{"id":29712,"date":"2024-01-14T23:07:00","date_gmt":"2024-01-15T06:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/ute-mountain-ute-and-former-cortez-school-leader-faces-12-sex-charges-in-indictment\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T01:02:27","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T07:02:27","slug":"ute-mountain-ute-and-former-cortez-school-leader-faces-12-sex-charges-in-indictment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/ute-mountain-ute-and-former-cortez-school-leader-faces-12-sex-charges-in-indictment\/","title":{"rendered":"Ute Mountain Ute and former Cortez school leader faces 12 sex charges in indictment"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Lyndreth
Lyndreth Wall, Ute Mountain Ute tribal councilman, attended a meeting with U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CD3) on Saturday at the Ute Mountain Ute Casino to discuss H.R. 8601, a companion bill to another piece of legislation in the U.S. Senate that would protect wildlife and water and land rights in the Dolores River Corridor. (Christian Burney\/Durango Herald)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

The U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office in Colorado on Friday announced that Lyndreth Hemp Wall of Towaoc, a member of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribal Council and a recent member of the Montezuma-Cortez Board of Education, has been indicted on 12 counts of sexual abuse on tribal land.<\/p>\n

Wall has been a prominent figure in Cortez and Towaoc politics and education for years.<\/p>\n

He was sworn in Nov. 3 for a third term as councilman for the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe after winning a recount of the election by six votes on Oct. 24, as confirmed by a source from the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe.<\/p>\n

He also is a former member of the Montezuma-Cortez RE-1 Board of Education. Leland Collins was elected to Wall\u2019s seat in District D in November after losing the Tribal Council election to Wall the month before.<\/p>\n

And Wall was an outspoken supporter of Towaoc\u2019s Kwiyagat Community Academy, which opened in 2020.<\/p>\n

According to the indictment from a federal grand jury, Wall, 58, is alleged to have committed eight counts of sexual abuse and four counts of abusive sexual contact on the reservation.<\/p>\n

If Wall is convicted of the charges of alleged sexual abuse \u201cin Indian Country,\u201d he could face a sentence of life in prison.<\/p>\n

Wall made his first appearance in court on Friday at 9 a.m. in U.S. Magistrate Judge James Candelaria\u2019s courtroom in Durango. He was arrested on Thursday.<\/p>\n

Wall\u2019s arraignment, detention and discovery hearings are set for Thursday, Jan. 18 at 1 p.m. in U.S. District Court room 150 in Durango before Candelaria.<\/p>\n

The acts cited in the 12 counts allegedly occurred from 1997 to 2017. They involve four females, who were led to believe that Wall was acting as a \u201chealer engaged in traditional healing methods,\u201d during the alleged sexual acts. They also considered him to be \u201ca prominent figure\u201d in their \u201csocial group.\u201d<\/p>\n

Documents obtained by The Journal<\/em> said that Wall forced sexual acts on the victims through fear or threats, or the victim \u201cwas either incapable of appraising the nature of the conduct or was physically incapable of declining participation in, or communicating an unwillingness to engage in the sexual contact.\u201d<\/p>\n

At least one of the four women was under the age of 16, according to the grand jury indictment.<\/p>\n

Counts 1-3 involved Victim number 1, who was identified to be a female under 16 years old at the time of the abuse, which occurred on, about or between Jan. 4, 1997 to Jan. 3, 2013.<\/p>\n

The alleged acts of abuse were done twice in a room at Wall\u2019s home \u201cdesigned as a room for treating others by traditional methods\u201d and in a PT Cruiser vehicle.<\/p>\n

Counts 4-7 involved Victim number 2, a female, on, about or between Jan. 1, 2015 to July 7, 2017.<\/p>\n

The alleged assaults\/abuse took place in a room at his home twice, at his father\u2019s home after luring Victim 2 there with promises to \u201cprovide Victim 2 with meat\u201d and outside his car after driving Victim 2 home.<\/p>\n

Twice, Wall allegedly told her that he \u201cneeded to have sexual intercourse with Victim 2 to \u2018exchange energy\u2019 to treat Victim 2.\u201d<\/p>\n

Counts 8-9 involved Victim 3, a female and a friend of Victim 2. These counts took place on, about, or between Jan. 1, 2017 to July 11, 2017.<\/p>\n

The alleged assaults\/abuse of Victim 3 took place outside of a \u201cceremony\u201d Wall was reportedly performing at Victim 2\u2019s home, telling Victim 3 that he did it to \u201cprotect Victim 3 from men\u201d and at an outdoor location at the reservation.<\/p>\n

Counts 10-12 involved Victim 4, a female, on or about Jan. 1, 2014 to July 13, 2017.<\/p>\n

The first alleged account of Victim 4\u2019s assaults\/abuse occurred at Wall\u2019s home, where he became upset when she questioned why she needed to take her clothes off. Wall allegedly told her \u201cthat he needed to touch her to heal her, and Victim 4 was fearful of not being healed.\u201d<\/p>\n

The second count also took place at his home, and the third took place at a rural location on the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation. Again, when Victim 4 questioned why she needed to remove her clothes, Wall allegedly told her that if she refused, he would not heal a family member that she wanted to be healed.<\/p>\n

According to the indictment, these assaults\/abuse were performed \u201cwith the intent to abuse, humiliate, harass, degrade, arouse and gratify the sexual desires of a person.\u201d<\/p>\n

The FBI and BIA ask that anyone who has information about this case or other possible victims to call the FBI Denver office at (303) 629-7171.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lyndreth Hemp Wall faces at least eight counts of alleged sexual abuse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15897,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,524,144],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-29712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-sexual-assault","tag-towaoc"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29712"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80834,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29712\/revisions\/80834"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29712"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=29712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}