Data from a girl’s 2012 rape kit has led to a federal criminal charge against an Ethete, Wyoming, man who was already in prison for a different molestation conviction, court documents say.
Skyler Sven Quiver, 28, faces one charge in the U.S. District Court for Wyoming of sexual abuse of a person incapable of consent. If convicted, he could face life in prison.
The new charge comes nearly two years after Wyoming’s Chief U.S. District Judge Scott Skavdahl sentenced Quiver to 50 months in prison and five years’ probation – for the same offense.
Rape Kit Mismatch, At First
The new charge stems from June 2012, when a 13-year-old girl reportedly ran away from her home in Ethete on the Wind River Indian Reservation, according to an evidentiary affidavit filed in Quiver’s case.
The girl had told her family a male acquaintance had raped her the night prior. She’d been drinking alcohol at the man’s home on Left Hand Ditch Road near Arapaho, Wyoming.
She later “admitted that she was drunk during the time frame of her assault and could not be certain of her attacker’s identity,” says the affidavit.
Someone – the affidavit does not say who – took the girl to the hospital in Lander, where Dr. Thomas Rangitsch performed a sexual assault examination, and collected evidence and biological samples.
Her hymen was intact, but her genitalia contained male sexual fluid and she had abrasions in her pelvic area, suggesting forced contact, the affidavit relates.
The DNA did not match the suspect and police “initially closed” the case, says the affidavit.
Just Gonna Look At This
The document says that in 2021, a routine search of the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) indicated a possible DNA association between the biological evidence in the girl’s rape kit and a convicted offender, Quiver.
Quiver would have been 16 or 17 at the time of the girl’s assault.
FBI Special Agent Luke Williamson interviewed the girl, who was by then a woman, in 2021. She remembered the attack, and that she was “young and drunk,” says the affidavit. She recalled that the next morning, she woke feeling “gross” in her pelvic area, as if someone had had sex with her while she was drunk, says the affidavit.
She told Williamson that she never had consensual sex with Quiver.
The Wyoming State Laboratory gathered a mandatory confirmation sample of Quiver’s DNA and sent it to the FBI’s lab, where the FBI allegedly confirmed the match.
Halfway House Chat
FBI Special Agents Alesha McFadden and Taylor Reed visited Quiver at a halfway house in Casper on Dec. 6 of this year to interview him about where he was June 20, 2012.
He was living across the street from the girl in Ethete, Quiver reportedly told the agents.
The affidavit relates that Quiver said the pair had “consensual sex” while they were both intoxicated, though he was initially hesitant because he knew how young she was.
One of the agents asked if the girl may have been too intoxicated to consent, and Quiver allegedly replied, “Yes.”
Note: Some portions of the evidentiary affidavit give 2013 as the year of the alleged assault and others cite 2012. Because the 2012 reference is more prevalent, that is the year referred to in this story.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
