Yosemite climber receives life sentence for sexually abusing a woman

YOSEMITE – A well-known Yosemite National Park climber has been sentenced to life in prison for sexually assaulting a woman in the climbing community, prosecutors said Tuesday.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California announced in a press release that 40-year-old Charles Barrett was convicted of two counts of aggravated sexual abuse and one count of abusive sexual contact. He was already sentenced in February 2024.

The crimes were committed during a weekend in Yosemite National Park in August 2016. The victim was in the park for a weekend of hiking and was sexually assaulted three times by Barrett, according to prosecution evidence released at trial. Barrett had lived in Yosemite and worked there for a private company.

Three other women testified during the trial that they had also been sexually abused by Barrett. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, however, these incidents were not charged because they were outside of federal jurisdiction. However, they were allowed to be admitted at trial because they were relevant to the three charges on which Barrett was convicted.

Barrett, who was arrested in August 2022 for the current case, made hundreds of calls while in custody, repeatedly threatened the aforementioned victims with violence and filed lawsuits claiming they worked together to ruin his life, prosecutors said.

In 2017, Barrett knowingly visited a rock climbing gym that the victim at trial attended. She told the gym’s owner about Barrett’s attack, and Barrett harassed and threatened her for several years, prosecutors said.

In August 2022, Barrett was also convicted of making criminal threats in January 2022.