A Texas father of two was sentenced to 21 years in prison in Moscow on Tuesday after a court found him guilty of abusing his two sons in the US.
David Barnes, 66, was first arrested in January 2022, shortly after arriving in Russia to visit his children and their mother, his ex-wife, Svetlana Koptyaeva. Barnes applied for visitation rights at the time.
Koptyaeva was accused of unlawfully taking the children from their home in the US, prompting an Interpol warning for the two boys. The couple had an acrimonious divorce in which she accused him of sexually abusing their child.
His trial began in the fall of 2022, but was held non-consecutively. This week it was finally completed. During the proceedings, Barnes testified on his own behalf, reports said ABC news.
In response, his lawyer, Gleb Glinka, told the channel she was “shocked” by the verdict. “There was virtually no evidence on which the court could base that judgment.”
After the verdict, Koptyaeva rejected the claim that she had kidnapped her children. ‘I didn’t steal anyone. I was just protecting my children,” she said.
David Barnes was arrested in Moscow in January 2022, shortly after arriving in the Russian capital
During divorce proceedings, Svetlana Koptyaeva accused her husband of sexually abusing their children
Barnes learned his fate on Tuesday: He will spend 21 years in a Russian prison on child abuse charges
According to Russian media reports, the children were born in 2010 and 2014. The couple divorced in 2017.
An interference order in custody proceedings for Kopytaeva is still pending in Texas. As a result, Barnes is the children’s legal guardian in the US.
She had to give the boys’ passports to her lawyer so they could keep them during the custody proceedings.
The FBI believes Koptyaeva flew from Houston to Istanbul with the children.
Barnes was investigated by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services in 2018 over the abuse allegations, but this was quickly quashed. As of 2023, officials said Barnes had committed no crimes in the region that would require him to be held behind bars.
During the trial, Koptyaeva testified that she told police about the allegations against Barnes shortly after arriving in Moscow.
Speaking to ABC News, Koptyaeva said Barnes caused her children “suffering and pain” and that her actions were motivated by a desire to protect her children.
“He is a man who loves his children more than anything. “I don’t even have any joy in life because just knowing what he’s living in and the circumstances and what could come down after the trial scares the hell out of me,” his sister Carol said. NBC Houston in September 2022.
Carol said that when her brother arrived in Russia, he found an apartment in the same building as his ex-wife and planned to pursue a custody arrangement. When his ex-wife saw him there, she alerted the police.
“It’s just something you think about every day, and you’re devastated for him.” It’s just heartbreaking,” his other sister Margaret Aaron told the station.
A crowdfunding page has been set up for Barnes’ legal costs.
His friend, Chris Schiller, supported Barnes’ sister’s opinion of him.
‘He was the type of father whose children you would never see sitting alone in front of a computer or tablet. His children were his world,” Schiller said ABC Houston in 2022.
Unlike the cases of other high-profile Americans in Russia, such as Paul Whelan, Gershkovich and Brittney Griner, Barnes’ hearings were held so private that a U.S. Embassy representative was not even present.
After his conviction, Barnes’ family members told ABC News they hope he is part of a prisoner exchange, something Vladimir Putin alluded to during his softball interview with Tucker Carlson last week.
Before his pre-trial detention, Barnes was held in Moscow Detention Center 5, the same place where fellow countryman Trevor Reed was being held.
Reed was released in April 2022 in exchange for Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot convicted of drug smuggling
