CONCORD, N.H. (AP) \u2014 A graduate of an exclusive New England prep school was sentenced Thursday to a year in jail for sexually assaulting a 15-year-old freshman girl as part of a competition among upperclassmen to rack up sexual conquests.<\/p>\n
Owen Labrie, 20, of Tunbridge, Vermont, was also ordered to register as a sex offender, perhaps for the rest of his life, and serve five years of probation after he gets out of jail.<\/p>\n
He could have received 11 years behind bars.<\/p>\n
In imposing the sentence, Superior Court Judge Larry Smukler called Labrie a \u201cvery good liar.\u201d<\/p>\n
A glum-looking Labrie hugged his weeping mother. He was allowed to remain free on bail while he appeals his conviction.<\/p>\n
The case scandalized St. Paul\u2019s School in Concord, a 159-year-old institution that has long educated future members of America\u2019s elite. Its alumni include Secretary of State John Kerry, former FBI Director Robert Mueller, at least 13 U.S. ambassadors and three Pulitzer Prize winners.<\/p>\n
Labrie was originally charged with rape, accused of forcing himself on the girl in a dark mechanical room in 2014, just before his graduation. He was 18 at the time. A jury in August cleared him of rape and convicted him instead of misdemeanor sexual assault for having intercourse and other sexual contact with an underage girl.<\/p>\n
He was also found guilty of a felony count of using a computer \u2014 specifically, Facebook and email \u2014 to lure the girl. Under New Hampshire law, anyone convicted of a felony sex crime must register for life as a sex offender, though Labrie can petition to be removed from the list 15 years after he finishes his sentence.<\/p>\n
With good behavior, he could also be out of jail in eight months.<\/p>\n
Labrie did not speak in court, instead submitting a statement that was not immediately made public. But the judge found it lacking: \u201cThe consequences you spoke about all revolve around yourself and your family. They do not consider the victim.\u201d<\/p>\n
Labrie\u2019s arrest exposed a tradition at the $55,290-a-year boarding school called Senior Salute, in which upperclassmen kept score of how many younger students they had sex with.<\/p>\n
Labrie, an aspiring divinity student and captain of the soccer team, told authorities that he and the girl had consensual sexual contact but not intercourse, saying he stopped short in a sudden moment of \u201cdivine intervention.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a videotaped statement played in court Thursday, the girl, now 17, said she was subjected to verbal and physical retaliation from other students after her return to St. Paul\u2019s and has been living in almost constant fear since the assault.<\/p>\n
She said she has been made to feel as if she \u201cdidn\u2019t deserve to live\u201d and \u201cwould be better off being dead.\u201d<\/p>\n
Prosecutor Catherine Ruffle had asked the judge to give Labrie 3\u00ac\u03a9 to 7 years in prison.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe evidence was very clear this was not a date,\u201d she said. \u201cThis was a mission for him. This was a sexual conquest. It was a game.\u201d Crude Facebook exchanges between Labrie and friends \u201cshow his true attitudes toward young women. His style is to feign intimacy, then throw them in the dumpster.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said there is no question Labrie is \u201ca gifted individual. He is intelligent, articulate, engaging \u2014 often the same qualities we see in very dangerous sexual predators.\u201d<\/p>\n
Labrie\u2019s lawyer, J.W. Carney Jr., argued for probation and community service, saying that what the jury called sexual assault was really a \u201cconsensual encounter between two teenagers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carney said his client felt \u201cenormous remorse,\u201d and he lamented that Labrie will be marked for the rest of his life by having to register as a sex offender. He suggested that Labrie had been severely punished already.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s now known by so many people as the St. Paul\u2019s rapist even though the jury rejected that moniker,\u201d Carney said. \u201cHis life has been one of trauma trying to deal with these allegations and the emotion of the trial.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the wake of the scandal, Labrie lost his full scholarship to Harvard, and St. Paul\u2019s refused to add his name to an engraved list of graduates.<\/p>\n
As the sentencing approached, Carney also accused prosecutors of overreaching in bringing the luring-by-computer count, saying the charge was intended to protect young people from adult predators who use bogus identities online.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) \u2014 A graduate of an exclusive New England prep school was sentenced Thursday to a year in jail for sexually assaulting a 15-year-old freshman girl as part of a competition among upperclassmen to rack up sexual conquests. Owen Labrie, 20, of Tunbridge, Vermont, was also ordered to register as a sex offender, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-3077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3077\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3077"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=3077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}