By Brenda Wintrode for Wisconsin Watch.
Broadcast version by Jonah Chester for Wisconsin News Connection reporting for Wisconsin Watch-Public News Service Collaboration

Stacy Hartje's quest to clear her name took eight years.

In 2007, the 22-year-old mother of one was providing child care for several children in her Mauston, Wisconsin, home. One day after eating his lunch, a 3-year-old boy collapsed in front of her.

"He didn't fall to the ground because I was able to catch him," Hartje said. She called his parents, then called 9-1-1. She rode in the front seat of the ambulance that took him to the regional hospital.

The boy was transferred to American Family Children's Hospital in Madison, where doctors performed a lifesaving craniotomy to relieve pressure on his brain. And because his brain trauma was unexplained, a pediatrician trained in identifying child abuse examined him.

Dr. Barbara Knox called Hartje the next day. Although distracted while visiting the zoo with some children from her home day care, she answered the doctor's questions for about 15 minutes. Knox would later tell a jury Hartje's answers during their call deviated from the answers she gave to police, which Knox described as "a red flag to me for child abuse."

Hartje's saga was among a dozen cases Wisconsin Watch found in which Knox's assessment of child abuse was rejected by the criminal justice system, child protective services officials or other physicians.

But in Hartje's case, that process took nearly a decade as she watched a county prosecutor issue and then drop charges due to a lack of evidence - only to later face two trials on revived state charges. The case relied heavily on Knox's contention that nothing other than physical abuse could have caused the child's injury, even though the trauma left no clear external mark or broken bones.

Knox formerly led the UW's Child Protection Program in partnership with American Family Children's Hospital. She resigned from the position in 2019 after being placed on leave for allegedly bullying colleagues. She is facing similar complaints as medical director of Alaska CARES, a statewide child abuse forensic clinic that has seen a mass exodus of staff, many of whom lodged complaints about Knox's behavior and diagnoses.

Knox did not return calls and emails requesting comment.

Charges filed, dropped and filed again

The week after the boy collapsed, a detective came to Hartje's home and interviewed her for two hours. Juneau County Sheriff's Detective Tim Andres later said in court that the only conversation he had before he knocked on Hartje's door was with Knox.

Hartje agreed to let Andres question her "because I had no reason not to talk to anybody," she told Wisconsin Watch.

Andres told Hartje the boy was in grave condition and had undergone emergency brain surgery, according to the interview transcript. He said he had spoken with Knox on the phone, and described her as "an expert in child injuries."

Knox had told him the boy's injury happened within an hour of Hartje's 9-1-1 call and had taken severe force to inflict - as if the boy had fallen out of a two-story window or hit the windshield in a high-impact car crash while unbelted, he said, repeating what Knox had told him.

"That's why I had to come and talk to you," Andres told Hartje. "There's just no way that anything could have happened to (the boy) unless you were involved in it."

He warned her not to lie. "I understand that you're afraid, but I can also tell you that it's not going to be any better by lying to me," he said, according to the transcript.

Hartje wracked her brain for an answer. She recalled a recent incident in which the young boy had slipped on the stairs and hit his head. Could that have caused the episode? She told Andres she had never hit this child or any child in her care.

Andres kept talking. "There isn't anywhere else to go with this Stacy ... Something happened with you and (the boy), and I need to know what it was."

Six months passed and Hartje heard nothing, but officials were still considering whether to level charges. That December, a cadre of state and county law enforcement visited Knox in her Madison office. The doctor told them physical abuse, specifically "blunt trauma," inflicted within the hour before Hartje called 9-1-1 caused the boy's injuries.

Then in January of 2008, a sheriff's deputy knocked on Hartje's door and handed her a letter containing a list of criminal charges. The news hit days after Hartje learned she was pregnant with her second child.

"You're frustrated, sick to your stomach - and then, the thoughts of: If I go to prison, where's my kid going to go?" recalled Hartje. "It's every emotion you could possibly think of besides happiness."

The office of Juneau County District Attorney Scott Southworth had filed four charges against her, alleging she intentionally and recklessly caused bodily harm to the toddler and showed "utter disregard for human life" - only to drop the charges nine months later due to a lack of evidence.

But Juneau County Sheriff Brent Oleson wanted to go forward, asking Southworth to allow the state Department of Justice to look into the case. The state agreed and in 2012 charged Hartje with three counts - first-degree reckless injury of a child, physical abuse of a child and first-degree endangering the safety of another.

She pleaded not guilty.

Knox: 'These are violent injuries'

The first trial didn't start until 2014, seven years after the boy had collapsed. On the trial's third day, Knox took the stand and told the jury how she diagnoses child abuse. She said she examines the child, looks at his or her medical record, rules out bleeding disorders and genetic disorders and confers with other doctors working on the child's case. She speaks to the parents and caregivers.

Although the boy's mother had epilepsy, Knox testified the incident was "absolutely not" a seizure.

"My starting presumption is I don't know what this is, and I want to objectively look at an entire differential diagnosis of what may explain head trauma," she told the jury.

Assistant Attorney General Richard Dufour asked Knox if it was her job to affix blame. She replied, "Absolutely not," then proceeded to do just that, insisting that the injury was inflicted just before the 9-1-1 call - laying the blame firmly on Hartje.

She rejected the idea that the bump experienced during the child's slip and fall on the plastic steps could have caused brain bleeding. "We wouldn't survive as a human race if you had a little minor bump to your head and then you had a catastrophic head injury," she testified.

"These are violent injuries," Knox said.

She said the boy's brain had shifted to the right, meaning something must have impacted the left side of his head. But there were no injuries to the left side of his head. She pointed out a bruise on the right side of the child's forehead but said she could not determine if it was related to the brain injury.

She compared the boy's head injury to a fall from a horse followed by "violently striking their head on a rock."

Knox drove her point home with another grizzly scenario - one that bore little resemblance to the facts in Hartje's case.

"I had a mother who was upset with her three-year-old child and violently, violently impaled the child into the wall. That child immediately went down, and the child slowly started to get up. She slapped the child again, and the child died of massive head trauma. So that is a clinical scenario of how that happens."

Dufour asserted in his closing arguments that Hartje "bashed this little boy in the head and almost killed him." Knox had ruled out other diagnoses, he told the jury; child abuse was the only logical conclusion.

After eight hours of deliberation, the Juneau County jury deadlocked, and Judge James Evenson declared a mistrial. But that was not the end for Hartje.

The state announced the following week it would try her again. Hartje learned of the development while watching the local news.

Second trial ends in acquittal

In that second trial, Hartje's lawyers argued that the state ignored its own evidence to support their allegation.

"It was not a process of elimination. It was a process of justification," attorney Stephen Meyer said in his closing arguments.

A medical expert for the defense, Dr. Lawrence Hutchins, a Marshfield Clinic neuroradiologist whom Meyer said had never before testified on behalf of a defendant, wrote in his report he found no brain swelling, no skull fracture and no soft tissue swelling - no evidence of direct trauma to the brain.

A second defense expert, pediatric neurologist and epidemiologist Dr. Joseph Scheller, wrote in his report: "Children who are the victims of abuse typically have external injuries and broken bones. They can have retinal hemorrhages and neck injuries. (The boy) was not found to have any of these."

Scheller said an accidental fall likely caused the injury. And while Knox contended an injury as severe as the one in question would have elicited immediate symptoms, Scheller disagreed, saying such injuries can take hours - or even days - to reach enough pressure to cause symptoms.

A jury found Hartje not guilty of all three charges in October of 2015.

But nearly $250,000 in legal debt lingered. Hartje and her husband Ned gave their house over to a bank to pay a relative who offered a loan. They have about eight years of payments left.

Sitting on a picnic table in August outside the Sauk County Courthouse in Baraboo, Hartje, now 37, remains puzzled and angry about her legal ordeal.

"How in the world could I have caused this injury, and there's no other mark on this child's body?" she asked.

In an interview, Meyer said the state "hitched their wagon to Knox" and "went out and found other people to support their original erroneous assumption."

"Stacy and her family went through hell," Meyer said. "(The boy's) family was ... certainly convinced by people in authority that Stacy had harmed their child. And how do we repair that? How do we put it back together? We can't."

Brenda Wintrode wrote this article for Wisconsin Watch.


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A new report focuses on "girl power" in Indiana - with an analysis of how young girls are faring in the state, and recommendations for improving their lives.

Using Kids Count data, the Girl Coalition of Indiana found girls under 18 are experiencing trauma and mental-health concerns at rates higher than boys - from bullying and depression, to dating violence and a lack of emotional support.

In one survey, eight in 10 girls said neighbors "don't notice" or encourage them when they do a good job. Mackenzie Pickerrell, executive director of the coalition, described the purpose of sharing these findings.

"Being deeply embedded into communities to understand from their perspective," said Pickerrell, "what girls need to thrive, and what are the barriers for their girls to live their best lives."

The coalition plans to create programming in partnership with the six Indiana Girl Scout councils to make headway on some of the areas of concern.

This first-ever "Indiana Girl Report" was compiled in collaboration with the Indiana Youth Institute. It's available online at 'girlcoalitionindiana.org.'

Other findings in the report: In 2022, Indiana's middle and high school girls reported feeling a sense of hopelessness or depression for two weeks or longer. One in four "seriously considered" suicide.

Girls are twice as likely to be victims of traditional bullying, and three times as likely to face cyberbullying, compared to boys. Pickerrell noted what could be one reason behind these statistics.

"Girls experience mental and emotional pressures at a much higher rate," said Pickerrell, "and a very different reality than boys do."

She added that the report produced some positive data as well. Girls in Indiana are achieving academically at a stronger pace than boys, including higher high school graduation rates.

They're more likely to obtain advanced degrees. And nine out of ten girls say they have at least one caring adult or mentor in their lives, other than their parents.




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A recent ruling from the Washington state Supreme Court lowers the barriers for bringing some childhood sexual abuse cases to court.

Justices unanimously ruled that the three-year statute of limitation for these cases applies from the date of discovery of each element of the case. Seattle-based attorney Nate Roberts of the Connelly Law Offices said that, for instance, if someone in their mid-twenties suffers psychologically because of childhood abuse, they have three years to file a claim against their alleged abuser. He added that there are more situations where the Wolf decision applies.

"If they find out in their thirties, for example, that they were a ward of the state at the time of the abuse and the state knew they were being abused and didn't intervene," he said, "then they would have three years from the date they acquire that knowledge in which to file a lawsuit against the state."

Roberts said this makes more sense than applying the three-year statute of limitation to the date of the abuse.

Washington state lawmakers are considering eliminating the statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse cases completely. Roberts said other states have already done this.

"The insidious thing about sexual abuse and physical abuse of children is that the kids don't necessarily understand the scope or degree of harm sometimes ever, but often until much later in life," he said, "and I think a simpler, more equitable rule would be to say that if you're the victim of childhood abuse, you can bring the lawsuit whenever you're ready to do so."

House Bill 1618 was introduced in the Legislature this year and passed in the House but died in the Senate. It will be up for consideration again in 2024.

The Keystone State has some work to do to provide more access to quality pre-Kindergarten programs for the youngest Pennsylvanians.

Only 43% of eligible 3- and-4-year-olds are in high-quality, publicly funded pre-K, leaving more than 87,000 without access, according to the new "State of Early Care and Education in Pennsylvania" report.

Maggie Livelsberger, policy director for Pennsylvania Partnerships For Children, said young children need access to programs preparing them to start Kindergarten. But she points out that inadequate funding for child care has led to issues of supply and demand, affecting a family's ability to find care they can afford.

"It also impacts child care providers, and their ability to be compensated fairly, to pay their teachers and maintain their business expenses," Livelsberger outlined. "We are living in a world where there is a very historic workforce shortage within the child care system, and a lot of that is due to unlivable wages."

Livelsberger added in the Keystone State, child care center workers earn on average less than $12.50 an hour, or less than $26,000 a year. The report recommended the state increase funding for the child care sector, and develop a pay system to put pre-K teachers on par with K-12 teachers with similar education levels.

Livelsberger acknowledged child care providers have benefited from supplemental stimulus funding the state received, and there is some new money in the state budget for child care. But she insists more is needed.

"Child care has historically been underfunded," Livelsberger emphasized. "Even though there are new funds for child care in this budget, it's not nearly enough to be able to combat this workforce shortage that the sector is facing. And that's really closing classrooms and not allowing families to access that care."

The report recommends the state's Office of Child Development and Early Learning produce a report every three years to give what it calls a "clear picture" of the early-childhood workforce and recommend ways to expand and improve it.