NAVAJO MAN FROM NEWCOMB, N.M., SENTENCED TO LIFE FOR CONVICTION ON FEDERAL CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE CHARGES

            ALBUQUERQUE –Brian Adrian Sloan, 33, an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation from Newcomb, N.M., was sentenced yesterday in Albuquerque federal court to life imprisonment for his conviction on aggravated child sexual abuse charges, announced U.S. Attorney John C. Anderson and Special Agent in Charge James C. Langenberg of the FBI’s Albuquerque Division.

            The FBI arrested Sloan, in Aug. 2016, on an indictment alleging child sexual abuse offenses.  The indictment was superseded in Jan. 2017, and charged Sloan with sexually abusing two children under the age of 12 years.  The four-count superseding indictment charged Sloan with violating one child on three occasions in 2007 and 2008, and another child in 2003, on the Navajo Indian Reservation in McKinley County, N.M.  Sloan was convicted on all four-counts of the superseding indictment by a jury in Nov. 2018, after a five-day trial.

           This case was investigated by the Gallup office of the FBI.  Assistant U.S. Attorneys Novaline D. Wilson and Elisa C. Dimas prosecuted the case as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse.  Led by United States Attorneys’ Offices and DOJ’s Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims.  For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit http://www.justice.gov/psc/.