Prosecutor: Chasing Horse `grooming' girls to replace wives
Nevada prosecutors told a judge Wednesday that a former “Dances with Wolves” actor accused of sexually abusing Indigenous women and girls for decades should remain in custody because he was “grooming young children” to replace his older wives when he was arrested last week.
The new details in the criminal case against Nathan Chasing Horse, who played young Sioux tribe member Smiles a Lot in Kevin Costner's 1990 Oscar-winning film, were revealed in a packed North Las Vegas courtroom before Justice of the Peace Craig Newman set bail at $300,000 and called the 46-year-old a danger to the community. Under Nevada law, Chasing Horse would have to pay 15% of the bail amount — $45,000 — to secure his release.
Chasing Horse had been held without bail since Jan. 31, when SWAT officers and detectives took him into custody and raided the home he shares with his five wives in North Las Vegas.
Clark County Chief Deputy District Attorney William Rowles told Newman that investigators found journal entries during the raid that he said detailed “ongoing” grooming.
“There is evidence that this individual is still in the process of grooming young children to replace the others as they grow up,” Rowles said.
Nevada authorities have described Chasing Horse in more than a hundred pages of court documents as the leader of a cult known as The Circle, whose followers believed Chasing Horse, as a “medicine man,” could communicate with higher beings.
Police said he abused that position to physically and sexually assault women and girls and take underage wives starting in the early 2000s across multiple states and Canada.
In Nevada, Chasing Horse is charged with eight felonies, including sex trafficking, sexual assault and child abuse. He has not entered a plea.
Investigators and victims had been expected to speak in court Wednesday, because Nevada law requires prosecutors to show convincing evidence that a defendant should remain jailed as they await trial. But after delays in the proceedings, the judge heard only from Rowles, who requested $2 million bail, and Chasing Horse's public defender, Kristy Holston, who asked the judge to set bail at $50,000.
About two dozen of Chasing Horse's relatives and friends filled the courtroom in a show of support, and after Newman granted him bail, the supporters cheered outside the courthouse, waving signs that translate to “Justice for Chasing Horse.”