Patrick Marley and Molly Beck

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

MADISON - The Republican leader of the state Senate on Wednesday said Gov. Scott Walker’s administration hadn’t done enough early on to address problems at the state’s troubled juvenile prison and accused Walker’s opponent of being a tool of the teachers union.

Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald’s main goal in a conference call was to attack state schools Superintendent Tony Evers — Walker’s opponent this fall — for not doing more to advance legislation making it easier to revoke teaching licenses when teachers watch pornography. But in response to a question, Fitzgerald said Walker’s Department of Corrections should have done more to stem abuses at Lincoln Hills School for Boys.

“Obviously, Lincoln Hills has been a mess,” the Juneau Republican said. “It’s been a mess for some time. So, often times when you read these articles (about problems there), I’m not necessarily shocked, but very disappointed that there wasn’t more action taken directly by DOC at the time.”

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Fitzgerald was asked about a January 2012 incident in which a young inmate was sexually assaulted by his roommate and knocked out. Workers found the injured inmate but decided not to take him to a hospital until after a basketball tournament.

A Racine County judge who learned of the matter sent a letter to Walker a month later, telling him staff there acted with "indifference" in an incident he considered "sordid" and "inexcusable." Walker aides did not alert the governor to the incident, according to the governor's office.

No one was disciplined.

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Fitzgerald said he wasn't aware of the incident, which was first reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2016. He suggested it was hard to know when the governor and prison leaders knew details about the matter and said it should have been addressed earlier by lower-level staff.

"There’s no way that you could expect that certainly somebody in the governor’s office, who may or may not have gotten a letter, would be the first place for action to be taken," Fitzgerald said. "If that is the case, wow, that’s big trouble because that should have been handled at a much lower level."

Walker aides have acknowledged that a Walker adviser received the letter but have said it wasn't passed onto the governor.

Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake School for Girls, which sit on the same campus north of Wausau, have been under criminal investigation for more than three years for prisoner abuse and child neglect.

As problems at the facility became public in recent years, Walker’s administration expanded worker training, equipped employees with body cameras, upgraded its incident reporting system and expanded mental health services.

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Walker and lawmakers agreed this spring to close the facility by 2021 and replace it with smaller regional facilities. They made that decision shortly after Walker's administration agreed to pay nearly $19 million to a Copper Lake inmate who was severely brain damaged when no one checked on her as required and she hanged herself in her cell.

Republicans attack Evers over porn case

Fitzgerald and Assembly Majority Leader Jim Steineke (R-Kaukauna) held their conference call Wednesday to criticize Evers for not revoking the teaching license of a Middleton teacher who looked at pornographic material at work in 2009.

They spoke the same day Walker unveiled a graphic ad about the case that included references to a sex act and the size of middle school girls' chests.

Evers has argued state law at the time didn't allow him to revoke the license because students were not exposed to the pornography. The law was changed in 2011 with Evers' support.

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But Fitzgerald and Steineke contended Evers didn't do enough to advocate for the bill's passage. Fitzgerald contended that's because Evers was doing the bidding of the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the state's largest teachers union that has helped Evers win his superintendent elections.

"The union wouldn’t let him touch it," Fitzgerald said of the legislation changing the law for license revocations. "Tony was told to back down and that’s exactly what he did."

Fitzgerald didn't cite evidence of Evers taking cues from the union. Instead, Fitzgerald argued WEAC's financial support for Evers "raised the question (of) whether Tony was actually beholden to the teachers union and what actually was that relationship between Tony, WEAC and (Evers' Department of Public Instruction) and whether that line was bright or whether that line was blurred."

Steineke said if Evers felt strongly about the bill he would have done more to pass it, such as by testifying on it and getting Democratic lawmakers to sign onto it.

Rep. Sondy Pope (D-Mount Horeb) said Fitzgerald and Steineke's complaints were "absurd" because they didn't testify on the bill, while Evers' staff did.

"I'm not surprised they don't remember, they were pretty busy then pushing through Walker's $800 million cut in school aid and expanding private school vouchers to Racine," Pope said in a statement.

Walker's ad follows ones by the state Republican Party that criticize Evers' handling of the Middleton case. Evers' campaign manager Maggie Gau called the new ad false and said Walker was relying on a strategy that is "disgusting, dishonest and increasingly desperate."

As the ad shows the torso of a young girl in a school hallway, a narrator alleges Middleton teacher Andrew Harris “commented about the chest sizes of middle school girls."

The narrator says Harris “suggested one struggling student should brush up on her sex skills” as an image of the Middleton-Cross Plains School District investigation report flashes across the screen. The portion of the ad includes a young girl’s face next to a highlighted portion of the report that includes the word “blowjob,” which is partially blurred.

While it’s true Harris looked at pornographic material at school, and showed an obscene image to a female colleague, a Department of Public Instruction investigation could not substantiate allegations from the female colleague that Harris made the comments about the students.

The female colleague who made the allegations said Harris had made comments about students for a period of nine years. She complained to district officials about Harris after her relationship with Harris and other teachers began to fray, and after seeing similar material before, according to the district’s report.

But that teacher refused to swear to the allegations under oath, and the DPI did not have the power to subpoena her for testimony.