HELENA, Mont. (AP) — The U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs may be held liable for damages awarded to a Montana woman who became pregnant after a serving BIA officer used the threat of criminal charges to force her to have sexual intercourse, the Montana Supreme Court ruled. .
The woman, identified by the initials LB in court documents, sued former BIA officer Dana Bullcoming and her employer for the October 2015 sexual assault on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation that resulted in the birth of a child, who he is now 7 years old, his lawyer said. John Heenan.
“This is a woman who had the courage to report a federal law enforcement officer for sexually assaulting her and then had the courage to go through the entire process, including the officers there to collect DNA when the child was born,” Heenan said Wednesday. . She pursued the case on behalf of people living on reservations to show “that they should have the same rights as Montanans on this issue.”
U.S. District Judge Susan Watters of Billings awarded the woman $1.6 million in damages in May 2020, but previously ruled that the BIA could not be held responsible for paying them because, under federal law, coercion and sex were outside the scope of Bullcoming’s duties.
The woman appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which in turn asked the Montana Supreme Court to determine whether the federal agency could be held liable under state law.
Since a 2009 court ruling, Montana law has held an employer liable for the action of employees when they have a duty to provide protection, Heenan said.
On Tuesday, the Montana Supreme Court ruled 5-2 that the facts of the case establish that “Officer Bullcoming was not, as a matter of law, acting outside the scope of his employment when he sexually assaulted LB,” Judge Laurie McKinnon wrote. .
The conduct at issue here, the court wrote, “is the BIA officer’s abuse of his official authority by expressly or impliedly threatening LB with arrest and criminal prosecution with the intent and purpose of compelling her to have sexual relations with him.”
The BIA did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
Heenan said he hoped the case would be sent back to the Watters court for an order holding the BIA financially responsible.
“It’s a great day for Native women in Montana,” April Youpee-Roll, an enrolled member of the Fort Peck Tribes and an attorney who represented some Montana tribes that filed briefs in support of LB, said in a statement. “The Montana Supreme Court bridged the gap and provided us with the same remedy for on-duty sexual assault by law enforcement that Montana already provided our neighbors.”
In this case, LB called dispatchers to report that his mother was driving while intoxicated after they returned from an off-reservation bar. After finding the woman’s mother to be okay, Bullcoming went to the woman’s home in Lame Deer and asked her if she had been drinking. She was at home with her two children.
He then took her to his patrol car and took a breath test, which revealed she was legally intoxicated and thus in violation of a tribal law that prohibits intoxication on the reservation in southeastern Montana, according to court records.
She asked Bullcoming not to arrest her or call tribal social services for fear of losing custody of her children and her job. Bullcoming responded that “something has to be done,” according to court records.
The woman asked if that meant sex, and Bullcoming said yes, according to court records. The woman became pregnant.
After a DNA test confirmed that Bullcoming was the child’s father, he pleaded guilty to depriving the woman of her rights using the power and authority given to him by the BIA. He was sentenced to three years in federal prison.
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