CONCORD, N.H., Oct. 29 (UPI) — The former prep school student convicted of sexually assaulting an underage girl was sentenced Thursday to one year in prison by a New Hampshire court.
Owen Labrie, 20, convicted in August after a highly publicized two-week trial, was given three concurrent 12-month terms for misdemeanor counts of sexual assault and endangering the welfare of a child, and one felony count of computer-related seduction. He will serve two years probation following his jail term and have to register as a sex offender.
Labrie will remain free on bail pending appeal.
“You are a very good liar,” state Superior Court Judge Lawrence Smukler said when he passed the sentence. On Aug. 28, a jury of nine men and three women acquitted Labrie of the most serious charges of three felony counts of aggravated sexual assault. But Smukler said he couldn’t overlook the nature of the crime and how it affected the victim, who hasn’t been identified because of her age.
The victim spoke to the court moments before the sentencing via a video statement, saying she wanted “justice for myself, but others as well.”
“I don’t want to feel imprisoned for the rest of my life,” she said. “I want to be safe again.”
The victim’s father said he was proud that his daughter “stood up to the rape culture that exists in our society that allows boy to be boys.”
The trial became big news because it revealed a disturbing sexual culture among some students of St. Paul’s School, one of the most exclusive boarding schools in New England that had educated members of the Vanderbilt family, J.P. Morgan Jr. and Secretary of State John Kerry.
Both sides said the incident began when the then-15-year-old girl accepted Labrie’s invitation for a “senior salute,” when seniors would meet younger students for romantic encounters. But later, when Labrie, then 18, penetrated her without her consent, she said she felt frozen. Labrie said during the trial that things that night stopped far short of sex.
Messages between Labrie and his friends were used in the trial that the prosecutor said showed “an alarming glimpse of calculated, strategic behavior targeted toward young women.”
And while Labrie was clearly smart, talented and engaging, the prosecutor said, he also possessed “the very same qualities that we often see in sexual predators.”
Labrie was well known as a good student and athlete at St. Paul’s, where he once received an award for character. He intended to study theology at Harvard, an invitation which has since been rescinded.
“I believe that you are not the angel as portrayed by your counsel” Smukler told Labrie during the sentencing. “But neither are you the devil as portrayed by the prosecution.”
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