State nearly returned suspended psychologist to Wisconsin's youth prison

MADISON – State officials last year were on the verge of returning a suspended psychologist to his job at Wisconsin’s troubled juvenile prison, but backed off after a prosecutor said he could be charged with falsifying records, state records show.

After learning of possible charges, the Department of Corrections kept psychologist Wilson Fowle on paid leave and began its own investigation. Six weeks later, Fowle retired and by the end of 2016 agreed to surrender his psychology license.

Prosecutors will not say whether they are still considering charges against Fowle for falsifying medical records, such as by claiming he had met with inmates on days he did not work.

State records provide a new glimpse into the operations of Lincoln Hills School for Boys and Copper Lake School for Girls, which for more than two years have been under investigation for prisoner abuse, child neglect and other possible crimes. The facilities share a campus 30 miles north of Wausau.

RELATED: Crisis at Lincoln Hills juvenile prison years in making

Prosecutors first raised concerns about Fowle in November 2015, two weeks before they raided Lincoln Hills, according to documents released under the state's open records law. The Department of Corrections put Fowle on paid leave but in January 2016 took steps to return him to work.

That prompted a sharp response from Paul Connell, a top aide to state Attorney General Brad Schimel.

Fowle “still may be prosecuted” and “remains under investigation for at least one act of falsifying records relating to his treatment of youths at Lincoln Hills,” Connell wrote in an email to Julio Barron, who at the time was the top attorney at the Department of Corrections.

“Please understand that should Dr. Fowle return, we believe that (the Division of Criminal Investigation) will be forced to take immediate steps at Lincoln Hills to preserve potential evidence related to Dr. Fowle and to otherwise protect our investigation,” he wrote.

Barron responded that the Department of Corrections would not bring Fowle back to Lincoln Hills after all because it did not want to interfere with the criminal investigation.

Fowle, 64, did not return calls from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Connell wrote in his email that Department of Justice officials had been told prison officials planned to return Fowle to work. But Department of Corrections spokesman Tristan Cook said Friday the agency had only been considering doing so and had contacted the Department of Justice to see if that was acceptable.

"We were checking to see if we could reinstate him," he said.

Cook said his agency had overhauled how it provides psychological services to juvenile inmates in the past year, including by hiring a new chief psychologist at Lincoln Hills and a juvenile psychology director in the department’s central office in Madison.

Lincoln Hills has had a string of problems with is psychological services unit in recent years. Its top psychologist, Vincent Ramos, talked mockingly to a female employee about the breasts of a naked teen inmate with mental health issues. He was not disciplined for that incident, but was fired in December 2015 after he took photos of interns in a hotel room while he was wearing only an undershirt and underwear.

The prison was in danger of losing its internship program after the American Psychological Association found the program was in disarray in 2015.

Meanwhile, Lincoln Hills officials face a federal lawsuit from a former inmate who was severely brain damaged after she hanged herself in her cell. Her lawsuit alleges officials did not do enough to prevent the incident even though she told them she was thinking of suicide.

RELATED: Lawsuit alleges horrific conditions at Lincoln Hills

Pair of internal investigations

After the Department of Justice told prison officials about their concerns with Fowle, the Department of Corrections began its own review.

It was the second time internal investigators had looked into Fowle. In 2013, they found he had not turned in 11 of 20 weekly reports on his patients and had failed over four months to respond to 51 inmate requests to be seen.

Within three days of submitting those requests, inmates are supposed to be seen or told when they will be seen.

For those infractions, Fowle received a written reprimand from Paul Westerhaus, then the superintendent of Lincoln Hills. Connell later wrote that Department of Justice officials found it “curious why he was not terminated for these acts.”

The 2016 internal investigation found similar problems. Investigators found stacks of requests to be seen filed over 10 weeks that Fowle had not acted on.

Internal investigators found that he had claimed in reports to have seen patients on two days in the summer of 2015 when he had not worked. He also claimed to have called the mother of an inmate twice, but phone records show he did not, according to a summary of the investigation.

Fowle retired in March 2016, before the internal investigation was complete. The next month, the Department of Corrections filed a complaint about him with the state Psychology Examining Board.

He agreed in November 2016 to surrender his license in a deal with the board, which found he had failed to see patients, failed to create notes on patients and “had inconsistent documents that indicate falsification of records.” Fowle denied any wrongdoing.

The state attorney general turned the Lincoln Hills investigation over to the FBI in early 2016, shortly after Connell alerted the Department of Corrections that charges against Fowle were possible.

A spokeswoman for acting U.S. Attorney Jeff Anderson said the agency could not confirm or deny that a specific person was being investigated.