Judge Rules U.S. Indian Health Service Must Disclose Sex-Abuse Report

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Judge Rules U.S. Indian Health Service Must Disclose Sex-Abuse Report

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/fr...

In partnership with: The Wall Street Journal.
JANUARY 13, 2021

by Christopher Weaver

A federal judge ordered the U.S. Indian Health Service to disclose a report detailing the agency’s decades-long mishandling of a pediatrician who sexually abused Native American boys in his care, thwarting the agency’s efforts to keep the findings secret.

The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times sued the federal government in April seeking to compel the release under the Freedom of Information Act.

The IHS, a federal agency providing health services to 2.6 million Native Americans, claimed the report was exempt from disclosure because it constituted a privileged “medical quality assurance review.” The judge rejected that argument, noting that the report examined criminal and administrative activities, not medical ones.

The internal report was commissioned by the IHS after an investigation by the Journal and FRONTLINE revealed agency officials had dismissed warning signs about its pediatrician who sexually assaulted patients, Stanley Patrick Weber. The Journal-FRONTLINE investigation found the IHS had tried to silence whistleblowers and allowed Weber to continue treating children despite the suspicions of his peers and superiors. Weber was ultimately sentenced to five lifetime prison terms and is appealing one of his convictions.

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U.S.

Doctor Sentenced to Five Lifetime Terms for Sexually Abusing Boys

Former Indian Health Service pediatrician Stanley Patrick Weber abused patients in Montana and South Dakota between 1995 and 2011

By Christopher Weaver
https://twitter.com/cdweaver
[e-mail]
Updated Feb. 10, 2020 8:45 pm ET

RAPID CITY, S.D.—An Indian Health Service pediatrician who was convicted of sexually abusing young Native American boys in his care over two decades and became an emblem of the federal agency’s long-term failures was sentenced Monday to five lifetime prison terms.

Stanley Patrick Weber, 71, groomed and abused Native American boys as young as about 9 years old on reservations in Montana and South Dakota between 1995 and 2011, according to court documents. His supervisors in the federal government buried their own suspicions about his conduct, tried to silence others who raised concerns, and transferred the doctor from one reservation to another after managers concluded he might have molested his patients, The Wall Street Journal and the PBS series Frontline reported last year.

The agency’s handling of Weber revealed broader dysfunction at the U.S. agency that provides health care to 2.6 million Native Americans, often in some of the nation’s poorest and most remote communities. The Journal and Frontline later reported that the agency had hired dozens of doctors with track records of malpractice, licensure sanctions and even criminal convictions who went on to harm patients at IHS hospitals.

Weber was convicted in South Dakota in September of abusing four of his patients at the IHS’s Pine Ridge hospital and his government housing unit there. One victim testified at the trial that Weber had used narcotics to subdue him before sexually assaulting him, and another described escalating assaults during a series of visits in hospital exam rooms.

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Write to Christopher Weaver at [e-mail]

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Appeared in the February 11, 2020, print edition as '.'