April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month. This is the second story about front line workers who feel called to help the young victims.
Law enforcement is not for everyone, but for Dakota Etier, it is the job she feels called to.
Etier is a Lieutenant in the Criminal Investigations Division at the Pottawatomie County Sheriff’s Department, and works the child abuse and endangerment cases for children 13 years and younger.
According to the Pottawatomie County Sheriff’s Website, “The Criminal Investigations Division is charged with investigating those major crimes that are time sensitive; require a specific specialty; or would take too much time for a member of the Road Patrol Division to devote. They are typically felony investigations; however, those misdemeanor investigations which are time consuming may also be assigned.”
Etier said she always wanted to get into law enforcement, because she has two adopted siblings who she watched be damaged from the system and she wanted to help make it better for other children.
“I wanted to help not have children going through what my siblings went through, you know,” she said. “They should have been removed so many times, and they didn’t get removed. And they have trauma that they still deal with today.”
Before working in Pottawatomie County, Etier worked at Mercy Hospital in Ada as an EEG technician. She said she has always worked in a public service type role, because she is a people person and she feels called to help whoever she can.
When Etier first worked at the sheriff’s office in 2015 she started as field patrol. It was in field patrol where she said she started coming into her calling.
“I enjoyed going into the domestic violence scenes, because I really enjoyed working with the victims,” she said. “I felt I could relate on a different level than other officers could.”
After working field patrol, she moved to a VAWA (Violence Against Women) position. She worked in this role for a little over a year, and said it is really when her calling truly came to light. While working with the women, she was working with their children also.
While working with the kids in this capacity she realized she was able to gain their trust, and it was the trust she saw in those children on their worst days that proved to her the work she wanted to be doing.
In her current role as lieutenant, Etier said she knows when she leaves a child she can say she helped him or her. Her goal is to always make a positive difference in the life of every child she works with.
“Sometimes kids get sad, because we are taking their mommy to jail, or their dad, or grandpa or whoever the suspect is. But I know I changed their life, even if they don’t know at that time. It is just a rewarding field to be in, in law enforcement,” Etier said.
When working a case, Etier stays with each child throughout the entire process. She will respond to the initial scene, or if she is not available a field deputy will take a report and send it over to her immediately. From there, the child might have to go through child abuse assessments, forensic interviews, SANE (Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner) exams, or counseling.
Etier said if she is available, you will see her there. She tries to make sure she is there for the hospital visits, the forensic interviews, and the protective order hearings etc. If she can’t always be there she wants to know everything happening along the way for each case. Etier will even keep in touch with the families throughout the process.
“These kids are traumatized for the rest of their lives, and I want to know what’s happening,” she said. “I want to know that they are getting what they deserve. That they are not being pushed aside, that their case isn’t sitting on a desk somewhere. That we didn’t let someone plead out that did not deserve to plead out.”
For her job at the department, Etier has attended several trainings in Oklahoma and elsewhere. Some of these trainings include child abuse conferences and trainings in child homicide investigations. In August of this year, she will be attending the Crimes Against Children National Conference in Dallas.
She said these training sessions are extremely beneficial to her job, because attendees get to hear from other investigators, therapists, forensic interviewers, or even victims. She said they have taught her different ways to communicate with victims for different situations.
“It’s really, it’s just amazing to see how many ways you can work a case,” Etier said. “And if this doesn’t work for you, well, then you can do this.”
Etier said learning to speak with victims and genuinely listen to them is one of the most important things anyone can do in an investigation. She said it is important to get on their level and understand what they have been through.
Etier has spent many late nights on the phone with mothers who can’t sleep, because their children had been taken away and they were afraid at home with the abusive husband.
She said she has even had little children calling her late at night wanting to go back to their own bed, but they can’t because they were being beaten and sexually abused at home.
“When it comes to victims, you should always continue your education,” she said. “Because they are the most important thing. The whole goal is to revolve around, you know, what happened to them. I see it everyday. Some people are not meant to be in that field. They are there to serve warrants and that’s okay, because they are good at it. I don’t like that, I want to be on the other side of law enforcement.”
Because these cases sometimes span from weeks to years and she is often working multiple cases at a time, Etier said it is sometimes very hard not to take her work home with her. But, she said spending time at home with her family and at all their activities helps her to turn that part of her brain off for a little while.
A positive of the job though she said is how it has impacted the way she parents her own four children. She said working with children in the capacity she does has made her become more aware of how each kid thinks and acts. She notices more now how they each communicate through their tone, body language and eye contact. She said she is more aware when they are open to the situation.
Etier said, “Before I went into law enforcement…I probably wouldn’t have picked up on those little things as much as I do now.’
