Climber receives life sentence for sexual assault in Yosemite National Park

A well-known professional rock climber and guidebook author who was convicted of sexual assault in Yosemite National Park earlier this year was sentenced to life in prison on Tuesday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced.

A federal jury found 40-year-old Charles Barrett guilty in February of two counts of aggravated sexual abuse and one count of abusive sexual contact in Yosemite National Park, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California said. According to court documents, Barrett abused a then-19-year-old woman three times over a weekend in August 2016.

Prosecutors argued that Barrett’s life sentence was due to his “long history of violence against women, his repeated sexual assaults on admiring female climbers, his obstruction of justice and his refusal to accept responsibility.”

The climber, who has previous convictions for domestic violence, drunk driving and criminal threats, was also accused of sexually assaulting three other women, according to court records. Prosecutors said the three victims testified against Barrett in the Yosemite National Park trial because their testimony was “relevant to the assaults charged.”

But the assaults were not charged because they were outside federal jurisdiction, prosecutors said. Barrett was charged at the federal level because Yosemite National Park is designated federal land.

U.S. Attorney Phillip Talbert said in a statement Tuesday that Barrett “exploited his status as a well-known climber to attack women in the climbing community, and when his victims began to speak out, Barrett responded by publicly responding with threats and intimidation.”

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“Showed no remorse or regret”

Originally from Santa Rosa, California, Barrett was “best known for pioneering some of the most difficult bouldering routes in California,” 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, and 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 visited the park for a weekend of hiking when Barrett 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 attacked the victim two more times before the victim left the park and returned to her parents’ house.

“Over the course of the remaining years, Barrett took steps to intimidate and silence the victim,” court documents state. In 2019, Barrett texted the victim so she knew he knew of her whereabouts, and the victim received random calls from disposable numbers that hung up on her.

Barrett also prevented the victim from finding work and threatened the victims with lawsuits on social media, court documents state. One of the victims Barrett threatened testified that he attacked her at a friend’s house in March 2010.

According to court documents, Barrett harassed the victim online for several years after the 2010 incident. And seven years later, in 2017, prosecutors alleged that Barrett “intentionally climbed at a rock climbing gym that the victim attended.”

In January 2022, Barrett entered an emergency room and threatened to kill the victim because she had “ruined his life,” court documents say. In August 2022, he was convicted of his threats.

While Barrett was in custody in connection with the Yosemite National Park case, prosecutors said he made hundreds of phone calls and “showed no remorse or regret.”

“Instead, he threatened violence and revenge against the victims, claiming they were plotting to ruin his life,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a press release.

Sexual assault in the climbing community

According to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), the nation’s largest anti-sexual violence organization, the majority of sexual assault cases end without conviction. RAINN data shows that out of 1,000 sexual assault cases, 975 perpetrators “walk away free.”

The National Sexual Violence Resource Center found that sexual assault, harassment and abuse are widespread societal problems. In the climbing community — which has grown in recent years due to the sport’s skyrocketing popularity — a 2018 survey by Safe Outside found that of more than 5,300 respondents, 47% of women and 16% of men reported being sexually harassed or assaulted at least once while climbing.

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 noticed similarities between incidents reported in Northern California, and Safe Outside referenced victims who confirmed that Barrett committed the assaults, Outside Magazine said.

“Four years after we launched the SafeOutside survey and subsequent initiative, we FINALLY had our first arrest directly as a result of our work,” the group said on Facebook in 2022 after Barrett’s arrest was announced.

If you or someone you know has experienced sexual violence, RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline offers survivors and their loved ones free, confidential support 24/7 in English and Spanish at: 800.656.HOPE (4673) and Hotline.RAINN.org and en Español RAINN.org/es.

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