Transformative justice

This is a story about elections and their consequences. About victims and justice. About hope for a safer, brighter future for the children in our midst.

On Aug. 9, this newspaper covered two sentencings in Sixth District Court in Carlton, both criminal sexual conduct cases involving juvenile female victims. The cases were the latest in a series of similar cases being prosecuted locally since Carlton County Attorney Lauri Ketola took elected office in 2019.

The emotional afternoon saw the perpetrators ushered to prison to serve lengthy sentences and justice for the victims - an important step toward healing.

"I've gotten to know these girls," Ketola said in court at the time, during the case of Jamie Alden Godbout, 35, who sexually abused the three daughters of his longtime live-in partner.

"They're fighters," Ketola added. "They've had to be. And they're trying to move on with their lives."

The cases also showed what kind of fighter the voters of Carlton County got when they elected Ketola. Anecdotally, the cases seemed to be stacking up. To better understand the degree of Ketola's influence on criminal sexual conduct cases, the Pine Knot sought a public records request with her office this summer.

The results showed a transformational level of justice unfolding in Carlton County. In 2018, the year before Ketola took office, only five such cases were charged. Ketola more than doubled that in 2019 (14), her first year in office. The office now fields dozens of referrals annually, charging more than a third of them. In the four years leading up to Ketola's arrival in office, 10 "crim sex" cases were prosecuted. In the ensuing six years under Ketola, that number is 92 and climbing.

The volume of cases has been so heavy that the county board approved an additional attorney to be brought into the office.

"I think Lauri is a go-getter," said Jamie Jazdzewski. "I love that she is in the position she's in. At her level she can choose not to fight for these kids, but she definitely does."

Jazdzewski (Yuv-jes-ki) is a Cloquet Middle School counselor in her 22nd year with the local district. She'd never taken a witness stand on behalf of victims until Ketola arrived. Under Ketola, Jazdzewski will have done it twice by the time the year is out.

When Ketola ran for office she made a promise to protect children. On her first day in office, she let her employees know where she stood.

"I sat down with the office and said, 'Whatever affects kids, that's what we're going to put our priority on,'" she told the Pine Knot during an interview this summer.

Protecting children was the immediate intent. But Ketola also had a larger goal in mind. The vast majority of people in the Carlton County Jail at any given time can trace their transgressions back to traumas resulting from unhealthy childhoods, she said - upbringings filled with neglect, child abuse, sexual abuse, and domestic violence in the home.

Ketola relayed a saying from the late human rights activist Bishop Desmond Tutu, who asked that instead of pulling people from a river, go upstream to find out why they're falling in.

"We've got to disrupt generational trauma," Ketola said, "if we're ever going to see a reduction in crime."

Team response

Of course, Ketola is not an army of one, and she will be the first to say it.

She described the increase in criminal sexual conduct prosecutions locally as a multi-disciplinary effort, encompassing multiple jurisdictions of law enforcement, teachers, counselors, medical professionals and other mandated reporters - professionals in charge of juveniles or vulnerable adults who are compelled by state law to report suspected abuse or maltreatment.

Additionally, in 2021, thanks to grants and funding support from the United Way of Carlton County, the county formalized its relationship with First Witness, a nationally recognized child advocacy center in Duluth that's renowned for its forensic interviewing of child victims and its Safe and Strong program, which goes into schools to educate children on body safety and how to protect their own boundaries. The program reaches students ages prekindergarten through sixth grade. Families can opt out if they choose.

"Our program is really focused on giving kids language and empowering them in their own body safety," said Ryan Prouty, a prevention education coordinator for First Witness.

In its reporting, the Pine Knot learned that local children are better than ever at speaking up for themselves. Ketola noted four criminal sexual abuse cases in which the child told the offender to stop and then reported it, including one of the Aug. 9 cases, in which the victim was cornered in a bathroom and told her uncle to stop before the assault escalated.

"We never saw that before," Ketola said of young victims warding off their assailants and immediately reporting the crime.

Historically, Ketola and other sources described sexual abuse as an insidiously silent crime. Offenders, often family members or trusted adults, target not just children, but the most vulnerable ones - children who are trusting, timid, disabled or chronically in trouble and, thus, often thought difficult to believe.

Kaylee Grunseth is a forensic interviewer with First Witness. It's her job to conduct interviews with a child, while law enforcement, the prosecuting attorney and other professionals watch via audio-video camera, providing feedback for questions through an earpiece. She's one of a team of interviewers who will conduct some 200 to 230 interviews by the end of this year.

"Lauri is a very thorough and thoughtful prosecutor, making sure everyone is doing their part," Grunseth said.

Ketola called First Witness "an absolute gift" in the protection of children. Instead of hauling victims around to meet child protection workers, investigators and attorneys for multiple interviews that risk retraumatizing victims over and over, the families meet at First Witness for a forensic interview that's used to make charging decisions and provide evidence for court.

"We have the good fortune of having a national child advocacy center in our backyard," Ketola said.

Tracie Clanaugh is the executive director for First Witness, which has been on the leading edge of forensic best practices for 30 years, providing services to south St. Louis County throughout that time while also training officials from 35 different states.

"If we're going to talk about what's effective, it's that team approach coupled with the expertise of the forensic interviewers and the child-friendly interview," Clanaugh said. "It's a package."

To that end, Ketola meets monthly with chief law enforcement officers from Carlton County, including Sheriff Kelly Lake and the police chiefs from Cloquet and the Fond du Lac reservation.

That group, along with the county's public health and human services department, is using grant funding to study domestic violence and how to coordinate the community response to it.

Whether criminal sexual abuse cases or domestic violence, the group is working to take the onus off victims - the shame and silence that often keep such crimes under wraps - and put it where it belongs: onto offenders.

"What we're trying to do now is put the focus where it needs to be and that's on, 'You've done harm; you need to be responsible for that harm,'" Ketola said. "And not shame the victim and (instead) give them the support that they need to heal and move on. And hopefully that will result in a cultural shift."

Mandated reporters

Inside her brightly colored office at the Cloquet Middle School, Jazdzewski spoke about the unique role mandated reporters play in abuse cases.

Armed with a master's degree level of education, she meets daily with students who are encountering friend or family drama, school anxiety, regular teenage angst, and even things like grandparents or pets dying. It's an assortment of emotions that requires her to build trust and maintain privacy.

That is, unless a juvenile reports they're being victimized.

"They know if they come into this space and tell me something that's dangerous or harmful that I'm going to break that confidentiality," Jazdzewski said.

In one of the cases in which she testified, a friend encouraged the victim to go see Jazdzewski. Ketola described a resulting response that showcased how seriously juvenile safety is being treated by the supervising adults. The girl had been through the Safe and Strong course and enjoyed a good relationship with Jazdzewski, who reported to law enforcement immediately upon hearing of abuse. The victim was forensically interviewed the next day and within 72 hours the offender, Godbout, was arrested.

"We've got a machine that's getting stuff done in a really good way," Ketola said.

Jazdzewski agreed, describing a climate for children and juveniles that no longer amounts to being seen and not heard. Instead, they're being listened to and believed.

"They're talking about it in class, they know it happens to other kids and that they're not alone," Jazdzewski said.

At the start of every school year, Ketola will mail about 250 letters to mandated reporters within the county, reminding them of their duty to report when they hear about abuse and suspected crimes.

And once they hear about it and report it, that's where their role usually ends. It's not a mandated reporter's job to press a victim about the situation. That's left for the investigators and forensic interviewers.

As for the example Jazdzewski shared, the girl is now doing great.

"Because people believed her and people were held accountable for what they did," Jazdzewski said. "It's pretty cool. That's where now healing can take place. These kids that hide it and keep secrets, that's way more damaging."

Motivated attorney

Before she was elected county attorney in 2018 with 77 percent of the vote, Ketola, who was re-elected running unopposed in 2022, launched a local Young Life chapter and spent years volunteering as its coordinator.

The nondenominational ministry aims to meet kids where they're at and uses activities, like camping, to build relationships with juveniles and share the gospel. She grew to know scores of kids, many into adulthood, and she now knows their kids and feels a grandmotherly affection for them.

"Kids share a lot of stuff with you when they trust you," Ketola said. "I've had the privilege of being in kids' lives. When you have that privilege, they let you into their pain and then when they let you into their pain, you want to do what you can to disrupt that."

Through that volunteer work, Ketola learned of assaults and abuse and reported it to authorities. But she also saw the paralyzing impact it can have when it goes untreated and is kept from justice.

In the case of Godbout, Ketola believes there's no way there would not have been more victims had he not been revealed and later sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Ketola now prosecutes about 90 percent of the county's criminal sexual abuse cases, sharing them more often now because of the sheer volume.

She does not charge every referral - not every child talks in forensic interviews - nor does she win every case. The cases are hard to convict, she said. They're often "he said/she said" occurrences without the physical evidence that might be included in, say, a murder case.

And she's learned along the way. In one of her early defeats, she spoke with the jury afterward and described it as an eye-opening experience. Sometimes it takes years for the cases to reach trial, and the victims can appear at trial to be more adult than the juvenile they were at the time of the abuse. As a result, Ketola has learned to gather pictures of victims at the time of the reports and share those images with juries - an effort to contradict the more mature victim they might see on the witness stand.

It's also a reality that some jurors just don't want to believe in a world where such insidious behavior, especially within families, exists.

"People like to think this doesn't happen, so jurors almost start with it didn't happen and it's really hard to get them to believe that it did," Ketola said.

Ketola braces every plaintiff about the possibility of outcomes. But she tells them she would not have charged or litigated the case if she didn't believe them.

When asked what it is about protecting children that drives her to do the work she does, and take these cases to levels heretofore unseen in Carlton County, Ketola didn't need time to reflect.

"I always call it righteous anger," she said. "That should not be. That just should not be. You don't have the right to destroy somebody else's life."

Criminal Sexual Contact Statistics

Year - Referrals - Charged

2015 1 1

2016 3 3

2017 1 1

2018 5 5

2019 23 14

2020 44 18

2021 45 17

2022 50 19

2023 40 16

2024* 19 8

*Through July 19, 2024

Editor's note: Minor corrections were made to this story on Oct. 18, including the age range served by the Safe and Strong program and how other professionals view the forensic interviews.