Browning man pleads guilty to sex abuse, giving meth to 12-year-old

A 25-year-old Browning man reversed his plea Monday to guilty in a case that began after police pulled over his vehicle, which was driven by a 12-year-old girl who was high on meth. 

Bengamin Ray Yellow Owl pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to sexual abuse of a minor and distribution of meth to a person under 21 years of age. As part of the plea agreement he signed on July 10, prosecutors agreed to drop a third charge, aggravated sexual abuse of a minor. 

At his change of plea hearing, Yellow Owl said the victim in the case had been his sexual partner for months, although he knew she was below the age of consent. The relationship began, Yellow Owl said, after a blackout night of drinking.

"One night, ended up drinking, I woke up and realized what I did," he told U.S. District Judge Brian Morris, who had asked how the sexual relationship started. "She was fine with it... and her mom was OK with us being together."

Yellow Owl said he and the victim had been arrested together a few times in Browning, but he never disclosed the relationship to tribal law enforcement. 

Following his arrest in Great Falls on Jan. 11, Yellow Owl admitted to an ongoing sexual relationship with the 12-year-old, whose body was involuntarily jerking in the driver's seat of Yellow Owl's red Ford F-150 from the effects of methamphetamine when they were pulled over around midnight.

Yellow Owl was initially charged with felony child endangerment, sexual abuse of children and unlawful transactions with children in Cascade County District Court, but the case was elevated to the federal court in May after the Bureau of Indian Affairs sent Great Falls police a photo of Yellow Owl injecting the victim with methamphetamine. The photo had been posted to Facebook. District court documents state Yellow Owl had first told police he and the victim were not in an intimate relationship, but later disclosed a sexual relationship that began in October, around the time they started dating and before the girl turned 12.

"I knew it was wrong...," Yellow Owl said Monday. 

"But after a while it became OK?" Morris asked about the relationship.

"Yeah," Yellow Owl replied. 

Drugs had also plagued Yellow Owl's life as he sought to balance family life with working in Glacier National Park, he said. Yellow Owl said he had in recent years been in rehabilitation for drugs and alcohol, although he left before he completed the 30-day program. About 10 years ago, he dropped out of high school during his freshman year to take care of his newborn son, who would be the first of Yellow Owl's four children. Two years ago, Yellow Owl's fifth child, a son, died at 18 months old and two months later his mother also died, he said Monday.

"That's when I started getting back into alcohol and drugs," he said. 

Yellow Owl said he did not obtain the methamphetamine found in the 12-year-old victim's system, but he did admit to injecting it into her arm. He reiterated his initial stance on the situation, that he knew it was wrong to be in a sexual relationship, and added that he had encouraged her to go back to school.

"Mr. Yellow Owl, I wish you had stuck with your first instincts here," Morris told him. 

Morris set Yellow Owl's sentencing hearing for Oct. 19 in Great Falls.