Criminal Justice in the U.S. vs Canada

"This court is going to make sure that you never have the opportunity to do that again."

"You preyed on these women's trusts and their spirituality, and you manipulated them for your own personal gratification." 

Judge Jessica Peterson, Nevada courtroom 

 

"He took away my sense of safety, even within my own mind. I believe I didn't have privacy in my own thoughts. Living with that kind of psychological control has had lasting effects on my ability to trust others and to fully express myself."

"The trauma delayed important parts of my life."

"He also took something deeply sacred from me: my spirituality. From a young age, I was taught to obey him and to follow rules without question."

"That conditioning put me in harm's way and has left me having to constantly remind myself that it is OK to say no."

Siera Begaye, child victim impact statement 

Actor Nathan Chasing Horse, best known for his role in Dances with Wolves, was handed a life sentence in Nevada for sexually assaulting Indigenous women and girls. Chasing Horse still has charges pending in other states and Canada.  CBC

 

Actor Nathan Chasing Horse, remembered for his role in Dances With Wolves, now 50 years old, this week was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole for 37 years. The Nevada courtroom heard the victim testimony of two young girls, 14 at the time that Mr. Chasing Horse whom they knew for his guidance in spirituality, convinced them that they were obliged to accept that he had the right to abuse them sexually. 

 

The presiding judge at the man's sentencing accused Chasing Horse of exploiting girls as young as 13 for  his own "personal gratification", while he had the trust of a spiritual authority figure as a traditional healer. Some of Chasing Horse's victims were Canadian. He has been accused of maintaining a harem of wives including an Alberta minor, as well as of having sex with an underage B.C. girl who had been sent to live with him because she was ill, and his reputation as a healing figure was thought to be of benefit to her. 

 

There were active warrants in both British Columbia and Alberta against Chasing Horse at the time of his 2023 arrest in Las Vegas. Had he been sent to trial in Canada, the Canadian justice system would have dealt with this man's crimes far differently than did Judge Peterson in the Nevada courtroom.  In Saskatchewan last year, a court sat to mete out justice to a 63 year-old spiritual healer who had used his position for a long reign of sexual assaults.

 

Nathan Chasing Horse is led out of the courtroom after being arraigned at North Las Vegas Justice Court, Feb. 2, 2023. Photo by Bizuayehu Tesfaye/Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP, File

 

Cecil Wolfe had violated a dozen women over a period of nine yeas. The abuse of these women was explained as a necessary treatment to remove "bad medicine". For his crimes against those 12 women, eight years in prison was considered more than adequate punishment, with parole likely in five years. His victims were warned by presiding Justice John Morrall that the sentence would seen unjust to them.  "The sentence I will impose will seem wholly inadequate for the women. The violations they have experienced will remain with them for the rest of their lives."

 

Because Wolfe, like Nathan Chasing Horse, is Indigenous, the court in Canada was forced to consider his 'marginalized' background and how it would have victimized him through racial prejudice, lack of opportunities, and the inherited deleterious effect of the Residential School system for First Nations children, impacting a sense of societal betrayal through following generations. Called the Gladue impact sentencing of Indigenous people, courts must take that 'marginalization' into effect, reducing sentencing times.

 

In a Canadian courtroom, Chasing Horse would have had his sentence wholly minimized, as a First Nations miscreant. A man convicted of sexually assaulting a 12-year-old in an Alberta court was given a 10-year sentence rather than the 12-year sentence thought to be more appropriate, by the Crown. "But for his Gladue factors, I would have imposed the sentence sought by the Crown", wrote Alberta Justice Jayme Williams.

 

A man in Texas was given a 50-year jail sentence for sexually abusing a child; while for sexually exploiting four girls between 13 and 15 years of age, a Connecticut man was given 35 years in prison. Manitoban Thomas Martin Butler, responsible for a series of child sex assaults in the mid 1990s that included two elementary school-aged children in his care being subjected to regular sexual abuse by himself or other men, received a 25-year sentence, a rarity in Canada. 

 

Siblings Raven-Dominique and Jeffery Gobeil say they were shocked to hear the man convicted of sexually abusing them as children was sentenced to 25 years in prison on Tuesday. (Justin Fraser/CBC)

 

"I hadn't even imagined the possibility of it being 25 years [sentence for 'horrendous' series of child sex assaults in 1990s]."

"If you had told me five years ago that we would be here today I would not have believed you."

"I wouldn't have even thought it was possible."

Lawyer Raven-Dominique 33, child victim of Butler's sex assaults 

While working as a doctor with USA Gymnastics, U.S. sports physician Larry Nasser sexually abused over 150 women and girls. "I've just signed your death warrant", Judge Rosemarie Aquilina said in 2018, as she read out his sentence -- 175 years in prison. The chasm in justice meted out between the American and Canadian judiciary in response to heinous crimes could not be more pronounced.

 

The provincial courthouse in Saskatoon, Tuesday, Jan. 4, 2016. A Saskatchewan man has been sentenced to eight years in prison for the sexual assaults of 12 women while under the guise of being an Indigenous medicine man. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Matthew Smith