Which brings me to this lovely story (warning: repulsive story of repulsive person ahead)

[elbales]

Promises, justice broken
A dysfunctional system lets serious reservation crimes go unpunished and puts Indians at risk.
By Michael Riley
The Denver Post
Article Last Updated: 11/13/2007 01:10:00 AM MST

In the stacks of thick folders that cover Jonnie Bray's desk, there are tales of monsters.

The one in her hand starts on a winter night in 2003, when Ronnie Tom tries to rape the 12-year-old sister of his live-in girlfriend on the Colville Indian Reservation in eastern Washington. When she manages to escape, he moves on to his girlfriend's 7-year-old daughter who is nearby, and here he succeeds.

Bray, a Colville Indian and one of the tribe's prosecutors, said an expert forensics interviewer found the 7-year-old's testimony recounting the rape clear and credible. And a sexual-predator profile of Tom warned that he should never be allowed to be alone with children, including his own, or live "near places designed for children, such as schools, playgrounds (or) swimming pools."

But Tom was never charged with a felony crime. That's because here, as on the majority of the country's nearly 300 Indian reservations, the sole authority to prosecute felony crime lies with the federal government. One hundred fifty miles away in Spokane, an assistant U.S. attorney - faced with a distant case and a 7-year-old witness - simply declined to prosecute, something that crime data show they do in 65 percent of all reservation cases.

Now Ronnie Tom is out of jail, freed after serving less than two years on the equivalent of misdemeanor charges Bray cobbled together in tribal court, including a separate incident involving the 12-year-old discovered later. Bray said he is again living with his girlfriend and their new child - a girl.

I think "broken" covers it if spread thinly. There is something very, very fucked up in our country's criminal justice system where it touches the lives of Native Americans. We can all thank the great men who signed and broke and signed and broke and signed all those treaties with the Indians. And I have no earthly idea how we could go about fixing it.
 

Comments

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

The condition of Native women on and off the reservation gets worse every year.

In my own natal region, what's been going on with rape, murder, torture is beyond description. Not only are they subject to these assaults by Native men, non-native men go out at night drinking and drugging, looking for native women to do these things to.

See this, for instance:

http://www.prettybirdwomanhouse.blogspot.com/

Love, C.

[elbales]

Yes; my previous post addressed just that. Rape tourism, for crying out loud. Makes me think thoughts about handguns, and I am not a violent person.

[kiri-l.livejournal.com]

"On the Fort Peck reservation in Montana, a man recently assaulted his girlfriend and broke her jaw, a result that didn't count as "serious bodily injury," according to the U.S. attorney, who therefore declined the case"

Yeah.. I love that one. *head desk* I wish I could say it only happened there (does in no way make it right - by any definition) it happens elsewhere too. I have memory of this stuff happening in my own lifetime.

That quote from lawyers. "I didn't sign up for this" scuse me?! EXACTLY WHY did you become a lawyer? oh yeah.. pardon me.. to make lots of $ and only deal with something that doesn't have to actually deal with anything real.. sorry to have to trouble your NON-EXISTENT CONSCIENCE. jerks. we have a saying back home.. what is a 1000 lawyers at the bottom of the lake?


a good start.

[kiri-l.livejournal.com]

yeah that one got me. I'm thinking about writing the Senators and Congress people for South Dakota about their "tourism". Perhaps making a comment to be read on the floor of congress.. I think we can have that done still *goes to look that up*

[elbales]

Srsly. I mean, I know some great people who are lawyers, but guys like that jerk in the article make the whole profession despised.