Bert Travis Little Owl Sentenced in U.S. District Court
| U.S. Attorney’s Office September 01, 2011 |
The United States Attorney’s Office announced that during a federal court session in Billings on August 31, 2011, before Chief U.S. District Judge Richard F. Cebull, BERT TRAVIS LITTLE OWL, a 41-year-old resident of St. Xavier, appeared for sentencing. LITTLE OWL was sentenced to a term of:
- Prison: 168 months
- Special Assessment: $50
- Supervised Release: five years
LITTLE OWL was sentenced after a federal district court trial in which he was found guilty of aggravated sexual abuse.
At trial, the following evidence and testimony was presented to the jury.
In March of 2010, a 25-year-old female, hereafter referred to as “L,” reported to the Bureau of Indian Affairs that over a period of time in 1990-1991, when she was only 6 or 7 years old, she had been sexually abused by LITTLE OWL while she was living in St. Xavier, which is within the exterior boundaries of the Crow Indian Reservation.
“L” testified at trial that LITTLE OWL would babysit her and while he did, he sexually abused her and forced her to perform oral sex on him.
When questioned by law enforcement, LITTLE OWL at first denied but then later admitted that he had sexually abused “L” during the summer of 1991 on several occasions. In June 2010, LITTLE OWL gave a recorded statement confessing to the events in question.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Marcia K. Hurd prosecuted the case for the United States.
Because there is no parole in the federal system, the “truth in sentencing” guidelines mandate that LITTLE OWL will likely serve all of the time imposed by the court. In the federal system, LITTLE OWL does have the opportunity to earn a sentence reduction for “good behavior.” However, this reduction will not exceed 15 percent of the overall sentence.
The investigation was a cooperative effort between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Indian Affairs.