A KY probation officer pursued women on his caseload. He was allowed to resign
Paul Travis Duncan, a 48-year-old probation and parole officer in Western Kentucky, inappropriately pursued women who were serving their sentences under his supervision in 2024, according to a Herald-Leader review of public records.
Duncan, who was assigned to the Kentucky Department of Corrections’ Mayfield office, texted the women at all hours, showed up at their front doors, brought them gifts, hugged them and briefly moved one of them into his own house with her kids when she was homeless.
“I just wanna come pick you up, and just go somewhere, chill, and listen to music together,” Duncan texted to one of the women. Also: “I’d like to get the chance to get to know you outside of our current situation ... lol.”
And: “You’re fine, remember, I know how to find you ... lol.”
He was one of at least two dozen probation and parole officers the Herald-Leader could identify from public records over the last several years whom the state of Kentucky pushed off the payroll for poor job performance; sometimes fined thousands of dollars for ethics violations; and, in two cases, prosecuted for felonies.
Seven of those officers were accused of pursuing offenders for personal relationships or sex. All lost their jobs, but only two were charged with crimes.
Duncan was not charged with a crime. He wasn’t even fired.
Instead, Duncan was allowed to resign in December 2024, adding in his brief farewell note to colleagues, “Thank you for everything.”
His strange and aggressive behavior toward female probationers was noticed by others at the Department of Corrections. But nobody said anything, they later acknowledged.
“At that time I thought it was an isolated incident, (I) was hoping that this was — I probably should have reported it,” a former colleague told internal investigators.
Vulnerable to exploitation
The recurring problem of probation and parole officers improperly pursuing offenders doesn’t surprise Ned Pillersdorf, a Floyd County attorney.
Pillersdorf has represented women charged with crimes who said they were exploited for sexual purposes by men working in the justice system, including law enforcement officials.
“It’s as simple as the fact that there are more women in the courts charged with crimes today than there were 40 years ago, largely because of drug addiction, and they are vulnerable to people in authority who would take advantage of them,” Pillersdorf said.
“They know a simple phone call, you’re back in jail, and they know if they complain about the guy, they probably won’t be believed, because hey, they’re a criminal!” he said. “These women are beaten down, and they’ve got the ankle bracelet, they’re in drug court, they’re in rehab, they’re on probation. They can be pressured.”
Duncan, the former probation officer, did not return a call seeking comment for this story.
The Department of Corrections and its Division of Probation and Parole declined to make anyone available for interviews with the Herald-Leader.
In a prepared statement, state officials said there are 657 probation and parole officers and supervisors in Kentucky, all of whom are expected to uphold the professional standards of law enforcement.
“The work we do in the Division of Probation and Parole is vital to ensuring public safety across the commonwealth,” Probation and Parole Director Erica Hargis told the Herald-Leader in a statement.
“Therefore, we require our employees to do the right thing, and they will be held accountable if they choose otherwise,” Hargis said. “We are fortunate to have a strong staff of investigators who act when a policy or law has been violated.”
Hargis was named to her job in 2019 shortly after her predecessor, Johnathan Hall, was fired as part of a scandal involving one of his officers who was accused of sexually assaulting several female offenders. Hall’s supervisors at the Justice and Public Safety Cabinet said he should have acted faster to remove that officer.
Hall protested his firing and later was allowed to replace his termination letter with a resignation letter.
‘Very awkward and intimidating’
As a sworn law enforcement officer who carried a badge and a gun and had arrest power over his clients, Duncan was responsible for making sure the women on his caseload stayed employed, drug-free and out of trouble as they served their sentences.
A phone call from him could send them back to jail — a fact they understood.
“I kept telling him that, like, this is very awkward and intimidating — you know, you’re my probation officer,” a Duncan client later told investigators.
The internal investigative file into Duncan’s misconduct redacts the names of the women he is accused of pursuing.
The investigation started in late 2024 after one of the women’s mothers, who was upset about Duncan’s behavior toward her daughter, reported him to a friend in law enforcement. Word quickly got back to the Department of Corrections.
As Duncan spent months wooing women under his supervision, he failed to report at least one who tested positive for cocaine use. He said it “slipped my mind,” according to the investigative report.
The woman, in turn, blamed Duncan for letting her continue to use cocaine, saying she “could have been clean months earlier if he had done his job the right way.”
“He plays on single mothers who — literally, all of us are trying to either get sober, stay sober or find a place to stay,” the woman told investigators. “He legit was wanting to get married. Like, he talks about marriage. He talks about being intimate.”
‘Red flags’ were missed
While Duncan lavished attention on female clients, his colleagues told investigators, he couldn’t get rid of male clients fast enough. He spent five minutes on average with men — a quarter of the time he did with women — and called them profane nicknames, colleagues said.
Duncan would say, “Here comes this (expletive)” as male clients walked in the door at the probation and parole office, his colleagues said.
Duncan, who previously worked as a prison guard at Kentucky State Penitentiary in Eddyville, denied in December 2024 that he did anything wrong with the women.
“Do I personally feel that I crossed a line? No. Did I tightrope it? Maybe,” he said in his own interview with investigators.
“After working in the prison and being in an environment as long as I was, I came over to this job because I wanted to help people. And there’s certain people that you can’t help,” Duncan said. “I saw that spark in (one of the women) like I’ve seen in several of mine that I’ve tried to get, you know, go a little above and beyond to help them out.”
Rather than fire Duncan, state officials recommended to him that he resign in order to “maintain some face out of this, walking away.” He took them up on that offer.
However, last July, the Executive Branch Ethics Commission followed up on the case by fining Duncan $8,000 for misusing his state job “to suit his own prurient interests.” He’s one of four former probation and parole officers to get an ethics fine for misconduct over the last year.
Speaking with internal investigators, Duncan’s colleagues admitted that “red flags (were) going off” when they observed his behavior.
Duncan walked female clients to their cars outside the probation and parole office — not a typical behavior — and he remarked during home visits about how physically attractive he found them, colleagues said.
“That was kind of inappropriate,” one of Duncan’s colleagues told investigators. “It was just, like, it’s kind of weird.”
The lead internal investigator, Lindsey Smith, urged the other officers to say something to their bosses the next time they witnessed misbehavior by one of their own. There already are enough bad news stories about people in law enforcement abusing their authority, Smith told them.
In fact, Smith’s dogged investigations at the Division of Probation and Parole led to several officers’ misconduct being uncovered in the past couple of years. In December, he was given an award for his work by the Executive Branch Ethics Commission.
“There’s always red flags,” Smith told one of Duncan’s colleagues. “I’ll just ask you, would you report it if you all hired a new officer next week, and they came in and started saying how hot these girls on the caseload were? Would you say something?”
