An Oklahoma man who kidnapped his stepdaughter when she was 12 and took her to Mexico, where he fathered nine children with her before she was able to escape, has been sentenced to life in federal prison.
Henri Piette, 65, was sentenced to life on Thursday for charges of kidnapping and to a further 360 months, 30 days, for traveling with the intent to engage in sexual acts with a juvenile.
He was also ordered to pay a $50,000 fine and $50,067 in restitution to his victim, Rosalynn McGinnis.
Names of the victims of sexual crimes are generally withheld but McGinnis, who Piette says he married, went public with her story shortly before his arrest.
Piette was arrested in Mexico in September 2017, a year after his stepdaughter-turned-wife McGinnis escaped and contacted police. In 1997, he abducted her from her school in Oklahoma in retaliation against her mother, who he was in a relationship with at the time.
He took her to Mexico where McGinnis, now 33, said he forced her to ‘marry’ him. The pair had nine children and lived together in a filthy tent, undetected by US authorities for years.
In 2016, McGinnis – with the help of a mystery couple – fled with eight of the nine kids and sought help from a US embassy.
Piette was convicted of kidnapping in 2019. He denies wrongdoing.
McGinnis claims that Piette’s abuse began when she was 10 and he still lived in their family home in Wagoner. According to an affidavit filed in a federal court, he raped her for the first time when she was 10.
‘According to R. Doe (McGinnis), she remembered when she was around 11 years old, (Piette) took her to a van and married her,’ the affidavit says. ‘She added Piette gave her a ring and (Piette’s) son, Toby Piette, officiated the marriage.’
Prosecutors argued that over the course of the next two decades, Piette raped her repeatedly and inflicted physical and emotional abuse on her.
When he was eventually arrested, Piette said their sex had been consensual.
‘Most of it are lies,’ he told Fox23 News.
‘Ninety-nine percent are lies. I’m telling the truth.
‘I never raped any children. I made love to my wife. We were married’.
