Two “specially trained service dogs — Jeeter, a moonlighter, and Ellie, a full-timer,” who work in Seattle’s King County Courthouse or Juvenile Detention Center, have “helped scores of victimized children talk with prosecutors, interviewers and investigators about what had happened to them.” More below:
From “Dogs lend comfort to kids in court,” The Seattle Times, May 14:
“It’s hard to explain,” said the twins’ mother. “He just had a tenderness about him that helped them find the strength they needed to tell the story they couldn’t.
“While we were waiting in the hall to testify, he approached the girls and places his head on their laps. He knew they needed him then.”
Page Ulrey, a Special Assault Unit prosecutor who gives Ellie a home and is one of her co-handlers at work, said, “Ellie and Jeeter are really just about unconditional love.”
Ellie’s duties include nuzzling, cuddling, doing tricks, looking kind and lovingly placing her head on the laps of little ones.
“It can be very, very hard to come in here and talk about what happened,” said Christine Liebsack, the child interviewer with the prosecutor’s Special Assault Unit who uses the dogs most in her work.
“There are definitely kids who do not want to be here, and the dogs can help to break the ice or minimize the trauma,” Liebsack said. “It makes me feel good when I can tell Ellie’s providing some emotional comfort for them that I can’t.”
The program started nearly two years ago when Ellen O’Neill-Stephens, a deputy prosecutor, brought her son’s service dog to the Juvenile Detention Center and the Drug Court where she was working.
Jeeter, who, like Ellie, is a Labrador-retriever mix trained by Canine Companions for Independence, was such a natural at befriending the young and the troubled that word of his abilities spread.
Last fall, a prosecutor asked for Jeeter’s help with the 8-year-old twins who were hesitant to testify in a sex-abuse case, and the success of that story led O’Neill-Stephens to lobby for the dog’s formal placement with the Prosecutor’s Office to help victims. …
