Suspected child predator was counselor at Lakeland Village nursing facility

A Spokane man arrested this month in a sting operation targeting child predators had briefly worked as a counselor at Lakeland Village, the state-operated nursing and rehabilitation center in Medical Lake that specializes in treating people with mental illness and developmental disabilities.

Kyle J. D’Ettorre, 30, was one of nine Spokane County men arrested in early June as part of “Operation Net Nanny,” an effort led by the Washington State Patrol’s Missing and Exploited Children Task Force. Court records say state troopers posed as minors on various apps and websites to lure would-be child rapists.

Charging documents for D’Ettorre include a lengthy text exchange in which he appears to have solicited sex with two 13-year-old “girls,” one of whom he met through an undisclosed social media site. The undercover trooper greeted him shortly after midnight on June 2 when he arrived at a Spokane County residence with a box of condoms and a bottle of apple-flavored Crown Royal whiskey, as one of the troopers posing as a girl had requested.

D’Ettorre was charged with two counts of attempted second-degree child rape and one count of communication with a minor for immoral purposes. He pleaded not guilty the following Monday and was released from jail after posting a $100,000 bond. His case is pending in Spokane County District Court.

Lisa Copeland, a spokeswoman for the Washington Department of Social and Health Services, which operates Lakeland Village, said D’Ettorre had been hired in early February and was fired the day he entered his plea, “as soon as we learned that he could be a threat to our clients.”

Copeland said the department conducts background checks before making hiring decisions, and the charges would have disqualified D’Ettorre from getting the counseling job, which involves working one-on-one with clients to improve living skills such as dressing and hygiene.

But D’Ettorre appears to have no prior criminal record in Washington or Idaho. Before his arrest this month, his only brush with the law was a speeding ticket in Spokane County in 2014.

Copeland said she did not know whether state officials would look into D’Ettorre’s interactions with Lakeland Village clients.

“We terminated him,” she said. “Any further investigation would be done by law enforcement.”

Lakeland Village was established in 1914 and now has 283 patient beds. It was one of four Washington facilities that came under scrutiny last summer when the watchdog group Disability Rights Washington released a report alleging patients had been sexually assaulted, denied basic treatment and given the wrong medications, and that some had died from choking on food.

At the time, Lakeland Village Superintendent Tony DiBartolo said none of the allegations in the report were new and all had been addressed.

It wasn’t immediately clear where D’Ettorre worked before Lakeland Village. Attempts to contact him Friday were unsuccessful. The phone number he allegedly used to communicate with the undercover troopers, which has a Seattle area code, had been disconnected.

The others arrested this month as part of “Operation Net Nanny” are Fire F. Carrol, 30; Dustin R. Harbour, 33; Pierce M. Schober, 43; Jeffrey M. Kvasnicka, 44; John E. Cotton, 49; Wesley M. Calhoun, 26; Jeff L. Raymer, 42; and Robert M. Brogdon, 40. All are from Spokane or Spokane Valley.

When the operation was announced this month, a WSP spokesman said the undercover social media posts had generated “hundreds of responses,” though not all could be investigated and prosecuted. And in a news release, the agency said Net Nanny operations across the state had resulted in 182 arrests and the rescue of 29 child victims since August 2015. A previous Spokane County sting, in which undercover troopers contacted suspects via Craigslist, resulted in 13 arrests in 2016.

Also this month, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that a three-month, nationwide law enforcement effort dubbed Operation Broken Heart had led to the arrests of more than 2,300 people suspected of sexually abusing children and dealing in child pornography. Many of those suspects are accused of distributing child porn via peer-to-peer file-sharing programs such as BitTorrent.