Harris June 22, 2022 3:19 pm
Image source: CRYSTA ABELSETH, John Barnes
A Louisiana judge overturned an earlier decision to give her father full custody after the mother of the child accused the man of pregnancy by raping her.
Online records obtained by people confirmed that Judge Jeffrey Cashe issued an order on Tuesday to temporarily transfer actual custody of Crysta Abelseth and John Barnes’ 15-year-old daughter to a third-party guardian.
According to the ruling, Abelsces, 32, and Barnes, 46, will take turns guarding the girl on the weekend. Both parents must sign the butler designated by the court.
Cashe also decided to appoint her own lawyer for the teenage daughter on Tuesday.
Abelseth claims Barnes raped her in late 2005 when she was 16 and he was 30. Barnes has not been charged with a crime related to the rape charge.
On March 21, 2022, Cash granted Barnes full custody of the girl despite allegations of sexual, physical and verbal abuse of children. The allegations were first submitted by a school counselor to the state’s Department of Children and Family Services. Barnes has not been charged with the abuse charge.
Cashe also ordered Abelseth to pay child support to Barnes, who denied all of Abelseth’s allegations and called the allegations “absolutely, explicitly wrong” in an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital on Monday.
"This is a lie," Barnes told Fox News Digital. "She was in a bar with a fake ID card and told everyone that she was a college student. I didn't know she was only 16 years old and I didn't rape her."
Court documents people viewed, including DNA test results, confirmed that Barnes was the biological father of Abelsse's daughter. If sexual contact is voluntary, it will still constitute statutory rape, as Barnes insists. In Louisiana in 2005, the age of consent was 17, just like today.
In 2015, Abeleth filed a lawsuit against Barnes in the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Office, claiming that he raped her on December 13, 2005, when they were both drinking at a bar in Hammond. Abelseth told investigators that Barnes had asked her to take a ride home. Instead, she said, he took her to his residence in Ponchatoula. “I woke up naked on the bathroom floor,” Abelses wrote in her statement, saying she could not agree because she lost consciousness in the encounter.
Abelseth further claimed in her written statement that Barnes threatened to seek full custody of the girl if she filed criminal charges against him.
Barnes told Fox Numbers, “What I’ve been trying to do is protect my daughter,” Barnes told Fox News Numbers.
Related: A woman allegedly raped as a teenager loses custody of the child accused of rapist and must pay child support
Court records show that Abels' 2015 complaint was not allocated to detectives until this year. The Tanjipaho Diocese Sheriff’s Office acknowledged in a statement that they did not conduct proper investigations into the allegation and said the case had been handed over to prosecutors on Wednesday. "When tracing the case back to the first complaint on July 1, 2015, it was found that the report never entered the designated investigation through appropriate channels within the department," the statement read. "So, our department absolutely lost the ball and we must admit our mistake. It was a mistake, however, it never became a problem before or after and we must make sure that we remained that way."
Abelseth said in the document that she had not reported the alleged rape case for years because she believed the victim could call the police only 24 hours after such crimes occurred. She finally reported the alleged rape 30 years after learning that the statute of limitations for the rape was the victim at the age of 18. The custody battle for
began in 2011, and after the girl was 5 years old, Barnes learned that he might have a child.Abelseth told people that she didn’t know how he discovered his daughter’s existence, but Barnes told Fox News Digital that it was she who told him he might be a father.
Barnes took Abels to court, and once the parent-child relationship was determined, Barnes sought and obtained common custody of the child, although they were very old when Abels became pregnant. Barnes sued the girl’s sole custody in May 2015, accusing Abelses of leaving the man at home overnight while his daughter was present.
"Men come in and out of my kid's life," he told Fox News Digital. "She has had three husbands in six years and is not healthy."
Judge Kash took over the case in August 2015. Six months later, the two sides reached a split guardianship agreement, and Abelses was ordered to pay Barnes $78.41 a month. The amount increased to $117.72 per month in 2017.
Abelseth demanded restrictions on Barnes' custody, but Cashe rejected the motion. A few months later, the judge ruled that Abels had defied allegedly given his daughter a cell phone. In previous decisions, Cash banned girls from owning their cell phones.
Barnes told Fox News Digital that he had applied for an expanded custody in December 2020, saying Abelses was irresponsible as a parent. He told the site that he did not want his daughter to have another phone after learning that there were inappropriate pictures and videos on her previous phone.
On February 2, 2022, Cash found Abel Seth despised her on the phone and asked her to pay $500. He told his mother again not to call the girl.
At a hearing in Cashe, a charge of child abuse involving Barnes was raised and Abeleth demanded full custody. But Cash said no criminal charges were filed against Barnes and the evidence failed to support his allegations of child abuse. A few days later, Barnes applied for full custody, claiming that Abelses provided their daughter with a second call. Cashe approved the request the same day.
Abelseth tells people that the allegation that Barnes made that she provided her cell phone to her daughter was "false".
Barnes and Cash did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Barnes said in an interview with Fox News Digital that he just wanted to provide the best service for his "very smart" daughter, who had the desire to be a nurse. “She has a very promising future,” he told the site. “I want to keep that and keep her on the right track, just as any caring parent would like their children.”
The issue of custody of the daughter will be decided in a trial scheduled to begin on July 15.
