photo by: Dylan Lysen/Journal-World

Thomas A. Spotted Horse speaks to his attorney, Sarah Swain, in Douglas County District Court on Tuesday, Nov. 30, 2021, after he was sentenced to 122 months in prison for two counts of aggravated indecent liberties with a child.

A former Haskell Indian Nations University housing supervisor has been ordered to spend more than 10 years in prison after he was convicted of sex crimes against two children that spanned a decade.

Douglas County District Court Judge Amy Hanley sentenced Thomas A. Spotted Horse, 64, to 122 months in prison on Tuesday for his conviction of two counts of aggravated indecent liberties with a child, which is a level-three felony.

Once he is released from prison, Spotted Horse is required to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life. Hanley also credited Spotted Horse with 1,191 days, or a little more than three years, for the time he has spent in custody while the case was pending.

Spotted Horse’s sentence comes after he pleaded no contest to the two felony charges through a plea agreement, which saw several more severe child sex crimes dropped by prosecutors, as the Journal-World previously reported.

However, Hanley’s sentence was more severe than what Spotted Horse and prosecutors had agreed to in the plea agreement. Prior to sentencing, Deputy District Attorney Joshua Seiden asked Hanley to sentence Spotted Horse to 59 months for each count, which would be the standard sentence for an individual with no prior criminal history.

But Hanley chose to sentence Spotted Horse to 61 months for each count, which is the aggravated suggested sentence under the state’s sentencing guidelines. It was also the maximum sentence Hanley could hand down, she said.

Hanley said she chose to sentence Spotted Horse to the maximum penalty because the victims in the case were children in his care and he used his role to “prey on their trust.”

One of the victims, who is now a married mother, told the court prior to the sentencing that she saw Spotted Horse as a father when she was a child and that she wanted to have a father-daughter relationship with him. But she said she never got that chance because he instead became “a monster” who sexually abused her.

While she said she did have some good memories with Spotted Horse, the bad experiences with him outweighed them.

“It’s hard to keep the good memories alive,” she said. “I had a monster, a narcissist, an abuser and a pedophile.”

Additionally, the woman said she now suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and she has difficulty trusting any male figures, including her husband. But she said she knows she will eventually forgive Spotted Horse for his actions.

photo by: Dylan Lysen/Lawrence Journal-World

Thomas A. Spotted Horse listens to Douglas County District Court Judge Amy Hanley on Tuesday, Nov. 30, 2021, as she sentenced him to more than 10 years in prison for sexually abusing two children.

Meanwhile, the mother of the second victim told the court through a written statement that when she learned that Spotted Horse had abused her daughter she felt helpless and guilty for allowing her child to be put in harm’s way.

She also said she couldn’t understand how the sex crimes could have occurred because Spotted Horse was a religious man. She said her daughter also told her that she prayed every night that the abuse would end.

“Why did God allow this to happen to people who believed so much in him?” the woman said in her statement, which Seiden read to the court.

She then asked Hanley to sentence Spotted Horse to the highest penalty allowed, which Hanley did.

A statement written by the second victim was also provided to the court, but it was not read aloud. Additionally, after hearing from the victims, Spotted Horse chose not to speak to the court, declining an opportunity to apologize to the victims in front of the judge.

Spotted Horse was originally arrested on the charges in 2018, but the allegations of abuse date back to 2007 and continued through 2017, according to a charging document filed in 2018. One of the children was 5 when the alleged abuse began, and the other was 12, according to the complaint.

Spotted Horse was originally charged with six counts in all — three against each victim — of aggravated indecent liberties with a child and aggravated criminal sodomy, the Journal-World previously reported. Four of the counts were off-grid, which could have come with sentences of life imprisonment.

Spotted Horse — whose name has been spelled Spottedhorse or SpottedHorse in other references — was a recognized figure around Haskell.

The supervisor of housing, he retired in 2017 after 27 years with the university, the Haskell Indian Leader student newspaper reported at the time. Spotted Horse also delivered a pre-meeting blessing before at least one Haskell Board of Regents meeting in the spring of 2015.

Spotted Horse lived in Lawton, Okla., at the time of his arrest. He has remained in custody on a $500,000 bond during the entirety of his case, according to court records.