CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — Prosecutors on Thursday asked a judge to sentence a New England prep school graduate to 3½ to 7 years in prison over a sexual assault on a 15-year-old freshman girl.
The request came at the sentencing for 20-year-old Owen Labrie in a case that scandalized the exclusive St. Paul’s School in Concord and exposed a tradition called Senior Salute, in which upperclassmen competed to have sex with younger students.
The former captain of the soccer team and aspiring divinity student from Tunbridge, Vermont, was charged with rape, accused of forcing himself on the girl in a darkened mechanical room in 2014, when he was 18 and about to graduate.
A jury in August cleared him of rape but convicted him of misdemeanor sexual assault for having intercourse and other sexual contact with an underage girl. He was also found guilty of using a computer — Facebook and email — to lure her.
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’s and has been living in almost constant fear since the assault.
She said she has been made to feel as if she “didn’t deserve to live” and “would be better off being dead.” She also said she has problems concentrating in school.
The charges carry up to 11 years behind bars. And the felony computer offense will require Labrie to register for life as a sex offender.
Prosecutors asked for 3½ to 7 years for the computer offense and said they would agree to a suspended sentence on the other charges if Labrie completed a sex offender program.
Labrie was to be given the opportunity to address the court, too. Ahead of the sentencing, his lawyer asked for probation and community service, saying the young man has already suffered “enormous” punishment, including the loss of a full scholarship to Harvard.
St. Paul’s has long educated members of America’s elite, counting among its alumni Secretary of State John Kerry, Nobel laureates and Pulitzer Prize winners.
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