WisDems Web Ad Highlights Growing Scandal
MADISON – A day after Scott Walker politically postured to cover up a growing scandal, a new Web ad released today by the Democratic Party of Wisconsin focuses on Scott Walker’s failure to protect women in Milwaukee County’s care from sexual predators.
Various state, local and federal probes are underway at Scott Walker’s mental health complex, where conditions of neglect found after a patient starved to death there in 2006 have continued to the present-day, when housing female patients with men known to be violent was given as the false choice to keep the men from fighting.
Though the unsecured and mixed-gender arrangements have been vocally opposed for years by nurses at the facility, Walker and his hand-picked administrator have defended the policy and the conditions at the complex, which is facing a staffing crisis because of his poor budgeting.
Meanwhile, county taxpayers have paid more than $200,000 for a private attorney-not to prevent rapes or custodial deaths, but to protect Scott Walker and his cronies from liability in the unfolding scandal, for which the GOP gubernatorial candidate has tried to deflect scrutiny and has refused to answer basic questions.
Yesterday, Walker announced that he would be raiding a capital fund to fix building violations that are the result of his plan to defer maintenance at the mental health complex. It is not clear that the funds are even bond eligible.
“The patients of Milwaukee County’s mental health complex were put at risk of preventable sexual assault because of decisions that Scott Walker made, but he’s too busy with political gamesmanship to answer for his failures,” Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Mike Tate said Tuesday. “Scott Walker has failed the most vulnerable of Milwaukee County. We cannot let him bring his reckless management to all Wisconsin.”
The new Web ad and a full timeline of events at the Behavioral Health Division is available online here.
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