MINNESOTA
Star Tribune
By Jenna Ross, Jennifer Brooks and Pam Louwagie
Even after two young women stepped forward to say their minister had molested them as children and the sheriff’s office built its case, it took two years for the Pine County Attorney’s Office to bring charges.
The search is underway for Victor A. Barnard, the charismatic leader of the River Road Fellowship who convinced parents in his isolated flock to send their young daughters to live together near him as his “maidens.” Barnard, 52, faces 59 counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct with two of the girls, who told law enforcement that they were just 12 and 13 years old when the abuse began.
“We are frustrated in the length that it has taken,” said Pine County Sheriff Robin Cole, who sent investigators as far as Washington State to investigate Barnard, before turning the case over to Pine County Attorney John K. Carlson in 2012. And then he waited.
When the county attorney’s office brought charges, two years later, there was little substantial change beyond the evidence investigators submitted in late 2012, Cole said.
“The police investigate, we gather information and we forward it to the prosecutor. What the prosecutor does with that information is up to the prosecutor,” Cole said.
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