‘Brainwashing’: the shocking case of a Native American healer accused of sexual abuse | Native Americans

Adopted Melissa Leone longed to connect with her Native American tribe after learning she was of Lakota descent around 1996.

“I was holding on to any connection that felt good or safe,” she said.

Leone thought she found out after a relative recommended she talk to a wizard named Nathan Chasing Horse. As a child, Chasing Horse starred in the Oscar-winning film Dances with Wolves in 1990. As an adult, he traveled throughout North America performing healing ceremonies.

In 2005, Leone, then the mother of a seven-year-old daughter, participated in a ritual that Chasing Horse said connected her with the spirits of her ancestors. “It was like he turned on the lights in a dark room,” Leone said. “The whole thing felt like I belonged there. It had the ability to impress you.”

Eventually, after becoming part of Chasing Horse’s group, the Circle, participating in healing ceremonies, and recovering from cancer, Leone came to see him as a messianic figure.

“He could say or ask or do anything and there was nothing wrong,” Leone said.

And this is where everything went bad.

The belief that Chasing Horse had healing powers made it easier for Leone to sexually abuse minors, including his daughter, according to a criminal indictment. Chasing Horse currently faces 21 charges, including sexual assault, sexual assault of a minor, first-degree kidnapping of a minor, and use of a minor in the production of pornography.

He has pleaded not guilty, and his trial, which began last Tuesday in Las Vegas, has shed light on a shocking case that operates like a cult, as well as an often underreported area of ​​sexual or violent abuse of Native American women.

Leone and others say the indictment is about more than bringing Chasing Horse to justice for alleged sexual abuse. They see his behavior, including allegations of sexual harassment and manipulation of adults, as part of a larger problem in which people in his position are taking advantage of those they offer to heal and police are not doing enough to stop them.

“This is about medical people and the entire country of India exploiting its people under the guise of spirituality,” Leone said. “This must end.”

She appeared in Dances with Wolves Chased by a Horse as a character called She Smiles a Lot, making a “remarkable cameo”. New York Times reported. “The beautiful Indian boy smiles a lot… he comes of age during the movie with his first tomahawk kill,” the newspaper wrote.

Chasing Horse spoke as an adult in the following speech: meetings nationwide.

in 2013 Fort Mojave tribe At the meeting, Chasing Horse shared how doctors diagnosed his mother with terminal throat cancer and told the family to “be prepared because she’s not going to be here very long.”

However, they held a ceremony, during which a messenger told him that he would live. When Chasing Horse returned to “white doctors” in New York, he said tests showed he was cancer-free.

He then explained how the healing powers of the ceremonial whistle work.

“The purpose of blowing this whistle is to give some of your life to the person you’re blowing for, so make sure you mean it because your life will be shortened by a few years,” Chasing Horse said. “If you don’t do it from your heart, maybe they’ll take your whole life away. That’s the trade-off.”

Fernando Trujillo, who was part of the Circle, which had about 300 members, from 2006 to 2014, said Chasing Horse often instilled that kind of fear in his followers. Associated Press reported.

Chasing Horse asked Trujillo to travel with his team after a ceremony because he learned that Trujillo could sing.

“I was honored to know such a person,” Trujillo said.

But she began to see how Chasing Horse womanized and convinced people to give him their money.

“Let’s say you need help of some sort and the doctors aren’t trying to do much for you, you can say, ‘Hey, I think I want to go see a healer,’” Trujillo said. Chasing Horse was able to “manipulate many people” by portraying himself as “the best medicine people or someone with a spiritual connection that others did not have.”

When Leone was diagnosed with cancer in 2013, her 14-year-old daughter, Ren Leone-LaCroix, went to Las Vegas to seek help from Chasing Horse, according to court records. She prepared food and a pipe for him. He then took her to his bedroom closet, where he told her there was “a life for a life,” explaining that it meant taking her firstborn and her virginity, records say.

She said Chasing Horse allegedly raped her and then took her on the road with him, where he raped her every night. ABC News.

Leone has also survived cancer three times.

Leone said he believed it at the time: “He was saving people’s lives.”

He allegedly continued to sexually harass Leone-LaCroix for years.

In 2015, leaders of the Fort Peck tribe in Montana banned Chasing Horse from holding ceremonies on their reservation due to allegations of human trafficking, drug dealing, spiritual abuse and intimidation of tribal members. IndiJ Public MediaA local news outlet reported this.

Another supporter of Chasing Horse, Lilda Christian, said: [she was] “I have to call the actor because there is no legal doctor in the area and the local doctors have spent time in prison for sex crimes.” IndiJ Public Media It was reported in 2015.

More than four in five American Indian and Alaska Native women have experienced violence, and more than half have experienced sexual violence, according to a 2016 study. National Institute of Justice to work.

Crystal Lee, founder and CEO of United Natives, an organization that provides services to victims of sexual abuse, said Chasing Horse “was not a one-time incident.” Since 2024, among the alleged healers Saskatchewan Cree; the Ojibway-Anishinaabeg; And Ute Mountain Ute all were convicted of sexual assault.

“Holding our Indigenous men accountable for being perpetrators among our own women, children and family community is a big elephant,” Lee said.

When Leone-LaCroix was 16, the age of consent in Nevada, she told her mother that she wanted to be one of Chasing Horse’s spiritual wives.

Chasing Horse told Leone that nothing had happened between them and they asked for his permission.

Leone told ABC News that she “looked at it as an honor” and that “just him telling me he loved her.”

She said that she was not aware of the claim that he had previously raped her daughter and that he had threatened her mother would die if she said anything. She also did not learn until later that Leone-LaCroix regularly beat her after she became one of his wives.

But Leone had heard other allegations, too.

“He would always have evidence to justify that what the victims said was not true,” Leone recalled. “I’m not ignorant, but it’s the brainwashing and spiritual manipulation he uses there to control each of us. I didn’t understand what was happening to me.”

Trujillo said he left the Circle when he learned that Chasing Horse had sexually assaulted a girl who became Trujillo’s niece.

Trujillo said he wanted to leave before 2014, but Chasing Horse said, “He would be afraid that if you left his circle, your family would die.”

In 2023, eight years after Fort Peck tribal leaders exiled Chasing Horse, Las Vegas police arrested him at the home he shared with his five wives.

Associated Press Chasing Horse reportedly told his wives to “shoot up” police officers if they tried to “tear their families apart.” Police also found video of him having sex with a minor and sexual photos of a teenage girl, according to court records.

Chasing Horse also faces sexual abuse and assault charges in canada.

A Nevada judge dismissed the case The arrest in 2023 was due to the prosecution’s “improper instructions to the grand jury”, but the grand jury was charged again In 2024.

The prosecutor and defense lawyers did not respond to the Guardian’s interview requests.

Despite being previously impeached, Leone said he was “100% sure” he would be convicted.

He is also a cancer survivor, but he now realizes it wasn’t because of Chasing Horse.

When Leone’s daughter left Chasing Horse and told him she had been raped, he said: “But mom, that’s the reason you’re not sick.”

Leone told him: “I do not give Nathan authority over my health or illness.”