ALBUQUERQUE - Orlando Harvey, 25, an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation who resides in Bloomfield, N.M., was sentenced this morning in federal court in Santa Fe, N.M., to 18 months in prison for sexually abusing a minor. Harvey will be on supervised release for five years following his prison sentence. He also will be required to register as a sex offender.
Harvey was arrested on Dec. 22, 2014, on an indictment charging him with four counts of sexual abuse of a minor. According to the indictment, Harvey engaged in a sexual act with the victim, who was under 16 years of age, on four occasions between Aug. 2014 and Oct. 2014, on the Navajo Indian Reservation in San Juan County, N.M.
On Feb. 20, 2015, Harvey entered a guilty plea to Count 1 of the indictment, and admitted engaging in a sexual act with the 15-year-old victim in Aug. 2014. Harvey admitted knowing that the victim was only 15 years old when he picked her up at school and drove her to his residence where they engaged in a sexual act. He also acknowledged manipulating the victim into engaging in a sexual act with him.
This case was investigated by the Shiprock office of the Navajo Nation Division of Public Safety and the Farmington office of the FBI. The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Raquel Ruiz Velez and Elaine Ramirez as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by United States Attorneys’ Offices and DOJ’s Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit http://www.justice.gov/psc/.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the United States Attorneys
