.

Kreul, who at the time of the incident was the Racine County circuit judge responsible for juvenile crimes, retired five months after he sent his letter to Walker and now lives in Texas. In an interview, he said he had not heard about the more recent incidents at Lincoln Hills.

The 2012 sexual assault “caused me great concern because of the administration response, which in my opinion was disastrous for the young man,” Kreul said. “After this incident . . . I issued basically a directive that we, Racine County, would no longer send anyone to Lincoln Hills.”

Kreul said he had also been shocked when the state closed a separate youth facility, Ethan Allen School in Wales, in 2011 and instead sent all young offenders to a single institution, Lincoln Hills.

“My experience with the administration at Wales was 100% better than my experience with the administration at Lincoln Hills,” he said.

In December, about 50 state agents and attorneys flooded Lincoln Hills as part of a probe that had been going on since the beginning of 2015. Lincoln County Judge Robert Russell has found there is reason to believe crimes occurred that include prisoner abuse, child neglect, sexual assault and overuse of pepper spray.

Last week, the Milwaukee County Board approved a resolution aimed at removing 170 Milwaukee County youth from Lincoln Hills. Officials are trying to determine where they can house those offenders safely and effectively.

After hearing from a tipster in the fall of 2014, Milwaukee County officials raised concerns about youths not getting adequate classroom time and allegations about youths’ arms being broken by staff.

The complaint led to an internal investigation, and within months corrections officials asked the Lincoln County sheriff and Department of Justice to get involved.

Twenty Lincoln Hills employees have been put on paid leave as part of the investigation, Staab said. Of those, 11 remain on leave, six have resigned or retired, two have been fired and one has returned to work.

Three of those now on leave will get additional training before returning to work, Staab said.

“After this incident . . . I issued basically a directive that we, Racine County, would no longer send anyone to Lincoln Hills.”

Richard Kreul, former Racine County circuit judge