A Jicarilla Apache Nation tribal police officer has been charged with allegedly raping her prepubescent son and physically abusing one of her two daughters.
FBI agents charged Lory Muniz, 48, with aggravated sexual abuse and abuse of a child on April 17.
FBI Agent Jared Harshbarger wrote in court documents that Muniz is a Jicarilla Apache Nation police officer, a position that Muniz was allowed to keep after she was charged with child abuse in the Jicarilla Apache Tribal Court, where she received a deferred sentence, for many of the same underlying allegations of physical abuse.
Police Chief Joseph Schake wrote in a statement on Facebook that he was “extremely disappointed” to learn that one of his officers was the target of an investigation, even though his department allowed Muniz to come back to work after she finished serving a deferred sentence in the tribal court that he and his officers work with and in.
Muniz appears to be still employed, but “relieved of duties” pending an internal affairs investigation, he wrote.
Following a detention hearing on April 23, Magistrate Judge John Robbenhaar ordered that Muniz can be released pending trial if and when a bed opens up at the La Pasada Halfway House in Albuquerque, according to a minute sheet from the hearing.
Abuse
Harshbarger wrote in an affidavit for a criminal complaint that his investigation began on April 4, after Jicarilla Apache Police Department Detective Christopher Rafferty told the FBI that Muniz’s son, 13, told his father that Muniz raped him when he was between the ages of 7 and 11.
As Harshbarger investigated, he found that Muniz was charged with child abuse in the tribal courts in 2023 and she had not been allowed to see her children since that case was brought.
It’s unclear how Schake wouldn’t know about allegations of abuse against Muniz, upheld in the tribal court, since it wasn’t until her sentence deferment was over that Muniz was allowed to be a police officer again.
“After completing a period of deferred sentencing, MUNIZ returned to work as a police officer for the Jicarilla Apache Police Department on March 31, 2025,” Harshbarger wrote.
Five days later, FBI forensic interviewer Heather Kimbell interviewed the son, who said he was physically abused by Muniz between the ages of 7 and 11, and that it only stopped because of the tribal case against his mother.
“John Doe recalled one specific incident during this time frame in which MUNIZ grabbed John Doe while he was playing PlayStation in his bedroom,” Harshbarger wrote. “MUNIZ pulled John Doe into MUNIZ’S bedroom, where MUNIZ then threw John Doe against the wall, slapped him, punched him in the face, and punched him in the gut.”
After hitting him, Muniz would apologize and would also prevent him from going to school, lest his injuries be spotted, Harshbarger wrote.
The boy said he was also molested and raped between ages 6 and 12.
“If John Doe did not do what MUNIZ wanted, MUNIZ would slam him onto the bed and either slap or punch him,” Harshbarger wrote.
She would also grab his hand and molest him. She would also rape him in the shower, he wrote.
“If John Doe tried to say no, MUNIZ would slap him,” he wrote.
The boy’s sister, 19, said she was abused between the ages of 5 and 15 or 16, ending in 2021, he wrote.
“She reported that during ages 5 to 13, the physical abuse happened on a weekly basis, but the abuse lessened from 13 to 16, with the physical abuse happening approximately monthly,” Harshbarger wrote.
When she was 5, she told her mother she had to go to the bathroom while at church, and her mother told her to hold it. When she got home, she ran to the bathroom, but didn’t make it and urinated in her dress. Muniz hit her and, while holding her arm, pushed her hard into the toilet bowl, breaking her arm.
The other daughter, 14, said when she was a baby, she drew on the bed with lipstick and her sister took responsibility for it and her mother broke her older sister’s arm on the toilet, corroborating her sister’s memory of the broken arm, if not the exact circumstances, Harshbarger wrote.
“Jane Doe 2 also reported that when Jane Doe 2 was approximately 11 years of age, John Doe spilled a fruit cup, which angered MUNIZ,” he wrote. “John Doe was taken into the bathroom by MUNIZ. Jane Doe 2 could hear MUNIZ slapping and hitting John Doe in the bathroom.”
She was also “aware” that her brother was sleeping in the same bed as their mother and that he told her that she would touch him “in an inappropriate way while they slept together.”
“John Doe told Jane Doe 2 that at those times, MUNIZ would touch him “weird,” and he felt really scared,” Harshbarger wrote.
No more court dates have been set.