A prominent professional climber and guidebook author who was convicted earlier this year of sexual assault in Yosemite National Park was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced.
A federal jury found Charles Barrett, 40, guilty in February of two counts of aggravated sexual abuse and one count of improper sexual contact that occurred in Yosemite National Park, according to the U.S. District Attorney’s Office Eastern California. Court records showed Barrett sexually assaulted a woman, then 19, three times during an August 2016 weekend.
Prosecutors argued that Barrett’s life sentence was due to his “long history of violence against women, his serial sexual predation against female climbers who admired him, his obstruction of justice and his failure to accept one’s responsibilities.”
The climber, who has a history of domestic violence, drunken driving and criminal threats, was also accused of sexually assaulting three other women, according to court records. Prosecutors said the three victims were tested against Barrett during the Yosemite National Park trial because their testimony was “relevant to the accused assaults.”
But the assaults were not charged because they did not fall under federal jurisdiction, prosecutors said. Barrett was prosecuted at the federal level due to the designation of Yosemite National Park as federal land.
U.S. Attorney Phillip Talbert said in a statement Tuesday that Barrett had “used his status as a prominent climber to assault women in the climbing community, and when his victims began to come forward, Barrett responded by publicly engaging in threats and intimidation.”
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“Showed no memory or regret”
Barrett, a native of Santa Rosa, California, was “primarily known for pioneering some of California’s most challenging bouldering routes,” according to a 2019 Tahoe Quarterly article. He also wrote a series of guidebooks detailing difficult climbs in the eastern Sierra Nevada, where he lived for many years, as well as in Yosemite National Park.
According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Barrett was living and working for a private company in Yosemite National Park in 2016. In August of that year, the victim was visiting the park for a weekend hiking trip when Barrett l sexually assaulted her three times. .
Court documents showed that in the first incident, Barrett isolated the victim alone in the woods after initially inviting her to watch a meteor shower with friends. The next day, Barrett assaulted the victim twice before she left the park and returned to her parents’ home.
“Over the remaining years, Barrett took steps to intimidate and silence the victim,” according to court documents. In 2019, Barrett texted the victim to let her know he knew where she was and the victim received random hang-up phone calls from burner numbers.
Barrett also interfered with the victim’s ability to find employment and posted threats of legal action on social media, according to court documents. One of the victims, Barrett, threatened to testify that he assaulted her in March 2010 at a friend’s house.
Court documents say Barrett harassed this victim online for several years after the 2010 incident. And seven years later, in 2017, prosecutors said Barrett “deliberately climbed into a climbing gym where the victim was present.
In January 2022, Barrett went to the emergency room and threatened to kill the victim because she “ruined his life,” according to court documents. He was convicted in August 2022 for the threats he made.
While in custody for the Yosemite National Park case, prosecutors said Barrett made hundreds of phone calls and “showed no remorse or regret.”
“Instead, he threatened violence and vindictive prosecution against the victims, claiming they had hatched a plot to ruin his life,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a news release.
Incidents of sexual assault in the climbing community
The majority of sexual assault cases end without a conviction, according to the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN), the nation’s largest organization fighting sexual violence. RAINN data found that out of 1,000 incidents of sexual assault, 975 perpetrators “will go free.”
The National Sexual Violence Resource Center has noted that sexual assault, harassment and abuse are widespread societal problems. In the climbing community – which has grown in recent years due to a spike in the sport’s popularity – a 2018 survey by Safe Outside found that of more than 5,300 respondents, 47% of Women and 16% of men reported experiencing at least one incident of sexual harassment or aggressive behavior in an escalation context.
Safe Outside, an independent grassroots initiative, also played a role in the case against Barrett, Outside Magazine reported in January. A data analyst for the group had found similarities between incidents reported in Northern California and Safe Outside linked to victims who confirmed Barrett committed the assaults, according to Outside Magazine.
“Four years after launching the SafeOutside investigation and subsequent initiative, the first arrest resulting directly from our work has FINALLY occurred,” the group said on Facebook in 2022 after announcing the arrest by Barrett.
If you or someone you know has been a victim of sexual violence, RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline offers free, confidential 24/7 support to survivors and their loved ones in English and in Spanish at: 800.656.HOPE (4673) and Hotline.RAINN.org and in Español RAINN.org/es.