Serial rapist preying on Arizona reservation

By Emily Bazar
USA Today

A serial rapist posing as a police officer has attacked at least 11 young women, mostly teenagers, on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation in Arizona.

The rapist, wearing a dark shirt and hat emblazoned with "POLICE," stopped each of the victims as they walked between two housing projects and told them they were under arrest, says Warren Youngman, assistant special agent in charge of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) office in Phoenix.

He then restrained their hands and "took them to a remote area where he told the victims they were going to be met by a police car," Youngman says.

The assaults all took place between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. The first was in March. The most recent occurred Sept. 6. All but one of the victims were juveniles, Youngman says.

Collette Altaha, a spokeswoman for the White Mountain Apache Tribe's vice chairwoman, Margaret Baha-Walker, says the attacks have raised fears on the reservation, which is near the New Mexico state line. "A lot of people are doing things differently," she says. "I know of women who don't go on walks anymore. They're sticking close to home."

Some parents aren't letting their children go out unless they're in groups or supervised, she says.

When the BIA learned about the attacks from tribal police in August, it created a special task force of police officers and federal agents to investigate, says Chris Chaney, deputy director of BIA's Office of Justice Services. The BIA is offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to an arrest or indictment.

The victims have described the rapist as a Native American man age 20 to 40. Investigators don't know if he belongs to the White Mountain Apache Tribe, or if there are other victims who have yet to come forward.

Chaney says Native Americans suffer disproportionately from sexual assault. The rate of rape and sexual assault for the general public is two per 1,000 people, he says. For Native Americans, it's five per 1,000.

Residents of the reservation have become less trusting of police because of the nature of the attacks, Youngman says. "The community is cautious of people identifying themselves as officers," he says.