Before a federal judge sentenced a convicted child torturer to nine years in prison Tuesday, he blasted the failings of a tribal child protective system and voiced weariness at the ripple effect of a father’s poor choices.
Truman Sitting Eagle, 36, wept while U.S. District Court Judge Alan B. Johnson handed down a 108-month sentence Tuesday in the Cheyenne-based court.
“I trust your judgment, sir,” Sitting Eagle whispered at the end of the hearing.
The judge also gave Sitting Eagle five years of supervised probation to follow his prison term, and ordered him to pay $33,622.93 in restitution to state Medicaid providers.
Sitting Eagle pleaded guilty in April to assault causing serious bodily injury for torturing his 13-year-old stepson last autumn.
He had confined the boy in his room for about seven weeks, beat him with a wooden stick and a metal rod, and deprived him of food, according to court documents and to Sitting Eagle’s Tuesday allocution before the court. He also lamented that his actions have taken his other five children and his stepson away from him.
“If I could speak to my son today, I would tell him I’m sorry that I failed him, and I hope one day he will forgive me, because I will never be able to forgive myself,” said Sitting Eagle.
The boy was 13 when Wind River Police Officer Matt Lee found him in a crawl space under Sitting Eagle’s home Dec. 12, 2023, after weeks of food deprivation, torture and confinement.
Lee had refused to leave the home after noticing, in his role as a school resource officer, that the boy had not been at school for weeks, court documents say.
Authorities discovered the boy also had a broken nose, broken spine and another serious injury. When police came to take the boy away from home, he clung to Sitting Eagle’s leg.
Johnson characterized the act as a heartbreaking show of Stockholm syndrome.
‘Dear Lord, Help Us’
Johnson derided Sitting Eagle’s failure to provide for his children, his chronic unemployment, his dependence on “whatever the dole could provide,” his failure to address substance abuse and other life issues, and his history of criminal conduct including child neglect and domestic abuse.
But he also criticized the Northern Arapaho Department of Family Services (NADFS), not by name, but by referring obliquely and at length to the system run by a sovereign tribe tasked with protecting Sitting Eagle’s stepson.
He said Sitting Eagle is right to worry about the fate of his other five children, and said they could be separated from one another in what he called an uncertain foster system.
“Dear Lord, help us if the quality of that system is adequate to take care of the five (other children),” said Johnson.
He noted that the victim in this case was discovered with 22 broken bones before the age of 2. Other court testimony indicated the involvement of the boy’s mother, Kandace Sitting Eagle, also known as Kandace VanFleet, in that abuse case.
Kandace Sitting Eagle was charged alongside Truman last year and was convicted by a trial jury June 13. She had cast the blame for her involvement on her husband, Johnson said.
Her sentencing is set for Aug. 29. She faces no fewer than 10 years in prison.
The boy was taken from Kandace when he was young and placed with his grandmother, who is now facing a witness-tampering charge on claims she fed one of the children laxatives so he couldn’t testify against his mother.
He also spent time in foster care and another type of government care. And when the boy was 12, he was placed back into the home his mother and Truman Sitting Eagle shared, Johnson said.
The decision came five years after Sitting Eagle threatened to kill his wife with a knife and make the other children watch, Johnson recounted from tribal police documents.
The Wind River Intertribal Court or earlier variations of it has filed roughly 30 criminal cases against Sitting Eagle, he added.
“Oh, we’ll just put another troubled 12-year-old in the house,” said Johnson, in a sarcastic critique of the NADFS decision.
He Can Say Whatever He Wants
NADFS Director Clarence Thomas said the agency has changed in recent months, and that Johnson’s impression of the agency is no longer accurate.
Thomas became director of the agency in August of last year.
“He can say all he wants, but he doesn’t know our program,” said Thomas in a Tuesday phone call with Cowboy State Daily. “I can’t speak for NADFS prior to when I got there, but NADFS has changed, and all children under NADFS’ care are secure and safe — so he can make as many comments as he wants, but he needs to research before he speaks.”
Thomas responded to another of Johnson’s critiques. The judge handed down a requirement for Sitting Eagle to be supervised while meeting with his children for five years after he gets out of prison.
“Who’s going to supervise?” asked Johnson with a dour chuckle.
Thomas countered, saying state authorities have recently been pleased with the agency’s performance, and that NADFS will be responsible in supervising the children and the vulnerable adults under its jurisdiction.
Going Forward
Johnson said he hopes Sitting Eagle succeeds in improving his life.
“You have many years ahead of you on this earth,” said Johnson. “But people cannot change their life with the snap of a finger or a wish. And I know your wishes are sincere.”
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
