California rock climber sentenced to life imprisonment for sexual assault

A California rock climber who repeatedly assaulted a lady in Yosemite National Park in 2016 with severe physical force received a life sentence on Tuesday, according to officials. In February, a jury found forty-year-old Charles Barrett guilty of one count of abusive sexual contact and two counts of aggravated sexual abuse. 

Since the park is located on federal ground, the crimes were punished at the federal level.

U.S. Attorney Phillip A. Talbert said in a news release that Barrett deserved a life sentence due to his history of sexual violence. “He used his status as a prominent climber to assault women in the rock-climbing community, and when his victims began to tell, Barrett responded by lashing out publicly with threats and intimidation," Talbert said in a statement in the release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California. "This case is a testament to the courage of the victims who reported these crimes."

Barrett used deceit and manipulation to sexually abuse a lady, who was 19 at the time, three times over the course of a weekend in 2016 when he was living in Yosemite and working for a private corporation. According to the sentencing statement, he once enticed her to a remote section of the forest where he raped her and "strangled her to the point that she feared death". 

Three additional women testified in court regarding Barrett's sexual assault in 2010, 2015, and 2016. The announcement stated that although the women's testimonies were deemed "relevant to the charged assaults," the assaults were not prosecuted "because they were outside federal jurisdiction."

Barrett made over 100 calls while incarcerated for this case, according to the prosecution, and he displayed no "remorse or regret" for them. According to a court document, Barrett described the ladies as "random girls saying whatever they wanted" and called the women's stories "wild" and "crazy" in a recent call made in May.

"Barrett’s jail calls continue to show a complete lack of remorse and a mentality of victimhood that cannot be rehabilitated," the document said. 

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