Child-abuse investigator honored

May 3, 2005

KATE GOLDEN/Frontiersman reporter

WASILLA - Ruthan Josten tracks down monsters for a living. She seeks the stories people often don't want to hear, and hears some of the worst lies people tell. Nobody wants to know the details. When they find out what she does, inquirers back off.

"I've never had somebody say to me, 'Tell me about your job,'" she said.

So she isn't in it for the accolades, but here they are. The local chapter of a women's service organization, Beta Sigma Phi, will recognize Investigator Josten, from the Mat-Su Child-Abuse Investigation Unit, as its Lady of the Year at its Founders' Day celebration Saturday.

"She's like the queen of child-abuse investigation," said Wasilla Police Chief Don Savage, who has seen her work for more than a decade.

Many investigators avoid jobs with high child-abuse caseloads, whereas that's all Josten does.

"It's pretty incredible to see a case finish," she said.

Truth extraction

As an Alaska State Trooper working domestic-violence scenes, and even before that, as a volunteer firefighter at emergencies, Josten found herself able to detach from highly emotional situations.

Inner calm has served her well in eight and a half years as a trooper general investigator and three, most recently, as a Wasilla police officer focusing exclusively on child-abuse cases.

Part of detachment is abandoning preconceptions about perpetrators. Nobody ever thinks a suspect seems like a child abuser.

"Postal carriers, naval reserve officers, salespeople, engineers, males and females, football coaches, Boy Scout leaders. There's no way to tell," Josten said.

Plus, there's the No.-1 story Josten hears from abusive adults: Adults are truthful; children are manipulative liars.

Josten must be willing to entertain suspicion of a person of any gender, from any economic level. On the other hand, she never denies a first report as implausible.

So she never accuses. She asks open-ended questions: Do you know why you're here? Why would the child say something like that?

A suspect's denial shades first to a slight admission as he minimizes the act. Every now and then, and it's happened a few times this year, someone will tell the truth.

"Sometimes, they'll come in here, they're willing to take responsibility for what they did," she said.

Detachment in the name of fairness must be balanced, though.

"Believe it or not, I feel compassion," she said.

Though she clarified, "I'm not saying I always understand."

Interviewing kids

Even more than with adults, kids - who tend to think they're to blame for what has happened to them - must not feel interrogated or judged. Yet somehow, Josten has to crack questions so difficult to answer that sometimes children will only write the answers.

To most kids, the plain-clothed Josten - petite, with long brown hair and a conservative suit - doesn't look like a cop. She identifies herself clearly. Then she carefully sets out the rules of the interview. "If I ask you a question and you don't know the answer," she'll say, "I need you to tell me you don't know." Or: "Can you tell me the difference between a truth and a lie?"

"Do you know why you're here today?" she asks a child.

She asks for permission to talk about the incident. Then she spends most of the time talking about other things, making the child comfortable.

And she'll say, "I'm sorry we have to talk about this," because she is.

Locking up bad people

Josten said most cases never get to trial, and it's not just because of understaffing in the justice system.

It's difficult to investigate a crime that's two weeks old, let alone 10 years old. One-story-against-another evidence is hard to corroborate. There are "credibility issues" with someone who would wait a decade to report a crime, Josten said - although there are strong reasons people do so. And while occasionally a person whose conscience is screaming has come in alone, admissions aren't generally easy to come by.

It's also hard for children to testify in front of the people who harmed them. The graphic standard for court testimony is far beyond "gross" and "icky." As Josten said, "You want to spare them." A decent plea deal, she said, spares victims.

Josten also notes that if there's a conviction, the presumptive eight-year sentence covers a wide range of offenders.

"It's not a big price to pay for changing the lives of children," she said. She'd like Alaska laws to approach those of Texas, which has the toughest laws in the nation: life in prison for sexual offenders.

Staying sane

There are times, Josten admits, that a case will get to her, such as when a child holds back a report because he's afraid of being killed.

Yet despite the gravity of her job, she's remarkably blithe. She smiles a lot, actually.

At the end of the day, how does Josten get the bogeymen out of her system?

She didn't waste a lot of words on her response: Having a partner helps; she and Trooper Investigator Derek DeGraf not only bounce ideas off each other, but diffuse the emotional stress of their jobs. Staying fit helps.

And, Josten grinned as she spoke, she has her own young one - Gianna, 3, recently adopted from China - who keeps her happily occupied.

"You just kind of go home and shut the door," she said.

Contact Kate Golden at

352-2284 or kate.golden@

frontiersman.com.