Maddesyn’s Story
Last updated: November 22, 2021
Maddesyn George is a 27-year-old Native mother, a member of the Colville Confederated Tribes, and a survivor of domestic and sexual violence. She has been incarcerated since July 2020 for defending herself against a white man who raped and threatened her. On November 17, 2021, she was sentenced to serve 6.5 years in federal prison.
In July 2020, Maddesyn George was raped by a white man named Kristopher Graber whom she had previously considered a friend. The rape took place at Graber’s home in Omak, Washington. Maddesyn fled as soon as he fell asleep, taking the gun he had brandished, loaded in front of her, and waved around during the assault. She also took some of his money and drugs. The following day, Graber came looking for Maddesyn on the reservation. He found her sitting in the passenger seat of a parked car outside a friend’s house; the gun was visible on the floorboard of the car. Graber demanded that Maddesyn hand over the gun, money, and drugs, and when she refused, he grew irate and grabbed at her. Terrified, Maddesyn picked up the gun and fired a single shot. Graber died instantly. Eye witnesses confirmed her account of the shooting and attested that they believed her life was in danger.
Maddesyn was detained by tribal police and, without an attorney present, gave a detailed and unequivocal account of the rape and the events leading to the shooting. Instead of receiving support after suffering two traumatic events in the span of 24 hours, Maddesyn was jailed. She was never given access to a rape kit.
Maddesyn has been incarcerated since July 2020. Her only contact with her daughter, who was 4 months old at the time of her arrest, has been through a video screen; in-person visits remain prohibited because of the COVID–19 pandemic.
Because the shooting occurred on a reservation, Maddesyn was prosecuted by the federal government. After being incarcerated for more than a year, facing multiple charges, and fearing the unknowns of a jury trial, Maddesyn accepted a deal from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Washington that included pleading guilty to voluntary manslaughter and a charge of drug possession with intent to distribute. The prosecutors then recommended a punishment that significantly exceeded the sentencing guidelines for these charges: a prison term of 17 years and lifetime state supervision. They discredited and minimized Maddesyn’s account of rape, using her criminal record and the fact that she took drugs and money from Kristopher Graber to deny her victimization claim. At the same time, they willfully ignored the deceased’s well-documented history of violence against multiple women. As Maddesyn’s attorney said to The Intercept, the prosecutors told “a story of robbery by a drug-addicted Native woman, playing into stereotypes about substance use and Native people to undermine her claim of self-defense.”
The federal prosecution of Maddesyn inspired a broad-based grassroots campaign of Indigenous and anti-violence organizers to fight for the charges to be dropped before her November 17, 2021 sentencing hearing. Nearly 9,000 individuals from all 50 U.S. states and 47 different countries as well as more than 90 social justice organizations from the U.S. and Canada endorsed our call.
But the prosecution stuck to its racist, sexist, anti-survivor arguments to the bitter end, bringing witnesses to court to discredit Maddesyn’s account of rape and insisting to the Judge that United States v. Maddesyn Danielle George was “simply a drug trafficking case.” However, Judge Rosanna Peterson made it unequivocally clear that she found Maddesyn’s account of sexual assault to be credible and she challenged the prosecutors on their omission of Graber’s history of violence against women. The judge additionally pointed to the systemic uneven prosecution of drug charges as well as the failure of the US Attorney’s Office’s to prosecute Graber for violating federal gun laws. In further explaining her decision to limit Maddesyn’s sentence, Judge Peterson cited the Savanna’s Act and the Not Invisible Act, signed into law in October 2020, which are designed to address the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women (MMIW).
While the Biden Administration and Department of Justice have pledged more resources to addressing the MMIW crisis, they must also take steps to address the intersecting crisis of the abuse-to-prison pipeline that has entrapped Maddesyn and many other colonized and racialized survivors of sexual and domestic violence. The DOJ that has promised action to end the MMIW crisis and the DOJ that criminalizes Indigenous survivors who act in self-defense are one and the same, and the contradiction in policy becomes clear in a case like Maddesyn’s. Incarceration is a tool of Indigenous removal, and Maddesyn is now missing from her community.
The standard sentencing range for the two charges Maddesyn pleaded guilty to is 9–11 years in prison. Judge Peterson rejected the prosecutors’ motion for a sentence beyond that range and used her discretion to impose a sentence below it. The drug charge carried a mandatory minimum sentence of 5 years, and the judge sentenced Maddesyn to 6.5 years for the voluntary manslaughter charge, to be served concurrently. Maddesyn will get credit for her time served in the Spokane County jail, and she will also be eligible for “good time” credits and credit for participating in an intensive drug abuse program (RDAP). This means she could be home as soon as January 2025. Of course, Maddesyn’s family and supporters believe that she should be home now.
Maddesyn’s defense committee will continue to take her lead and support and organize with her and her family. To join us in this work, please visit the Take Action page on this site.