PINE CITY, Minn. _ Preacher Victor Barnard, who pleaded guilty this month to raping teenage girls entrusted to his care, was sentenced to 30 years in prison Friday.
Barnard, who fled to Brazil to avoid prosecution, accepted a plea agreement Oct. 11 on two counts of felony sexual assault against two of the young women he isolated from their families and molested for years.
As part of the agreement, Barnard, 55, accepted two consecutive 15-year sentences that almost guarantee that the leader of the cultlike River Road Fellowship will spend most or all of his life behind bars.
Both victims approved the terms of the agreement.
The prison sentence Barnard agreed to was almost as lengthy as if he had been prosecuted on all 59 of the first- and third-degree assault charges against him, Pine County Attorney Reese Frederickson said at the time of the Oct. 11 court hearing.
Barnard's attorney, Dave Risk, said after the hearing that his client agreed to the deal and lengthy punishment to spare his victims and remaining followers the pain of a trial.
Barnard persuaded families in the River Road Fellowship to send their daughters to him, promising that a group of young women he called "maidens" would live lives of prayer and purity. Years later, two girls turned to Pine County authorities for help, saying Barnard began raping them almost as soon as he separated them from their families. They were 12 and 13 at the time.
When Pine County brought charges against him in 2014, he fled, setting off an international manhunt.
Barnard landed on the U.S. Marshals Service's most-wanted list. Brazilian authorities tracked him to a beachside resort town, where he was in hiding with one of his former "maidens"_ a young woman from a wealthy Brazilian family. He spent more than a year in a South American prison before he agreed to be extradited to Pine County in June.
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Staff Writer Jennifer Brooks contributed to this report.
