Former Browning pediatrician on trial next month for molesting boys
According to most recent CDC statistics, an estimated 1 in 4 children in America experience maltreatment at some point in their lives. Here is what to do if you suspect child abuse and how to report it. Wochit
- Since this article was published, Judge Brian Morris issued a continuance Monday morning pushing Weber's trial to September 4.
A former Indian Health Services pediatrician will stand trial next month for allegations of grooming, intoxicating and raping two young boys in his practice and his home in Browning more than 20 years ago.
Stanley Patrick Weber is alleged to have raped and sexually abused two children from the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, as well as a number of others Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.
Weber also faces a federal case in South Dakota, where he was indicted in 2017 on 10 counts of aggravated sex abuse, sexual abuse and sex abuse of a minor. That case has not yet reached trial.
Weber's trial in Montana was scheduled for Monday, but due to "an unforeseen issue," Judge Brian Morris continued the trial and rescheduled it for September 4.
Federal prosecutors laid their case out in a brief filed July 30, painting Weber as a predator who used his practice to isolate and assault disadvantaged boys between the ages of 11 and 13 while working as a pediatrician with the Indian Health Service and Public Health Service, beginning on the Blackfeet reservation in 1992.
A Montana defense attorney for Weber was not available for comment Friday afternoon. Federal prosecutors were also unavailable.
According to federal prosecutors, Weber made it known to medical personnel and hospital staff that he preferred to treat adolescent children, and favored boys over girls. Part of his practice reportedly included outreach services, including physicals for young boys ahead of participation in sports. He also provided counseling services to the local middle school for boys who got into trouble in class, according to reports.
The trial brief alleges Weber would groom these boys over time: inviting them to his home; providing them with small gifts like candy, or sometimes a little cash; or taking them on trips to Missoula, Kalispell or on hiking trips around Glacier National Park.
In 1993, a 10- or 11-year-old boy first met Weber at the Nurturing Center in Browning while his parents were going through a divorce. Prosecutors allege that while the boy would talk with Weber about the divorce and how it was affecting him, Weber would coerce the boy into sexual acts, with Weber telling him he could get him back to his parents if he agreed to go along with it.
Weber at one point, according to the alleged victim, forced the boy to perform oral sex on him. He also tried penetrating the boy's anus with his penis but had to abandon the attempt. Weber reportedly told the boy not to tell anyone or he wouldn't be able to see his parents again.
Another boy, approximately 13 years old at the time, later told investigators that Weber took him and a group of boys to Pizza Hut and the Upper Two Medicine area in Glacier. After earning the boy's trust, Weber allegedly got him drunk at his home. The boy passed out from the alcohol, and said he woke up to Weber masturbating himself and fondling the boy.
The brief also includes allegations from the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota, where Weber was assigned in 1995 after his time in Browning.
In the filing, allegations from four boys seem to indicate Weber's modus operandi became much more aggressive. One, age 11 when he met Weber, said Weber raped him two to four times a week from ages 12 to 15, each time giving him money, food or clothing in exchange. Another said Weber drugged him with OxyContin and alcohol before raping him.
Two others said Weber treated his hospital office as a place to develop "little secrets" with them, gradually increasing sexual behavior from touching to rape.
While Weber is not charged in the U.S. District Court of Montana with the allegations from South Dakota, the now-grown boys included in the prosecutors' filing are expected to testify at the trial in Great Falls on Monday.
According to court filings, the allegations against Weber in Montana precipitated from the investigation in South Dakota, where reports of Weber's sex abuse of young boys dates as recently as 2011.
Weber was arrested on the federal charges filed in South Dakota District in February 2017. He is not in custody but has been under release conditions imposed by judges in both South Dakota and Montana, where Weber was indicted in February of this year, since both cases were filed.
Weber stopped working for IHS in May 2016, an IHS spokesman told the Tribune in an email. The agency declined to comment further on the specifics of Weber's tenure there, citing personnel policy.
The trial is scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. on September 4 in at the Missouri River Federal Courthouse in Great Falls. Prosecutors expect to take three days to make their case, according to court filings.