Patrick Marley

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

MADISON - A fired prison guard who falsely claimed she had repeatedly checked on a teen inmate before the inmate hanged herself in her cell has won reinstatement — with back pay.

Taxpayers must pay guard Rosemary Esterholm about $29,000 after the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission determined last week that she was wrongly fired in March and must get her job back.

The decision follows a round of firings in March around the time the state reached an $18.9 million settlement with a former 16-year-old inmate who was severely brain damaged after she hanged herself at Copper Lake School for Girls.

Copper Lake and Lincoln Hills School for Boys, which sit on the same campus north of Wausau, have been under criminal investigation since 2015 for prisoner abuse and child neglect. The facilities are slated to close by 2021.

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In 2015, Copper Lake guards left inmate Sydni Briggs alone in a cell and did not check on her for more than 40 minutes even though they were required to regularly do so and she had recently expressed suicidal thoughts. They found her hanging in her room not breathing and with no pulse.

Esterholm filled out paperwork that day claiming she had checked on Briggs five times that morning, even though Esterholm wasn't even on duty in the unit at those times.

At the time, the state Department of Corrections did not discipline Esterholm or the guards who had failed to check on Briggs. Esterholm's bosses promoted her two years later, in September 2017.

But this March, as the state neared its record settlement with Briggs, officials fired Esterholm and another guard. They took those actions after Esterholm acknowledged in a deposition she had wrongly filled out prison paperwork and had not checked on Briggs before her suicide attempt.

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Esterholm contended she mistakenly filled out the paperwork amid the chaos of the day and appealed her firing. James Daley, the chairman of the employment relations commission, ruled Wednesday she should get her job back.

Daley found her explanation plausible and noted in other cases employees who improperly filled out paperwork have gotten much less severe punishment. He ruled she should have gotten a one-day suspension.

He ordered the state to give Esterholm her job back and provide her with back pay since March, other than for the one day she should have been suspended. That should mean a payment of about $29,000 to cover 27 weeks, based on her hourly pay of $27.13 as of last year.

"It is apparent that by wrongly discharging Esterholm, DOC succumbed to the pressures of a lawsuit and sacrificed the career of a valuable employee in the process," Daley wrote in his decision.

Department of Corrections spokesman Tristan Cook said the agency is in the process of getting Esterholm back to work and calculating her exact back pay.

Attempts to reach Esterholm through co-workers were unsuccessful. A colleague who represented her before the employment relations commission did not respond to emailed questions.

In November 2015, Briggs — who had expressed suicidal thoughts — was placed in her cell. Guards were supposed to check on her every 15 minutes but didn't.

After she had been there for nearly 20 minutes, she turned on a call light that guards were supposed to respond to immediately.

Guards could see into Briggs' room from a video camera, but no one came to her door for nearly 24 minutes more. By then, she had hanged herself with a torn T-shirt, had no pulse and was not breathing. Staff revived her with CPR and a defibrillator.

In all, she was left alone for 42 minutes.

An expert witness determined Briggs was hanging for 2 to 5 minutes, and Briggs' lawyer has contended staff could have stopped it if they had responded to her call light promptly.

She spent the next four months in a coma. Briggs now uses a wheelchair, has the cognition of a young child and is expected to require around-the-clock care for the rest of her life.

After the incident, Esterholm was brought into that unit to monitor other inmates. She filled out paperwork claiming she had checked on Briggs that morning.

No one from the Department of Corrections questioned her actions at the time and they did not discipline her or anyone else.

More than two years later, just before the March settlement was reached, Department of Corrections officials told Esterholm and guards Andrew Yorde and Darrell Stetzer they had to go. Stetzer resigned and the other two were fired.

Stetzer and Yorde were among those who were required to check on Briggs. Yorde discovered her hanging and Stetzer helped revive her.

Four months before Briggs hanged herself, an audit of operations at the prison found staff were not routinely checking call lights when inmates turned them on.

Lori McAllister, who was a manager at the time, promised she would train her staff to do that, but didn’t follow through.

She wasn't disciplined and seven months after Briggs' suicide attempt was promoted to deputy superintendent, the No. 2 position at the prison. That boosted McAllister's annual pay from $70,600 to $89,100.

Cook, the Department of Corrections spokesman, said the agency has made a number of changes since Briggs' suicide attempt, such as giving workers more training and improving the tracking of prison incidents.

This spring, Gov. Scott Walker and lawmakers agreed to close Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake by 2021 and instead keep juvenile offenders at new regional facilities. They approved that $80 million plan just after the settlement with Briggs was reached.