Man jailed for life for kidnapping and raping stepdaughter for 20 years
A man who kidnapped his stepdaughter before forcing her into marriage and fathering nine children with her has been sentenced to life in prison.
Henri Piette, 65, was jailed for life for charges of kidnapping and received a further 30 sentences for engaging in sexual acts with a juvenile, Fox News reported.
“For 20 years he inflicted extreme physical and emotional abuse on the victim and her children,” attorney Brisan Kuester said in a statement.
He was arrested in 2017 after his victim Rosalynn McGinnis, now 35, contacted authorities following her escape a year earlier with eight of her children.
Ms McGinnis was just 12-years-old when she was kidnapped in 1997.
The US man abducted her in 1994 while she was at her Oklahoma school, allegedly in retaliation against her mother, who he was married to at the time.
Piette took his stepdaughter to Mexico where she claims she was constantly raped.
She gave birth to nine of his children, two before her 18th birthday.
Piette and Ms McGinnis lived in poor conditions in a makeshift home.
In 2016, she managed to escape Piette and Mexico with eight of her nine children.
In an interview with Dr Oz last year, Ms McGinnis explained how a mystery couple who spotted her with her children and Piette shopping, helped pay for her groceries and ended up rescuing her from her hell.
"We were in the grocery store, we were in front of them, and we had a bunch of kids, of course, and it was me and Henri Piette,” she told Dr Oz.
"Actually, we were short on the bill to pay for the groceries and they paid it for us,” she said, adding the couple may have been suspicious because of “the age difference and all the children...”
When the couple asked Ms McGinnis where they lived she said Piette became nervous and moved their location almost immediately but the couple tracked them down.
"We moved and they found out where we were and she's like ‘I know there's something wrong. If you can ever get away, I'll help you’," Ms McGinnis recalls the woman telling her.
With the help of that couple Ms McGinnis fled to the US embassy and returned to the States.
McGinnis revealed that she kept the details of her relationship with Piette a secret from their children and it wasn’t until she escaped back to the US that she told her children the truth about their father.
"He would tell them they're animals. He would treat them like animals. [He would tell them] the only reason that they're alive is because your mother's here,” she said.
Piette was convicted of kidnapping charges in early 2019.
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