Predator on the Reservation (full documentary) | FRONTLINE

[Music] a special investigation from frontline and the wall street journal there were allegations of drug misuse stealing sexual abuse and inappropriate behavior decades of dysfunction inside the federal agency that provides health care to native americans the indian health service they just seem impervious to improvement and they could not get it right because of the absolute need to fill positions we don't really get the best of the best and the case of a government pediatrician moved from reservation to reservation my concerns was that this man was sexually using children despite the warnings there was obviously a lot of people that knew something was going on and they didn't do anything the indian health service and the failure to stop decades of abuse what kind of cover-up is this this involves a lot of people in a lot of high places [Music] predator on the reservation [Music] this is special agent kurt muller inspector with united states department of health and human services office of the inspector general i'm here meeting with dr stanley patrick weber in his home on the pine ridge indian reservations indian health service hospital campus dr stanley patrick weber was a pediatrician working for the indian health service we've got some instances what we need to talk about okay we're not here to judge anybody we're here to try to get down to the facts of what had happened and why it happened his patients were native american children reason that your nurses were emphatic that you wanted to see boys instead of girls i don't know there was a certain type of skinny muscular mm-hmm i mean i'm ironing issues yeah i mean i'm not making this up doc i'm talking to all the nurses i know you wanted to keep things quiet but things were never quiet allegations followed dr webber from reservation to reservation let's be clear about this i have not had sex with my patients and i don't it's just a principle i have but the doc people been talking for 20 years here it seems that your mother is the allegations that you're you're with young boys [Music] [Music] wall street journal reporters christopher weaver and dan frosh have been on the trail of dr stanley patrick weber and the government agency he worked for the indian health service starting about two years ago we got interested in a federal agency called the indian health service their hospitals have had an ugly track record in the last few years they were missing diagnoses patients were dying for no reason and we found that the agency had failed for many years to take in hand a series of structural problems that had basically rendered these hospitals incapable of meeting their regulatory requirements we found a bunch of doctors with troubled track records before they joined the ihs or once they got there in some cases people who had who had been convicted of crimes prior to their service with the ihs and the ihs heart of them anyway and the ihs hired them anyway we began looking into troubled doctors that had got in trouble during the course of their careers at ihs and one of those doctors was a guy by the name of stanley patrick weber upon finishing the residency he immediately joined the indian health service he was stationed from 86 to 89 at a hospital in oklahoma ada oklahoma that the ihs ran at that time he was a pediatrician there and have we tried to reach him yes and and he hasn't responded this doctor being accused of sexual assault by patients and we thought that warranted a broader look both at dr webber but also it's sort of widespread practice of hiring doctors who would get into trouble we thought we got to find out i did the ihs now did anybody have any and claim that there might be an issue with this doctor [Music] in 1992 dr webber arrived in the little town of browning montana part of the blackfeet indian reservation blackfleet reservation is about 2300 square miles it butts up against canada this stunningly beautiful place like a lot of indian reservations there's high poverty rates high rates of alcoholism diabetes domestic abuse etc and so this is really one of the most far-flung places that you could go uh if you were a doctor [Music] the reservations only hospital was run by the ihs which struggled to find doctors mary ellen laframboise was the hospital's ceo at the time we had been without a pediatrician for a while so here comes dr weber and all i could think of is he looks comfortable huh he looked young and just seemed like he was would be a good fit for us one of the first things dr webber did was help expand the hospital's youth outreach programs they were talking about we want to do some things in the school you know we have some programs that would blend really well with middle school i just thought wow here's something that the hospital can offer the community we'll put dr weber out there in the community [Music] almost from the start concerns began to emerge tim davis is the chairman of the blackfeet tribe running weasel is my hindu name but in 1992 he worked in the hospital's facilities department that greenhouse 105 is it that's the one webber was in [Music] part of his job was to inspect government-owned houses including the one where dr weber lived alone so we did each annual walk through we'd come through each house and i'd do the inspection of the roof the floors the walls the windows the doors and then go through the basement check out for any leaks when i went downstairs when i was kind of like floored because of what i saw there is a to me a signal of something that wasn't right the gentleman had a lot of food items candy pop cookies and then toys games videos uh games that boys would play with i mean i wasn't just a small it was stacks of stuff i mean they were stacked i mean i'm a dad i got boys i got eight boys and i mean i buy my kids stuff but it's not stacked up in the basement like like that was you know that to me signal there's something wrong with this guy [Music] davis says he shared his concerns with mariel and laframboys who at the time didn't see it as cause for alarm have you ever had any boys spend the night with you well when i was in browning some kids would come by and they didn't have a place to stay how old were the kids i i can't remember around the time i think they were 18 or 10 or i mean most of them are probably you know um yeah of age i don't know some of them might have been finers the comments that were coming from maintenance and about how there's a lot of traffic of young people in and out of dr webber's um quarters and i think somebody had asked him about it why there were so many young people oh they we just like to get together you know to have pizza or pop you know things like kids like to do he seemed to be genuinely interested in our young people [Music] we came with the idea of having a teen clinic area you know by having evening clinics being more user-friendly to the community others at the hospital were suspicious of dr weber's intentions psychologist dan foster and his wife becky a mental health specialist knew some of dr webber's patients they became increasingly uncomfortable with his after hours clinic normally if you bring your child to a pediatrician a parent is with them or if a social worker brings a child to a pediatrician the social worker is with them an adult is with them but these boys were going in there alone it was prepubescent adolescent males most of them teenagers 12 to 15 years old all of them vulnerable high risk many of whom we already had suspicions that they'd been sexually molested or or abused and so that that was a red flag and then later one of our colleagues came and told me he had real concerns regarding this doctor's bringing a couch into his his office and that he was keeping young males in their after hours when most of the staff had gone home while dr weber was on the blackfeet reservation no child is known to have come forward with a specific allegation of abuse but becky foster remembered one boy who she'd later had concerns about joe forhorns he's now in prison for bank robbery but spoke to reporter dan frosh by phone describe to me the first time you met dr webber i was skating and i collided with another kid and i fell and i broke my tailbone so they brought me to the hospital and that's where i met him i came and did a checkup on me about a week later when i was at the nursing center did he do anything that day that was inappropriate in your mind just the way he was talking to me but had his hand was on like on my leg while he was talking to me he just left it there and i kind of that was that made me uncomfortable why you just leave your hand on me on my leg while you're talking to me and joe tell me how old you were at this time i was 11. joe says he never told anyone at the time what was happening during his visits with dr weber [Music] but on the reservation the rumors and suspicions were growing he took the kids to great falls shopping he took him to basketball tournaments when our kids would qualify to us that was getting the community used to seeing him with these kids and the implication of parental permission this is grooming behavior so you take kids who are high risk who are from difficult family circumstances and who are poor and you offer them new clothes and you offer food and you offer them you know a home where the lights are on all the time a child will gravitate toward that [Music] dan foster says he decided to confront dr webber i had these concerns and i wanted him to know that i was bringing these concerns forward my hope was that if he were doing something he would stop and if he weren't he would be warned and would modify his behavior accordingly but but he did not how did he respond to you he was polite he assured me that he would not harm a child he was respectful and then i just didn't see him after that [Music] did you ever have any sexual contact with anybody in blackfeet anybody adult or juveniles not even an adult not even adults okay no did you know some folks there by the last name of four words four horns um i don't remember any parts [Music] i went to the hospital to get my eyes checked to see if i could get some glasses and he was just the same stuff like trying to touch me and told me that if i feel uncomfortable with what he was doing to let him know and he would stop and i told him that i did like yeah i feel uncomfortable like i don't know what this is for like why you trust me where was he touching you everywhere like rubbing my leg and my arm and my chest and stuff like that was he touching you on your genitals as well he got to that but not right there not at that time [Music] finally after years of suspicion and rumor there was an incident that couldn't be ignored involving a boy who'd been sleeping at the doctor's house there was an incident reported to me where a family member to a kid you know went over and wanted to fight him and ended up smashing him and smashing him in the face breaking his glasses kind of black eye i just thought you know he's just going to be he's going to be a problem and then you know get with the other staff and they were like yeah you know something's going on [Music] afromboys reached out to the region's top ihs official who summoned the hospital's acting clinical director randy rotenbiller to his office in billings he said you know i'm concerned that you have a pedophile on your staff and and you need to get rid of them [Music] and so i just said okay i've got to deal with this task the first thing i did when i got back to browning was called him and asked him to meet me in my office and i said well i've been told that you need to leave and he said that he had had some threats made against him and he was worried about his life and he was getting ready to leave browning anyway and i think he packed up and left the next day [Music] i guess the better response would be launch an investigation and and yet the ihs response is typically to sweep it under the rug or you know or pass it on to some other place [Music] the ihs would transfer dr weber to its hospital on the pine ridge reservation in south dakota the pine ridge indiana reservation is notoriously one of the poorest places in the united states the public health situation is dire life expectancy is among the very lowest in the country [Music] why did you leave blackfish why did you leave blackfeet and come here well you know i have family in this area and i've always wanted to come i always thought my place was would be high rich i don't know why i just felt that this was the place for me to come but within months a parent was already complaining that dr weber had inappropriately examined a child the ihs took him off clinical duties as federal authorities looked into it they didn't substantiate the complaint and dr weber went back to work but as in montana weber's interactions with boys continued to raise suspicions [Music] kelly brewer was a nurse who lived across the street from him the tan house straight ahead that was dr webber's house and then back here was where dr weber's garden used to be like all this area here where it's kind of mulched that was all garden he hired kids to work in it all the time and they were always young native american boys 10-ish to 12-ish in age the kids coming and going would earn a nickname around the reservation [Music] let me introduce you to it today because that's what was going on people that live in the community were seeing boys coming going out and waiting out your house maybe in the garage that's where the tools are but rarely would people come into my house which boys do you think did come into your house do you remember the only ones i ever did needed to use the bathroom and that was infrequent but nobody's ever stayed here overnight ever sometimes they're coming to use the phone but that's about it [Music] one of the so-called weber boys was named paul like joe forhorns in montana he is now in prison serving time for [Music] assault had nothing to nobody talked my dad in there turning it back on me and then my mom let me out you do what you have to in order to get by do you know what i mean i do we're talking you're like 13 14 years old at this time yeah about 13 little guy man to be honestly just understand the whole situation paul says that in exchange for sexual favors weber would give him money or prescription drugs like the other boys he kept his encounters a secret year after year here this guy was offering me money so i can find a place to be all i had to do was a few favors and at the time just made me feel super one night he says he pushed back that night i did some pills and was drinking every clear with it man i remember talking to weber and then i remember him telling me to come pick some money up was already drunk and i remember blanking out [Music] when i came to him then he was passing up on me and that fool was like trying to press me against that table man that whole weber was just like he was a predator i remember telling him to back up he was like oh you just want money is that all you come up here for on the table there was a wallet in there so i snatched it and i shoved him [Music] i remember runners and seeing those cop lights then i ran inside flew into that laundry room and tried to barricade myself in there man tribal police officer dan hudspeth was called to the scene call came in there was an assault we chased the suspect down located him not too far from the hs housing we took him into custody and then on to juvenile detention [Music] as hotspot took paul to juvenile detention he asked him what was going on man that was like the first time in a long time that somebody had actually asked me are you all right what happened i actually found some sympathy you know and then i was thinking about it and i did i did talk to him about like that whole situation the authorities now had a first-hand allegation of ongoing sexual abuse by weber but on the reservation the tribal authorities don't have jurisdiction over non-indians so all officer hudspeth could do was pass along paul's allegations to federal investigators we forwarded on to the bureau of indian affairs criminal investigations but i'm not quite sure how they ran with it all i do know is personally i took i made sure my my kids weren't seen anymore by that pediatrician the bureau of indian affairs declined to comment and paul says no one from the federal government followed up with him he kept quiet about what had happened after that at the ihs hospital one of weber's fellow pediatricians was developing his own concerns i'd hear him riffing through my charts cherry picking the the cute teenage boys so at that point i started having some suspicions about him he didn't like seeing babies didn't like seeing toddlers didn't like seeing girls didn't like seeing teenage girls so so just professionally i just kept butting heads with this guy but i couldn't get anybody on the medical staff to listen to me there was times where i'd be at the hospital right and then like i'll go into inside whether it's little dancing room and like certain situations that happen y'all mean like nurses and other doctors they're just like that man they knew exactly what was up when somebody looks at you a certain way you know that they know some some insiders like man of hope they don't think this i hope they don't think that but you know that they do you know and at the same time you're like man somebody help you know what i'm saying somebody noticed me man somebody helped me man they all just looked the other way though you know [Music] in november 2006 paul did something that made it harder to look the other way [Music] he wouldn't discuss the details over the prison phone line but he had one of his friends on the reservation recount what happened henry redcloud says he paul and another friend were out drinking and looking for trouble and then ran out of money [Music] all of a sudden you know paul's like you know and dog he was like let's just go over doctor's house man that anyways man i can't remember if he was calling him a child blaster or something like that i can't remember but i think i heard something like that paul had it out forever maybe it was just because of their little dealings and i thought it was up to you because he was my doctor i knew of several people that used to go get money for him so we went out there we parked as soon as he opened the door i just kicked the door he staggered back and he dropped and then i kicked him a few times he hit him a few times and threw him into the kitchen area and then he was bumbling around he started walking towards the back into that bathroom and dr webber was sitting there looking at himself in the mirror his eyes were up bloody mouth bloody nose he's pretty well done for man i said we better get that money so he pulled out a couple on and then he was like here here here here you go take it take it he said just don't kill me [Music] dr webber made his way to the ihs hospital bill pooyer the hospital ceo says security guards called him and said one of his doctors had been assaulted so i went up there and dr weber was laying on a on a gurney in the emergency room he looked rather beaten up and traumatized and so forth asking what's going on here that's who did this to you he won't tell me he won't say nothing he wouldn't say anything i don't say nothing it was frustrating hooyah says that he reported what happened to ihs's regional headquarters but that his bosses never pursued the matter and he was afraid to take it any further i've probably been suspended maybe even fired you know pretty much they can do what they want with you when he was beaten to the point of needing skull x-rays and no charges were filed for beating up a commissioned officer on federal grounds to the point where he needed skull films i thought what on earth is going on what kind of cover up is this i mean this involves a lot of people in a lot of high places [Music] outraged dr butterbrook would become increasingly fixated on exposing dr webber [Music] dr brooke has been trying to hate me because apparently he heard that there was an accusation of abuse okay and he's been bringing it up ever since okay repeatedly why would there be a road that he would bring things up this way he lives his life he starts you know jumping on people and i don't know why he does that it's um [Music] i think a lot of people thought it was overreacting and people would say to me you don't have any real evidence and that was almost the indian health service line too you know we've looked at the data bank there's no complaints on him um he's clean and i learned that there was a psychologist who had worked with him at browning and was aware of his activities of browning montana prior to 1995 when he came here [Music] it was dan and becky foster who had had concerns about weber's behavior on the blackfeet reservation when mark is telling you guys basically saying the crimes have been committed how did that make you guys feel well i think i i think we're just so you get to be just so angry and frustrated and then just kind of numb because part of what happens is that you can see all of these young people being hurt and knowing that you've tried to do everything that you could do within the bounds of what's available to you and then nothing happens it says to me as a indian woman as a mother is that your kids don't matter i felt deeply hurt and very angry the anger was because i felt it was preventable in fact years earlier dan foster had heard weber was working at pine ridge and contacted ihs leaders there to warn them would you have said in his explicit terms i'm worried this guy is a pedophile yes no i was clear my concerns was that this man was sexually using children after the encounter dr butterbrook was more determined than ever that webber had to go he complained to state medical boards and officials at the ihs and he believed he'd finally found proof in a list of patients weber had ordered tests on so i looked at these charts and there weren't any girls they were all boys on this page there are 14 patients and there's one female 1 out of 14. i kept asking myself why would a pediatrician zero in on a population consisting of normal weight boys and teenage boys it just seemed incomprehensible to me [Music] dr weber was suspended while the allegations were investigated when dr weber was suspended by the indian health service over allegations of misconduct in 2009 one of the officials who was sent to look into this was this guy ron keats keats who was one of webber's superiors at the time would soon leave the ihs under a cloud himself and later be convicted of possession of child pornography so effectively they sent a guy who would go on to be arrested a year later of trafficking in child porn to investigate suspicions that their pediatrician could be a pedophile keach did not respond to requests for comment weber was ultimately cleared and went back to work according to bill poyer the higher-ups i guess basically told me there was um they couldn't find any more reason to keep from suspension there was no facts evidence to support what happened and so forth and that's pretty much what they gave me the answer gave me so we just directed me to put him back to work at that time did you believe that dr weber was you know potentially engaged in some kind of misconduct towards children i kind of felt that there could possibly be something going on here because i started looking at everything but i just never got nothing i was frustrated as well in the summer of 2010 at the pine ridge hospital dr weber and dr butterbrook would clash over the care of a patient dr weber claimed he was threatened [Music] within an hour i'm sitting in the office of the acting clinical director in pine ridge and finally i said something really out of line i said if i'd wanted to intimidate him i would have cut his nuts off of the rusty knife in that remark went right to washington i was branded as a violent out of control person and within a few weeks was traveling up to belcourt north dakota leaving my life and my career and my family everything the ihs sent dr butterbrook to one of its most remote outposts 575 miles away on the canadian border the nurses came up to me and said no you know what we don't say anything dr b look what they've done to you i was ordered to leave i was chased off by a pedophile and the people who chose him over me months later a new ihs chief medical officer arrived in the region you know it just seemed like a perfect storm of issues that kind of arose rod cooney determined that dr butterbrook had been unfairly punished you know i created mark butterbrook because he i mean he laid his career on the line and doing what he needed to do really he did the right things and you know and he's a direct result of people fearing would happen what might happen to you i mean it happened to him and that's why people didn't come forward like he did and that's sad that that attitude has to prevail but you know people are scared to come forward many of the officials who ran ihs during the years dr weber was there declined to be interviewed but reporter chris weaver tracked down bob mcswain mr mcswain hi i'm chris weaver he worked at the ihs for more than 40 years including two stints as director mcswain conceded the agency has long tolerated problem doctors like weber it goes back to the the very heart of they needed uh his skills and so they they moved him around to to maintain his his contribution it's fair to say that because of the the absolute need to fill positions we don't really get the best of the best we get someone who they have a degree they're licensed and our requirement and licensing is at least licensed in one state in the system and there's a strange tolerance level that oh okay the guy's uh a womanizer or a guy's this and guys that um but he comes in to see patients okay you know and the the antithesis is what would be if he didn't come in who's going to see the patients call the hearing to order the hearing of the indian affairs committee in 2010 the dysfunction at the ihs got attention in washington at the senate's indian affairs committee senator byron durgan was chairman of the time we've got a couple employees here that are trouble and not only does the employee not get disciplined but the employee gets a bonus we found people who were transferred from one to the other despite the fact that there were allegations of drug misuse stealing uh sexual abuse inappropriate behavior a whole series of things that would in almost every other circumstance in life require you to discharge someone fire someone instead the indian health service moves them they transfer them they move them to the next service unit and let's have somebody else live with the incompetence and the mistakes this system is not working this isn't working we tried to browbeat the ihs in every way we knew how to get them to straighten out and they just seemed impervious to improvement and they could not get it right [Music] in the case of dr webber warnings continued to go unheeded for years in 2011 one of them reached winona stabler then the ceo of the pine ridge hospital she says a caller complained about dr webber but didn't provide her any specifics the matter never went anywhere stabler later received a gift of five thousand dollars from dr webber and would plead guilty to not reporting it on a government ethics form she didn't respond to requests for comment then one day in 2015 it all started to unravel a tribal prosecutor recalled something dr mark butterbrook had told her years before mark and i are really good friends i've known him since i was in high school so he was frustrated i remember one day and he told me about dr webber and how he was molesting kids i was driving to work and there was snow on the ground when i was thinking about the case and i was like i wonder if the attorney general even heard about this she just asked there's some leads that i have on this can i start looking into this and seeing what i can find so i said absolutely if you can find something let's track it down and we'll take that information forward as in the past it was hard to get anyone to talk webber's alleged victims are all boys so you know it's even that much harder to get a boy or a man to speak about sexual abuse so i think trust is a big thing we felt it was a priority to at least identify a potential victim so that it wouldn't be dismissed anymore so that it would be taken seriously and a full investigation would happen they began to look into the assault on dr webber a decade earlier i learned that he was beat up really bad that he was so beaten that he had to get mris done what i think people should have noticed was that he didn't press any charges on anybody and those whole circumstances just looked odd there was something not right about that and i did go looking for that police report because if he was beat up so bad you know the ambulances should have came police officers should have came but i couldn't find anything after months of searching she found a woman who said she knew the boys who'd done it but she didn't give me much detail she just said yeah they came to me that night after they beat up dr webber she gave me the name of one of them and i was like alright fine i have this one name to go on we found out he was in prison state prison it was paul by then in his late twenties he's a bad man you know what he did in the past what we went through when he i was put through that type of stuff deserves punishment he got what he had coming to him that's why what happened happened and after we received that information we provided that that potential victim's name to the bureau of indian affairs today's date is may 19 2016. federal investigators followed the trail the tribal authorities had uncovered it started with paul's name and led to dr webber's door dr weber's been kind enough to invite us into his home to discuss a few things now is it all right if we record the conversation yeah [Music] i heard from another kid that he had made an accusation that i was sexually molesting him he was a juvenile and was in the juvenile service center yeah on that day he had sex with you yeah it's not true specifically inside your car it didn't happen and then you guys had failed intercourse at motel six at one particular time you guys had sex in the ball parking lot rushing from all right people would talk in the community about boys coming over a lot water road was somebody that that i know he's complaining about is he wrong when he says you're picking up i have not had sex with my patients do you remember any of the providers by the name of foster do you ever talk to them about these allegations did you ever discuss these things with bill pourier when he was ceo not really you mentioned that kids stayed with you at your house in blackbeard they did at times and you don't remember anybody by name beforehand foreign [Music] the years of accusations had finally caught up with dr webber federal prosecutors would charge him with the abuse of four boys on pine ridge and two on the blackfeet reservation in montana in september 2018 more than two decades after he was forced off the blackfeet reservation dr webber arrived at the courthouse in great falls montana to stand trial the first witness was joe forhorns now 35 years old and it walks joe and he is this muscle-bound guy tattoos on his face shackled very tough looking guy the prosecutor in her opening statement she puts up a picture of joe for horns when he was about 10 or 11 years old right around the time that he would have been abused by dr webber she wants the jury to remember this little boy recording was not allowed in the court this is the trial testimony voiced by actors can i call you joe yeah joe answers their questions it's clear he does not want to be on the stand did he ever kiss you yeah where did he kiss you the lips my face my neck and my chest did he touch any other part of your body with his hand yeah my penis dr weber is sitting there emotionless did you ever touch his penis placid yeah yes why did you do that because he told me to [Music] he looks more like the little boy on the screen than he does the hardened felon that is sitting there he's talking about the most humiliating thing that he could ever imagine talking about he breaks down crying dr webber's attorney questioned why joe had never spoken up before joe reacts in a way that undercuts the defense's entire line of question right now i don't want to talk about this i don't ever want to talk about that and explained in really sort of honest gut-wrenching visceral terms why he had never told anybody about this i got molested as a little kid man i don't want to talk about that all right i'll tell you the truth those pieces of those child molesters they deserve to be in prison they don't deserve to be on the street they deserve to get up and killed in prison and that's what's going to happen so during his testimony and as he began sort of discussing in detail what had happened to him his mom had to leave the courtroom in tears forehorns had lost custody of her son during those years i never knew about any of this and i feel bad for my boy because i wasn't able to protect him i feel i really feel bad i really heard the extent of the allegations against dr webber would begin to emerge as the trial unfolded with more men describing what they said he'd done to them as boys the prosecution brings several corroborating witnesses from pine ridge and as was the case with joe you see these tough guys sort of reduced to little boys despite the testimony against him dr webber continued to shrug off the allegations it's a nice day today nice sunny day on the third day of the trial the jury came back with its verdict guilty on multiple counts of sexual abuse weber is appealing and later this year he's scheduled to go on trial in south dakota for alleged abuses there [Music] i'm very glad that he was caught i still am frustrated that he was allowed to work for so long in that environment i think i'm still frustrated that more people haven't been charged criminally there was obviously a lot of people that knew something was going on and they didn't do anything they just let him go i feel like somebody should pay for for what all these boys went through because people knew to date no one else in the ihs has been held accountable and many of the officials who oversaw dr webber did not respond to requests for comment but following questions from frontline and the wall street journal the agency ordered an independent investigation of weber's tenure [Music] the current head of ihs agreed to talk about it and asked to do the interview at the hospital on pine ridge where weber had worked [Music] rear admiral michael wiaki has been leading the agency since 2017. since this case has come to light we've been doing a lot of checking internally to to see what people may or may not have known if there are individuals who were aware that something was going on then you're basically culpable and complicit in those actions i'm in the process now of develop developing a new policy that will require that every indian health service employee be a mandatory reporter of what of any potential child abuse any sexual assault any anything potentially criminal in nature and what would be a satisfying resolution to the crisis around the case of dr weber did he do his time did he pay for what he did he did a lot of damage to our agency we've talked a lot about the difficulties we have recruiting providers this isn't going to help where do you set the bar for yourself in terms of leading the agency out of this crisis i think the bar is extremely high there are so many people depending upon us my own family receives their health care through the indian health service so i go home every day and the expectation is to fix this i'm sorry in january 2019 dr webber now 70 years old was sentenced to more than 18 years in prison [Music] but haunting questions remain [Music] you know it doesn't sit well the somebody like this monster came in and did what he did you know and i didn't do much to prevent it [Music] i certainly could have done more well at that time you think of your career and job and your livelihood so i probably got fired i guess that was the risk i would have took i couldn't afford to take the risk at that time to get losing my job do i feel responsible for it no no i guess i have to blame the bureaucracy of indian health service [Music] but i have to say i was on my watch that happened i should have known better but i didn't that that still looked hard for me to kind of deal with after nearly 30 years no one knows how many victims of weber's abuse are still out there or how many other people in the indian health service could have done more to stop him [Music] for more on this and other frontline programs visit our website at pbs.org frontline [Music] to order frontline's predator on the reservation on dvd visit shop pbs or call 1-800 play pbs this program is also available on amazon prime video [Music] you

Channel: FRONTLINE PBS | Official

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Id: geu-lTICHNI

Length: 53min 18sec (3198 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 05 2022