Women guards at Wisconsin teen prison subjected to sexual assault, flashing and crude comments
Patrick MarleyMADISON – Teen inmates at Wisconsin’s troubled youth prison routinely taunt women who work there with sexual comments, expose their genitalia to them and openly masturbate in front of them, according to records and interviews.
Details about the incidents — which include inmates deliberately getting female workers' attention as they masturbate and talking about their bodies in crude ways — come as Hollywood and political figures face new accusations and increasing scrutiny over sexual harassment and sexual assault.
In more than 20 years working at Lincoln Hills School for Boys north of Wausau, guard Julie Giers has had an inmate grab her buttocks, been subjected to daily sexual comments and had teen inmates masturbate in front of her countless times, she said.
“I don’t remember reading that in my job description,” she said.
Last year, teacher Pandora Lobacz checked on a teen inmate’s schoolwork only to find him masturbating at his desk. She said it appeared he was trying to get her to see him.
Guards removed him from her classroom, but she said Security Director Brian Gustke told her in a stern voice that he wouldn’t alert law enforcement.
For weeks after the incident, the inmate sat in an area outside her classroom, but he was “ogling me, giving me these looks that are unsettling,” Lobacz said.
“To me, that’s sexual harassment, and they didn’t do anything about it,” she said.
Lobacz — who was thrown into headlines last month after an inmate knocked her out with a single punch — recently reported the masturbation incident to law enforcement. Lincoln County Chief Deputy Sheriff Nathan Walrath said his office would investigate.
Prison officials would not tell the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel whether the inmate was disciplined, citing the state's confidentiality laws for juvenile inmates.
Such behavior is among the many challenges plaguing Lincoln Hills, which has been under a criminal investigation for nearly three years for prisoner abuse and child neglect. Separately, a federal judge this summer ordered prison officials to curb their use of solitary confinement and pepper spray.
Reports about inmates masturbating in front of female workers are similar to incidents at the Cook County jail that prompted female public defenders in Chicago to file a federal lawsuit this month over their working conditions.
Behavior 'not normal'
In 2004, an 18-year-old inmate grabbed Giers’ buttocks in a prison kitchen. Her bosses initially declined to report the matter to law enforcement but did so after she and her father, who also worked there, emphasized how serious the incident was, Giers said.
The inmate was found guilty of fourth-degree sexual assault, a misdemeanor, court records show.
Inmates commonly masturbate in front of female staff, she said, estimating that she has seen it happen more than 100 times in her more than 20 years at the institution. She said she was referring only to times when inmates were deliberately trying to be seen by female staff, and not when they were masturbating under covers or in other private ways.
“I get that they’re teenage boys, but this is not normal teenage boy behavior,” she said.
Once, Giers was collecting food trays from inmates’ rooms when one of them stuck his penis through the food slot in his door, she said. The same thing has happened to other women, she said.
“You either have to have thick skin or you’re not going to survive,” she said of working at Lincoln Hills.
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Sexualized comments are constant. Inmates comment on workers’ bodies and tell them what they plan to do with them sexually, she said.
“That’s every day at Lincoln Hills and nothing is being done,” she said.“You shouldn’t have to go to work and be verbally assaulted to earn a paycheck.”
Giers, Lobacz and others blamed management for not holding inmates accountable when they engage in sexual harassment.
In a May 2016 interview, Corrections Secretary Jon Litscher told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that his team would not put up with a harassing environment for women workers.
"I think they would take those accusations very seriously and they would not tolerate it, nor would they permit it," he said then.
Records show women workers have been raising concerns about conditions at Lincoln Hills before and after Litscher made that comment.
The Department of Corrections has a “zero tolerance” policy for inappropriate behavior, agency spokesman Tristan Cook said by email. Staff are encouraged to document such incidents and can call other guards if they need help resolving situations, he said.
"Input from staff is critical in identifying how we can continue to make improvements and what we can do to ensure they feel safe," Cook said. "As Secretary Litscher noted previously, their concerns are our concerns and we are willing to take action so our staff feel safe."
One female guard told internal investigators last year that male inmates in the summer of 2015 had climbed on a roof and exposed themselves to girls who were imprisoned at Copper Lake School for Girls, which sits on the same campus as Lincoln Hills.
That worker told internal investigators that she “absolutely” did not feel safe working at the prison complex because inmates had exposed themselves to her and regularly yelled sexual comments at her. Inmates at times openly masturbated in their rooms when they knew female guards would check on them, she said.
She estimated she had written 20 reports on sexual comments and the exposing of genitalia.
In one incident, an inmate flashed his penis at the guard twice in one week. She asked a supervisor to put the inmate in solitary confinement, but he wouldn’t, she said.
“When I called him to take the kid to security, he said no, he said you’re just going to have to figure this out, you know?” she told internal investigators in March 2016.
A few months later, the same inmate flashed a teacher, the guard told internal investigators.
In May 2016, one inmate masturbated in his cell while waving at a camera, knowing that that female guard was responsible for watching him on her video feed, according to an incident report.
State Sen. Lena Taylor (D-Milwaukee) said such incidents were unacceptable and could be better dealt with if correctional workers had the full collective bargaining powers they lost under Act 10 in 2011.
"No woman, no male, no person should have to go to work and be sexually harassed. No one should be put in that situation and items not be addressed," Taylor said.
Other incidents have already drawn media attention, including one in 2015 in which the prison’s top psychologist at the time mocked the breasts of a teen inmate who had run naked through a hallway. Chief psychologist Vincent Ramos told a female guard the girl’s breasts looked “worn out, used and abused," the Journal Sentinel reported last year.
He was not disciplined but was fired less than a year later after he took photos of female interns while he was wearing only his underwear and a shirt in a hotel room while they were attending a conference in Madison.
Also in 2015, a 17-year-old inmate brushed a guard’s breasts and groin and 10 or more other inmates taunted her about whether she enjoyed being touched. When she reported it, prison leaders initially focused their internal investigation on whether the guard — not the inmate — had acted appropriately.
After the guard reported the incident to law enforcement, the inmate was charged with fourth-degree sexual assault. In a deal, he pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct last year.
Ashley Luthern of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report from Milwaukee.