By Wheeler Cowperthwaite
Special to the SUN

A federal jury convicted a Dulce man of raping and molesting girl under age 12 and acquitted him on a charge of molesting a second girl under 12 following a multi-day trial in Albuquerque.

The jury convicted Herbert Ben Jr., 57, March 12, on two counts of aggravated sexual abuse following a three-day trial and acquitted him on a third count of abusive sexual contact, according to the jury verdict form.

Ben Jr. faces a minimum sentence of 30 years in prison and a maximum sentence of life.

A federal grand jury indicted Ben Jr. in 20122 for trying to rape a girl but prosecutors pleaded the case down to a non-sex offense and he served no prison time.

According to a U.S. Attorney’s Office press release, witnesses testified that he molested the two girls, under 12, between 2016 and 2022, and molested a high school-age girl in 2019 when she babysat his stepdaughters. Prosecutors also presented evidence that showed between 2010 and 2012, he molested another girl, a relative, while she was in elementary and middle school.

Ben Jr. has been held without bail since his arrest on May 17, 2023.

No sentencing date has been set.

According to court documents, the investigation into the rape and molestation cases appears to have started in 2022, when Ben Jr., his wife and his two stepdaughters, 8 and 12 at the time, were traveling from Shiprock to their house in Dulce. The wife and Ben Jr. started to argue, and the girls got out of his truck in Bloomfield. He then left them behind.

“While stranded in the parking lot of Farmers Market in Bloomfield, New Mexico, Jane Does 1 and 2 disclosed to (the wife) that Defendant had sexually molested both of them. (The wife) immediately reported Defendant to Bloomfield Police Department, prosecutor Zach Jones wrote in a motion to admit his post-disclosure conduct.

Jicarilla Apache Nation police later stopped him and found he appeared to be drunk, arrested him and noted that he was belligerent. Tribal police manually applied a stun gun to him, a tactic called pain compliance. After leaving his wife and two stepdaughters in Bloomfield, he called his son to say he was going to kill himself.

Ben Jr. allegedly molested the wife’s older daughter in a Farmington hotel room, which the older daughter told another sibling about in 2020, saying it happened a few years prior. The wife later spoke to her daughter about the molestation and told her she was sorry it happened. She told investigators she confronted Ben Jr., he denied it, but she was “uneasy” about leaving her two younger daughters with them, but stayed with him, Jones wrote in court documents.

Prosecutors pleaded down attempted rape in 2012

Ben Jr. was charged along with his father, Herbert Ben Sr., and Ben Sr.’s wife, Rosabelle Ben, and a family friend, Bruce Hamilton, in 2012, for the molestation and rape of a girl, 14 at the time, ac-cording to federal court documents.

The girl alleged Ben Jr. coerced her, at least six times, to take naked pictures of herself in his bath-room, using his mobile phone, and he tried to rape her once, when she was 12, and molested her also when she was 12, FBI Agent Steven Garbett wrote in an affidavit for an arrest warrant.

A grand jury, in 2012, only indicted him for the alleged attempted rape.

Ben Jr. pleaded down to a non-sex offense. In a plea agreement penned by prosecutor Jacob Wishard, Ben Jr. pleaded guilty to simple assault on a child, a misdemeanor, and prosecutors dis-missed a charge of attempted aggravated sexual abuse. He received no jail time and one year of supervised release. He was not required to register as a sex offender.

He admitted, in the plea deal, that he “touched or applied force” to the girl as he was frustrated that she was not yet ready for school, the same incident where the girl alleged he tried to rape her.

Ben Sr. and Hamilton both pleaded guilty to sexual abuse of a minor and received the same sentence: four years followed by supervised release for five years.

Rosabelle Ben pleaded guilty to accessory to sexual abuse of a minor and admitted letting Hamilton rape the girl in exchange for money and alcohol. She received a sentence of three years and four months followed by supervised release for five years.