A New Town man was scheduled to be sentenced Thursday in federal court in Bismarck for sexual abuse of a young teenager on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in June 2015.

According to court documents, Robert Gene White Owl agreed to plead guilty to abusive sexual contact with the child, who was older than 12 but under the age of 16 at the time. Under the terms of a binding plea deal with the state, he would be sentenced to up to a year of home detention with location monitoring at the discretion of a probation officer and five years of supervised probation. The maximum sentence for the charge is two years in prison, a $250,000 fine, and up to lifetime supervised probation.

White Owl was indicted by a federal grand jury in March 2016 on two counts of sexual abuse of a minor. Under the terms of the plea deal, the indictment will be dismissed and the lesser charge of abusive sexual contact with a person would be filed.

– Andrea Johnson