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Kauai Community Correctional Center Warden Neal Wagatsuma, left, uses a cellphone while walking out of U.S. District Court in Honolulu with Hawaii Deputy Attorney General Nelson Nabeta. Trial has started in a lawsuit that alleges Wagatsuma subjected female inmates to sexual humiliation and discrimination.
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A state prison warden admitted in federal court Wednesday that he showed sexually violent films to inmates as part of a therapy program he designed, but insisted they were not pornographic.
Kauai Community Correctional Center Warden Neal Wagatsuma testified as part of a civil suit in U.S. District Court on Wednesday.
Former KCCC psychiatric social worker Carolyn Ritchie is suing Wagatsuma and the state Department of Public Safety for allegedly retaliating against her for complaining about the treatment of female inmates. That treatment included showing them the films and forcing them to discuss their sexual histories in front of male inmates in group counseling sessions.
Ritchie worked at KCCC from 2009 to 2012, when she claims the department discharged her.
Wagatsuma said he wasn’t aware of Ritchie’s concerns until he read about them in a formal equal employment opportunity complaint in 2012. He said he initiated an internal investigation of Ritchie in 2010 because “she was breaking the rules of the institution repeatedly, jeopardizing the security of the institution.”
When Ritchie’s lawyer, Margery Bronster, asked Wagatsuma whether one of the rules Ritchie broke was passing a note between inmates, Wagatsuma said, “A note can be lethal.”
The trial resumes Nov. 10.
Wagatsuma said the films and group counseling are part of so-called “shame therapy,” a major component of the Life Time Stand program he instituted for work furlough inmates at KCCC. Wagatsuma, who has no professional training as a therapist, said he created Life Time Stand based on his own life experiences.
Bronster also represents a former KCCC inmate who sued Wagatsuma and the department in 2014 over the shame therapy she experienced in 2011. The court dismissed the lawsuit because it was filed beyond the two-year statute of limitations.
