President Donald Trump announced Tuesday his administration would form a task force to find out how a pediatrician was allowed to abuse Native American boys for years, while working for the Indian Health Service (IHS).
The task force will examine systemic problems within the Indian Health Service that set the stage for Dr. Stanley Patrick Weber's ongoing abuse. The task force includes law enforcement, government and tribal leaders. Its mandate is to come up with practices and policies to prevent such crimes from happening again.
For more than two decades IHS transferred Weber from reservation to reservation in Montana, Oklahoma and South Dakota. Federal investigators say the agency allowed him to continue to treat children, while failing to address allegations he was sexually abusing Native boys.
Weber was recently sentenced to 18 years in federal prison for the abuse of two boys on the Blackfeet Nation in Montana.
