A 63-year-old Bristol man has been charged with first-degree sexual assault after being accused of engaging in sexual acts with a child in his care thousands of times over the span of a decade.
The allegations span from 2004 to 2015 and during that time, the accuser said the suspect impregnated her when she was just 13 years old.
According to an arrest warrant, the accuser came forward with the claims in May of 2023, telling Bristol police that she was sexual assaulted by Roger Barriault upwards of 4,000 times over the course of 10 years.
“She was about eight [years old] when she first met Roger Barriault,” said Nate Baber, attorney for the accuser. “She met him by way of an introduction by her foster mother at the time. That’s when the abuse happened, while she was in foster care. She was first introduced to him, and he immediately began targeting her and abusing her. At about nine or 10 is when she became full-time in his home and [the] abuse ramped up.”
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Baber said the situation is a massive failure by the state Department of Children and Families (DCF), as he said the girl’s foster parent left her in the care of Roger and Darlene Barriault, without DCF’s knowledge.
“This foster girl, she was in foster care since she was six months old,” Baber said. “She was placed in a foster home by DCF. She was then allowed to move to another house without DCF even knowing about it and was there for a year before DCF even suspected something. The foster mother was in North Carolina.”
After she was impregnated, the accuser told police that she was raped almost daily until age 20.
“She fell through the cracks. She fell through canyons,” Baber said. “The lack of oversight and awareness and supervision of this child who was in foster care, at at least one point, is so alarming that it begs a complete investigation by DCF and anyone involved in it as to how this could have happened.”
“There’s limited information that I can share,” DCF Commissioner Vannessa Dorantes said on Thursday. “But what I can share unequivocally is that the department did not place this child in this home.”
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In an emailed statement, DCF told NBC Connecticut that the Barriaults were not foster parents to the accuser, and she was not placed in their home by the department, nor were they ever licensed to care for her.
“The family received guardianship of the victim via the Probate Court as a child,” a DCF spokesperson wrote.
Baber said DCF’s own records tell a different story.
“Darlene was my client’s foster mother. They used foster mother, foster father, foster child, foster parents repeatedly from 2006 to 2015,” he said. “They don’t even know what their role was. How can that be?”
NBC Connecticut asked DCF if the accuser was a foster child prior to 2004 but didn’t hear back.
Baber claims people in the home reported the alleged abuse to DCF, and they failed in that capacity, too. According to the warrant, a family member told Bristol police that they witnessed Barriault “grooming” the accuser.
“There were multiple reports of abuse with my client even before he impregnated her,” Baber said. “They failed…in investigating guardianship, in controlling the situation as managers of foster care, and investigating reports of abuse and neglect that spanned 12 years.”
“It took sexual assault allegations for [DCF] to even be aware that this child, who is 10, 11 years old at the time, was living with this person. Didn’t even know it. So, did they place her with the Barriaults? Maybe not, according to them. Doesn’t matter. The fact that you didn’t is because she was already living with them. You’d lost track of her. It’s disturbing.”
The accuser is now 28, and Baber said she is doing well despite the odds.
“[She wants] for this to either not happen again, or make sure that if there’s anyone else that’s been abused that they have the ability to come forward.”
NBC Connecticut has reached out to Roger and Darlene Barriault, as well as Roger's attorney, but has not yet heard back.
Roger Barriault is due in court on Feb. 14.
