George Chad Deputee Sentenced to 9 Years for Child Sex Abuse

BILLINGS — George Chad Deputee, 42, of Crow Agency, Montana, was sentenced Wednesday, November 30, 2016, to 108 months in federal prison for the aggravated sexual abuse and abusive sexual contact of a child. U.S. District Judge Susan Watters handed down the sentence in U.S. District Court in Billings, followed by five years of supervised release. The conviction stems from repeated acts of sexual violence against two young girls that began in 1989 and stretched into the late 1990s on the Crow Indian Reservation.

Deputee was first indicted in March 2015 on federal charges of aggravated sexual abuse and abusive sexual contact. A superseding indictment returned in November 2015 detailed abuse occurring between April 1992—when Deputee turned 18—and December 1997. The victims, sisters at the time, were just five years old when the abuse began. One sister reported the crimes to BIA law enforcement in August 2012, disclosing that Deputee had molested her repeatedly while living with the family in Lodge Grass. She recalled nighttime intrusions, and her mother remembered hearing someone flee from the children’s room in the dark.

That same sister told investigators Deputee had later turned his attention to her younger sibling. Both women, now adults, testified at trial, delivering harrowing accounts of prolonged sexual abuse. They described nearly identical patterns: Deputee, then an adult, exploited his presence in the household to molest them daily, sometimes multiple times a day, from ages five to ten. The abuse occurred inside a residence in Lodge Grass, where Deputee lived with the family during the years in question.

When confronted by the FBI in October 2012, Deputee denied ever abusing anyone. He initially claimed he hadn’t lived with the victims’ family during the timeframe—then reversed course under pressure, admitting he had lived there but insisting the younger victim hadn’t been born yet. Yet he later drew a diagram of the home, marking the younger victim’s bedroom with her name—a damning contradiction. At trial, he doubled down on lies, claiming he resided in North Dakota and returned to Montana only twice between 1989 and 1993.

Prosecutors demolished his alibi with medical records showing Deputee had numerous appointments in Lodge Grass during those years—proof he was present far more often than claimed. The government also introduced evidence of Deputee’s abuse of the older sister, arguing the strikingly similar accounts from both women strengthened the credibility of the victim named in the indictment. The jury agreed, convicting him after a trial that laid bare a pattern of predation spanning nearly a decade.

The case was investigated by the FBI and the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), with Assistant U.S. Attorneys John Sullivan and Adam Duerk handling the prosecution. Deputee’s 108-month sentence reflects the severity of crimes committed in the shadows of a family home, where trust was weaponized and childhood stolen. He will serve his time in federal prison before facing five years of supervised release.