Notorious Rock Climber Sentenced to Life for Sexually Assaulting Women at Yosemite

A well-known Cal­i­for­nia rock climber, Charles Bar­rett, has been exposed as a “mon­ster” sex preda­tor who lever­aged his fame to lure and repeat­ed­ly rape women at Yosemite Nation­al Park.

The 40-year-old was sen­tenced to life in prison on Tues­day after being found guilty of two counts of aggra­vat­ed sex­u­al assault and one count of abu­sive sex­u­al contact.

Accord­ing to the details, Bar­rett sex­u­al­ly assault­ed a 19-year-old woman three times dur­ing a week­end in 2016, at one point stran­gling her to the point where she feared for her life while he raped her. Three oth­er women also came for­ward with sim­i­lar sto­ries of Bar­rett sex­u­al­ly abus­ing them in 2010, 2015, and 2016.

Pros­e­cu­tors revealed that Bar­rett exhib­it­ed a com­plete lack of remorse, even going so far as to claim the women were “ran­dom girls say­ing what­ev­er they want­ed” and their sto­ries were “wild” and “crazy” dur­ing a recent jail call.

His for­mer climb­ing cen­ter man­ag­er described him as a “mon­ster” who used his sta­tus in the rock climb­ing com­mu­ni­ty to prey on vul­ner­a­ble women.

Despite hav­ing numer­ous crim­i­nal pro­tec­tive orders and restrain­ing orders filed against him by past vic­tims over the years, Bar­rett man­aged to avoid seri­ous pun­ish­ment through plea deals and light sentences. 

How­ev­er, this lat­est con­vic­tion has final­ly put an end to his reign of ter­ror, with the fed­er­al judge sen­tenc­ing him to life behind bars.