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TIME RUNS OUT FOR IHS SEXUAL ABUSER




 

 

Several years after I started working as a freelance writer in South Dakota I began receiving requests to write a story about a male doctor who worked at the Indian Health Service facility on the Pine Ridge Reservation.

I was told it had become common knowledge that the man was sexually abusing children under his care and had been for some time. I wasn’t given details about the incidents or those involved, I was just told that “something” was happening and that something had to be done.

I totally agreed, if the allegations were true.

Of course, the problem with investigating the activities of any individual in a government, corporate or even small business environment, no matter the issue, is the need for a person or persons to come forward – even anonymously – with hands-on knowledge of the situation to “blow the whistle” on the individual, the institution they work for, or both.

As is often the case no such person was available or, at least, no such person was willing to come forward at that time. But even if they were, I was not the man for the job.

Though I’d regularly written commentaries about sexual abuse and have relatives who’ve endured the horrors of that most heinous of crimes, I wasn’t in a position to initiate the mammoth undertaking conducting a full-scale investigation of a person employed at a bureaucratic nightmare like IHS would require.

It would take time… lots of time. It would take considerable financial backing. And, most importantly, it would take access to media entities that would be willing to back you to the hilt and run the story. Those media entities I worked with at that time wouldn’t have provided or, frequently, couldn’t have provided all of the above.

So, each time I received a request about “the doctor down on Pine Ridge”, I reassessed the situation. I had done my share of investigative reporting in the past on issues like the proposed shooting range near Bear Butte, the immense pile of chromium-tainted soil transported from Igloo, S.D. to Ogallala, N.E. and the case of Lavetta Elk – a young Lakota woman who was abused by her U.S. Army recruiter.

But those stories either involved researching public records and government agencies or interviewing people who were biting at the bit to talk. Not so in the highly controlled world of Indian Health Services, where unauthorized contact with the press could mean your job. That’s bad news for most people multiplied many times in an environment where there was 80% unemployment.

So, once, twice, three times that I can recall I reluctantly abstained from covering a story I had the desire to pursue but for which I lacked the wherewithal, referring the requests to larger media entities that might be able and willing to pursue the threads of what was sure to be a significant scandal.

To see the situation finally come full circle with last week’s conviction of former IHS pediatrician Stanley Patrick Weber in a Rapid City court room was beyond satisfying for me, no matter who had been responsible for starting the ball rolling to get this predator out of circulation.

After all, one of the primary reasons why victims of sexual abuse – from child molestation to rape – don’t come forward is the lack of support they receive once their allegations come into the public arena.

That Weber was first convicted for abusing children in a Montana IHS facility does add weight to the perception that the times “might be a changin’ ”. And it’s a shift that’s been far too long overdue.

Of course, the goal during this time of the #MeToo Movement is to ensure that the same care and concern being shown for those victims whose names are well known to the public is also given to children and adolescents in remote places like the Pine Ridge Reservation, some housing complex in L.A., or the home of that “nice foster family” down the block.

Wherever we need to go in order to protect our children – for they’re our collective responsibility, no matter where we live – the authorities, the media and we as individuals must be willing to journey.

It’s no longer enough to observe that “Mr. Jones seems to really like little boys and girls.” We must all ask why he does and then be willing to protect those children from his attentions.

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