A Texas man who has spent more than five months in a Russian detention center is facing a different challenge from other recent American detainees such as Trevor Reed and Brittney Griner, as authorities in Moscow are accusing him of wrongdoing in his home country.
David Barnes, a Huntsville, Alabama, native who has lived in the Houston area in recent years, was taken into custody by law enforcement in Moscow in January and has been incarcerated on Russian soil ever since.
“If I could go over there and just sit in that place with him, I would do it in a minute, because this is the most unjust situation I’ve ever experienced in my entire life,” Carol Barnes, David’s older sister, told ABC News. “I feel like part of me is missing.”
David Barnes was in Russia attempting to gain legal clearance to either see his children or bring them home, after his Russian ex-wife allegedly violated a court custody order and fled the United States with them, his family says.
On Jan. 13, Russian investigators apprehended Barnes in Moscow, accusing him of abusing his two children years earlier in Texas, according to translations of court documents. Similar allegations against Barnes were brought to authorities in Texas by his now-ex-wife Svetlana Koptyaeva during their long and acrimonious divorce proceedings. The allegations were investigated in 2018 by the Department of Family and Protective Services, which found insufficient evidence to support them and closed the case without any findings of abuse or any charges against Barnes.
Barnes’ ex-wife is herself now wanted in the U.S. on a felony charge of interference with child custody, after she fled with the children in 2019.
“His mission was to save his children,” Carol Barnes said. “His mission all along has not been really revenge against her at all.”
With her brother locked up abroad in a country that is currently fighting a war in Ukraine that has lead to a diplomatic dispute with the United States, Carol Barnes says she worries about his future.
“I’ve never been so sad and so hurt,” she said. “All I think about is the conditions that he’s living in.”
Making ‘examples out of U.S. citizens’
For much of his time in Russia, David Barnes has been in Moscow’s Detention Center 5, according to his family. He is not the only American — or even the only Texan — who has been held there in recent years.
Trevor Reed, a former Marine from Texas, was arrested by Russian authorities in 2019 and sentenced to nine years in prison. After being accused of assaulting two police officers in Moscow, Reed spent part of his time behind bars in Detention Center 5.
After Reed’s case gained widespread publicity in the U.S., he was released by Russian authorities in April in exchange for a Russian man who was being held in Connecticut on a federal drug trafficking conviction.
In an interview with ABC News, Reed described his pretrial Russian detention facility as rat-infested and “extremely dirty.”
“It took Trevor Reed three years to get out and his alleged crime was much less severe than what David is being accused of,” Carol Barnes said. “We’re talking about Russia. They’re going to make examples out of U.S. citizens.”
Another Texan, Brittney Griner, is still being held by Russian law enforcement in the Moscow area. The WNBA star and Olympic gold medalist was arrested at an airport after Russian authorities alleged that she had vape cartridges with hashish oil in her luggage, but the U.S. government says Griner is being “wrongfully detained.”
Barnes had been living in Texas since 2007, working initially as a design engineer for an Alabama-based software company’s Houston office.
Houston is where he met Svetlana Koptyaeva, who was also living there for work. The two would go on to marry and have two sons, at least one of whom has dual Russian and American citizenship.
“I saw a difference in him when he had those two children,” Carol Barnes said. “His boys were his only focus in this life.”
Svetlana Barnes filed a petition for divorce in 2014, and over the next five years, a lengthy and ugly custody battle ensued between the two parents, resulting in a jury trial and numerous court hearings in Texas.
“It was horrible,” David Barnes’ younger sister Margaret Aaron said. “She tried everything she could to take the children from him and to get sole control, and he fought her tooth and nail.”
Of Barnes’ two children, Carol Barnes said, “He wanted them — even though their parents were divorcing — to have two parents. He thought that children should be raised by two parents’ influence.”
Paul Carter, a lifelong friend of David Barnes who is also divorced with two sons, said the struggle between Barnes and his ex-wife became “a cascading series of events” stemming from “her desire to not have David in any part of their lives.”
“My boys are everything,” Carter said. “Watching my sons grow up has been a wonderful experience. I’ve wanted so much for David to have that.”
‘Completely and totally devastated’
In early 2019, as part of a custody arrangement, Svetlana Barnes was expected to bring the children to an agreed-upon meeting point so David Barnes could have the boys for a few days.
However, she never showed with the children. According to law enforcement records, David Barnes called the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office multiple times to ask for welfare checks on the two boys.
“She was a flight risk and somehow was able to flee with the passports,” Carter said. “I think that’s a real travesty. It’s a real breakdown of the system.”
By April 6, 2019, the FBI was able to track Svetlana Barnes to Turkey, according to a criminal complaint.
“He was completely and totally devastated,” Aaron said. “He had gotten their room ready at his apartment and bought them toys, and he was just so happy that they were going to come back to him, and then they were gone. He was crushed.”
In August 2020, a judge in Montgomery County signed an order designating David Barnes as the sole managing conservator of his children, which gave him rights to decide the primary home for his children, make decisions regarding their education, represent them in legal actions, and possess their passports.
Yet despite the order, the two boys were nowhere to be found in the U.S. and Barnes was unable to reestablish contact with them.
His family said he had a gut feeling about where the children had ended up.
