Crysta Abelseth’s life was changed forever in 2005 when her friend decided to leave early for dinner after she accepted the journey home from John Barnes, now 46, according to the research team of Hammond local news station WBRZ.

A Louisiana mother who was raped at the age of 16 by a 30-year-old man has been ordered to give up custody of her daughter and pay her child support.

Instead of bringing me home, he brought me home. Abelseth, raped me on the couch in the exit room when I walked in.

Crysta Abelseth Age

Crysta Abelseth is 32 years old.

Crysta Abelseth Statment

A Louisiana woman who said she got pregnant from her rapist 16 years ago, when she was 16 and 30 years old, was denied custody of her child, ABC’s WBRZ reported. Weeks ago, a judge awarded full custody of Crysta Abelseth’s teenage daughter to John Barnes, whom she identifies as Abelseth’s rapist. The judge also asked Barnes to pay child support—because Barnes claimed Abelseth had given his teenage daughter a cell phone.

Abelseth now speaks about the staggering ill-treatment she has faced from the legal system that led to this nightmarish outcome, as well as the routine threats she has received from Barnes, who she says demonstrates both her “connections in the justice system” and her talents. take your child from him. Her story is yet another shocking proof of why many victims of sexual violence fear and distrust the police and the courts.

Abelseth says she met him in 2005 when Barnes thought he was going to drive her home from a local restaurant in Tangipahoa, Louisiana. Instead, she took him to his home, where he said he had raped her. Even if the encounter had been consensual, as Abelseth insisted, it would have been illegal in Louisiana for being under 17.

When Abelseth became pregnant, she let those around her believe she was impregnated by her then-boyfriend, even though she knew Barnes was her father. Abelseth gave birth to a healthy baby girl in 2006 and “everything was fine,” she told the WBRZ. A DNA test proved that Barnes was actually the father, and Abelseth said a judge had given Barnes 50/50 custody of their daughters.

In 2015, Abelseth filed a criminal complaint against Barnes for rape, and understandably attributed her belated action to her ignorance of the law. “I thought there was nothing I could do about it if I didn’t report Barnes the next day,” Abelseth said. It wasn’t until a trauma counselor she spoke to said that after she turned 18 she had 30 years to report the incident and she knew her options.

But nothing has happened since he filled out the report almost a decade ago, according to Abelseth: “He was never assigned to a detective and nothing was investigated.” The Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Office told the WBRZ that the investigation into the case is ongoing, but that the court records against Barnes, Abelseth, and the charges against him are “mysteriously sealed.”

Police inaction and the local judge’s recent decision to grant custody of Barnes are all the more dubious given Barnes’ affiliation with local law enforcement: He appears to own Gumbeaux Digital Branding, a website in Ponchatoula, Louisiana, and his own website, Ponchatoula. lists . Police as a customer. (Ponchatoula is a city in Tangipahoa Parish.) “They have good connections,” Abelseth told the WBRZ of Barnes. “He has threatened me multiple times saying he has ties to the justice system, so I better be careful and he can take it away whenever he wants. I didn’t believe him until it happened.”

Lawyers at the Louisiana Foundation Against Sexual Assault (LFASA) say they’ve never seen a case like Abelseth’s before. “It seems pretty straightforward not only that a crime has occurred, but that as a result of the crime that person hasn’t taken custody of the child,” an LFASA attorney told the WBRZ. All this again because Barnes told a judge that Abelseth had committed the alleged gross violation of giving his teenage daughter a cell phone – that Barnes allegedly raped and impregnated her when Abelseth was 16 and herself 30.

A hearing is scheduled for next month to possibly revoke Barnes’ parental rights. However, even if the court reverses its previous decision, it will be damaged. Abelseth tells the WBRZ that after years of conflict with Barnes in court, he sank into legal fees and now has child support payments to him. She has to face and endure a protracted legal battle with the man she identifies as her rapist, all the while parenting as a single mother and a rape victim torn apart by the legal system. Yet seven years after his report, the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Office argues his case is “still open”, even though Barnes’ DNA and confession show the boy’s father was still 30 years old and Abelseth under 17.

The unique morality of Abelseth’s case points to a wider crisis in how rape victims are systematically punished, sometimes criminalized and bankrupt like Abelseth, as they come forward and even try to protect themselves or their families. As Jezebel previously reported, expensive defamation lawsuits or mere threats are routinely used to silence victims of sexual violence or force them to pay their rapists.

Survivors are exponentially more likely to be imprisoned than perpetrators – 90 percent of women incarcerated have experienced sexual violence before entering the system, a phenomenon known as the sexual assault-to-prison pipeline. Earlier this year, the San Francisco Police Department used DNA evidence gathered from a victim’s rape kit to charge him with a separate crime years later. A 2020 survey said 24 percent of victims of intimate partner violence had been arrested or threatened with arrest when they called the police for help.

Not surprisingly, given figures like this and stories like Abelseth’s, sexual assaults are overwhelmingly not reported to law enforcement. After all, where will the survivors turn to if the legal system that served them were to turn their children over to the rapist and force them to pay him child support? “is it still open?”