A woman who was kidnapped by her stepfather when she was 11 and taken to Mexico where he fathered nine children with her before she was able to escape has told of the moment a pair of strangers spotted them in the grocery store and offered her a way out because they knew ‘something’ wasn’t right.
Henri Piette was arrested in Mexico in September 2017, a year after his stepdaughter-turned-wife Rosalynn 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 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 earlier this year but he is still waiting for a determination on rape charges. He denies wrongdoing.
In a new interview on The Dr Oz. Show which will air on Tuesday November 19th, McGinnis recalled the moment she was saved.
Rosalynn McGinnis, now 33, recalls how she escaped from her stepfather who held her captive for 19 years and fathered nine children with her
‘We were in the grocery store, we were in front of them, and we had a bunch of kids, of course, and it was me and Henri Piette.
‘The age difference and all the children. Actually, we were short on the bill to pay for the groceries and they paid it for us,’ she said.
Henri Michelle Piette, 65, is awaiting his next court date
‘They asked… where we lived. It started like that. Henri was the type that always kept people away. But they knew something wasn’t right. So, they decided to do something about it,’ she said.
Piette forced them to move, but the couple found them.
‘We moved and they found out where we were and she’s like I know there’s something wrong. If you can ever get away, I’ll help you,’ McGinnis recalls the woman telling her.
She also revealed that she took the children without telling them they were fleeing and described the ways Piette would abuse them too.
‘They didn’t know. I kept the truth from them until I escaped from Mexico. They were really shocked. They’ve been through, especially my older children.
‘The reason I didn’t tell them, of course, was because what I knew inside was how much it’s damaged me. I didn’t want them to grow up knowing that.
‘He would tell them they’re animals. He would treat them like animals. That the only reason that they’re alive is because your mother’s here. Otherwise, if she wasn’t that I’d kill all of you. He would hit them and then I would step in and it would just be horrible.
‘Any kind of abuse that you can think of, he did to me,’ she said.
McGinnis says she was being abused by Piette for at least a year before he kidnapped her.
‘As a young child, you don’t really realize what’s going on. As an adult now, I look back and then I can see exactly how that he was grooming me the whole time. But as a child, you don’t know those things, you don’t know.
In this undated photo, McGinnis is shown as a young teenager with her stepfather. He abducted her from school when she was 11 and took her to Mexico
During her 19 years in captivity, McGinnis had nine children. She shared this photograph of them during an interview with People in August 2017
‘You don’t know what’s happening, you don’t realize it,’ she said.
In 1997, her mother – who has never spoken publicly about the case – broke up with Piette because he had been beating her.
He retaliated by snatching Rosalynn from school and going on the run. McGinnis said that before taking her to Mexico, they traveled through the US.
She claims he introduced her to his children as their ‘new mother’.
In Mexico, she said she was subjected to daily sexual assault or rape and had nine children as a result.
She claims they lived under the radar and that no one in Mexico suspected him of wrongdoing until she confided in a woman who lived near their tent in 2016.
That woman then found a missing person’s poster from 1997 with Rosalynn’s name on it.
In June 2016, she fled their tent with eight of the nine children she had with Piette and used a pay phone in Oaxaca City to contact the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC).
They were then put in touch with the US embassy to be taken back to the US.
When he was eventually arrested, Piette said their sex had been consensual.
McGinnis went missing in 1997 in Oklahoma. She was held captive by her stepfather for 19 years and avoided detection by traveling across Mexico and the U.S. Pictured is a missing person poster from the time she disappeared