Former Fort Mill yogurt shop employee pleads guilty to touching 12-year-old girl

A former employee of a Fort Mill store was sentenced to prison and probation Tuesday after pleading guilty to inappropriately touching a 12-year-old girl last year, according to the 16th Circuit Solicitor’s Office.

Rhyan Talmadge Barrett, 27, pleaded guilty to first-degree assault and battery. A judge sentenced him to 10 years in prison, but he suspended that sentence on the condition that Barrett serve two years in prison and five years on probation. Barrett must register as a sex offender.

Barrett was originally charged in December 2014 with five counts of third-degree criminal sexual conduct with a minor and one count of contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

Barrett inappropriately touched a 12-year-old girl multiple times Dec. 6, 2014, at the Sweet Frog frozen yogurt store on Carolina Place Drive in Fort Mill, according to previous reports.

The store manager told The Herald last year that he was out of town when the incident happened, but that he regularly reviews surveillance video. When he returned to town and reviewed video from the previous week, he saw the incident.

“It wasn’t terribly graphic,” the manager said at the time. “It was just stuff that shouldn’t have been going on.”

The manager said he terminated Barrett and notified authorities after viewing the footage.

This story was originally published August 4, 2015 at 5:02 PM with the headline "Former Fort Mill yogurt shop employee pleads guilty to touching 12-year-old girl."