Owen Labrie spoke with his lawyer during his trial in Merrimack County Superior Court in Concord, N.H., on Tuesday. CreditPool photo by Jim Cole
CONCORD, N.H. — The 16-year-old girl sat on the witness stand here, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. She tried to speak steadily as she told a jury about the night when a ritual at St. Paul’s — one of the country’s elite boarding schools — turned into what she described as a shocking sexual assault.
It had been days away from graduation last year, the season of a campus rite called the “senior salute,” when older students ask younger ones to join them for a walk, a kiss, or more. The girl, 15 and a freshman at the time, had agreed to follow a suitor, Owen Labrie, then 18, to the rooftop of a campus building to which he had a key.
Then, she said, he took her into a dark maintenance room. When they kissed, she did not object. But soon he began to grope her; he bit her chest too, she said, and tried more than once to remove her underwear.
“I said, ‘No, no, no, keep it up here,’ ” said the girl, signaling above her waist. “I tried to be as polite as possible.”
She described Mr. Labrie “scraping” the inside of her body with his hands. “When he got deeper and deeper I felt a lot of pressure. But other than that I tried to block out the feeling as much as I could,” the girl said. She said Mr. Labrie then penetrated her, with his hands on her shoulders. “It had to be his penis,” said the girl.
Lawyers for the prosecution and the defense made their opening statements in the trial of Owen Labrie, a graduate of the St. Paul’s School who is accused of raping a freshman girl. By REUTERS on Publish DateAugust 19, 2015. Photo by Pool photo by Jim Cole.
Her voice shook as she described the encounter escalating. “I wanted to not cause a conflict,” she said, as she started to cry. “I didn’t know how to deal with it because I’d never been in a situation like this,” she said, adding: “I felt like I had no control.”
The second day of testimony in the trial of Mr. Labrie, who has pleaded not guilty to 10 counts, including three of aggravated felonious sexual assault, brought out both excruciating detail and intense emotion from the young girl at the center of the case as she gave her account of the encounter on May 30, 2014. She said that even as it was happening, she worried about offending Mr. Labrie or drawing ridicule from other students at St. Paul’s.
She spoke for more than 90 minutes, never looking at Mr. Labrie, who sat still as a statue through much of the testimony.
He often seemed to be looking at the table in front of him, holding a pen in his hand, as the jury listened with rapt attention.
The courtroom was packed — standing room only — as Mr. Labrie’s family, the family of the girl, and others strained to hear the testimony.
A loud fan inside the courtroom made it hard to hear the accuser; early on, court officials had to turn it off.
It was all a sign of the growing interest in the case against Mr. Labrie, a former star student who earned a scholarship to St. Paul’s and had been headed to Harvard until the young girl came forward with her accusations.
Mr. Labrie’s lawyers deny that he and the girl had sexual intercourse, and he is expected to take the stand in his own defense. On Monday, J.W. Carney Jr., Mr. Labrie’s lead defense lawyer, argued that their encounter was consensual and more innocent.
He said in his opening statement that the “senior salute” was a longstanding tradition at the school, in which some of the young female students willingly took part.
But the case has cast that tradition, and other student rites, under a harsh light as it explores the culture of sex, gender and entitlement at St. Paul’s — which counts ambassadors, senators and prominent authors among its alumni.
Surrounding the details of the episode, prosecutors have said, is the social context for the crimes of which Mr. Labrie is accused: The senior salute, in which, they have suggested, some boys compete to have sexual encounters with as many people as possible. It is one of many rituals at the school that encourage hierarchy, according to alumni, and Mr. Labrie told the police he had been actively engaged in the tradition, trying to “score” and win.
The accuser said she had been more skeptical of the rite from the start. She said she had initially turned down Mr. Labrie’s invitation, but when he responded with an email partly in French, she wondered if she had been too harsh.
She decided to go with Mr. Labrie for a senior salute, but only if he would keep it a secret.
“What a golden change of heart,” Mr. Labrie wrote in response.The girl said she had thought that they might kiss, but nothing more. She was thinking “it would be cool” to go to a new place on campus with “one of the most popular boys,” she said.
They made a plan to meet. “It was a beautiful view,” she said, adding that Mr. Labrie wanted to go back inside. He brought her into a machine room, opening the door with a special key that prosecutors said had been passed down from senior class to senior class by boys seeking privacy.
They kissed. Before long, surrounded by industrial noise, she said she was groped, and bitten. “I was feeling violated,” she said.
Crying on the stand here, she described the sex acts she said he performed. “I felt so scared,” she said.
Still, she said she worried about offending him. She was younger. He was older and popular. The senior salute was a St. Paul’s tradition. “I felt so powerless,” she said.
Even afterward, she said she worried about upsetting Mr. Labrie, or drawing others into a turbulent situation.
“I thought, I’m at St. Paul’s right now, this is graduation weekend, I cannot be dramatic about this,” she said.
She added: “I didn’t want to come off as an inexperienced little girl. I didn’t want him to laugh at me. I didn’t want to offend him.”
New York Times
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