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Former SD pediatrician indicted on two more charges

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Stanley Patrick Weber is pictured in this passport photograph from the 1990s. Photo courtesy of public records

PINE RIDGE, S.D. — A former Indian Health Service pediatrician convicted of sexually abusing Native American boys in Montana and awaiting trial for similar accusations on the Pine Ridge Reservation is facing two new charges in South Dakota.

Stanley Patrick Weber, 70, was indicted Tuesday, Aug. 20, at the federal court in Rapid City on two charges of sexually abusing a child or children between 12- and 16-years-old in Pine Ridge, court records show. Child sexual abuse can be punished with up to 15 years in prison.

Weber, who most recently lived in Spearfish but is now detained at the Pennington County Jail, does not have a court date scheduled for the new indictment. But he's set to go to trial Sept. 23-Oct. 1 on 12 charges of sexually abusing Native American boys in Pine Ridge between 1995 and 2011. Weber could be sentenced to life in prison if convicted of certain crimes in that case.

Weber is appealing the Montana jury's September 2018 decision to convict him of sexually abusing two boys on the Blackfeet Reservation while he was working for the IHS in Browning between 1992-1995. A judge sentenced him to 18 years in prison in that case .

Weber targeted vulnerable Native boys struggling with poverty and difficult home lives and gave them drugs and money before and after sexually abusing them, according to search warrant affidavits in the first South Dakota case and an investigation by Frontline and the Wall Street Journal.

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Accusations about Weber sexually abusing boys circulated when he worked at both reservations, but some complaints were ignored and not investigated, while others resulted in investigations that cleared him of any wrongdoing, the investigation found.

In 2015, a prosecutor and the attorney general of the Oglala Sioux Tribe began investigating Weber and referred possible victims to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the investigation found. Then in February 2017, he was charged for the first time in South Dakota federal court with 10 sex crimes against minors. In February 2018, he was indicted on five crimes in Montana . Later that year, two more charges were added to his South Dakota case .

Weber resigned from his job in Pine Ridge in 2016 while under investigation, according to the affidavits.

Lawmakers and the IHS are trying to make sure he doesn't receive his $1.8 million government pension while serving his Montana conviction, and there are three investigations into the IHS's handling of Weber.

T he IHS hired a company to conduct an independent review of the case, a White House task force is investigating how Weber was able to sexually assault children in his care and how to prevent future abuse, and the Department of Health and Human Services is reviewing the effectiveness of the actions IHS has already taken.

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