Federal judge orders IHS to release report on abusive doctor

RAPID CITY, S.D. (AP) — A federal judge has ordered Indian Health Services to release a report investigating how one of its doctors was able to sexually abuse boys on Indian reservations in South Dakota and Montana.

Stanley Patrick Weber, the former pediatrician, was sentenced last year to five consecutive life sentences for sexual abuse he committed on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation from 1999 and 2011. Weber was also convicted of similar crimes against boys on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Montana.

Indian Health Services commissioned a report on how the agency failed to protect Indigenous children from the doctor, but declined requests to release the report under the Freedom of Information Act, the Rapid City Journal reported.

Indian Health Services said it would not provide the report because it's a "confidential medical quality assurance record." But Gabriel Gorenstein, a magistrate judge for the Southern District of New York, rejected that argument and ordered the report be released.

Gorenstein wrote in his order that "the entire report is entirely and exclusively about criminal conduct unrelated to medical care and the failures of the agency in detecting and preventing that criminal conduct."