A Louisiana judge has reversed an earlier decision granting a father full custody of his daughter after the child's mother accused the man of getting her pregnant by raping her.
Online records obtained by PEOPLE confirm Judge Jeffrey Cashe issued an order Tuesday, temporarily transferring physical custody of Crysta Abelseth and John Barnes' 15-year-old daughter to a third party guardian.
According to the ruling, Abelseth, 32, and Barnes, 46, will alternate custody of the girl on weekends. Both parents had to sign off on the court-appointed steward.
Cashe also decided Tuesday to appoint the teen daughter her own attorney.
Abelseth alleges that Barnes raped her in late 2005, when she was 16 and he was 30. Barnes has not been charged with a crime in connection with the rape allegations.
On March 21, 2022, Cashe had awarded Barnes full custody of the girl, despite allegations that Barnes had been sexually, physically and verbally abusive of a child. Those allegations were first brought to the state's Department of Children and Family Services by a school counselor. Barnes has not been charged in connection with the abuse allegations.
Cashe also ordered Abelseth to pay child support to Barnes, who denies all of Abelseth's allegations, calling them "absolutely, unequivocally false" in an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital on Monday.
"It's a lie," Barnes told Fox News Digital. "She was in a bar with a fake ID, telling everyone she was a college student. I had no idea she was 16, and I didn't rape her."
Court documents viewed by PEOPLE, including DNA test results, confirm Barnes is the biological father of Abelseth's daughter. Had the sexual encounter been consensual, as Barnes insists, it still would have amounted to statutory rape. In Louisiana in 2005, the age of consent was 17, as it is today.
In 2015, Abelseth filed a complaint with the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff's Office against Barnes, alleging he'd raped her on Dec. 13, 2005, after they'd both been drinking at a bar in Hammond. Abelseth told investigators Barnes had offered her a ride home. Instead, she said, he took her to his place in Ponchatoula. "I had woken up on the bathroom floor nude," Abelseth wrote in her statement, saying she was unable to give consent as she was unconscious during the encounter.
Abelseth further alleges in her written statement Barnes had threatened to seek full custody of the girl, should she ever pursue criminal charges against him.