The girl’s innocence or lack of it is NOT relevant. She could say NO at anytime. That is her right. However, that consent isn’t even pertinent any longer. The defendant was not charged with the felony counts of sexual assault just the misdemeanors. Being a minor, the victim could not consent. With their verdict, the jury is sending the message that Labrie lied to the police and on the stand, that sexual penetration with a minor did take place. They are not saying there was consent, just that there wasn’t enough evidence beyond a reasonable doubt to find the defendant guilty of the felony counts of sexual assault.
The State of NH filed suit against Labrie based on their research and evidence. The victim was a witness. This is a criminal case not a civil case. State of NH vs Labrie. The school was required by law to report the offense when they were notified and they did. The defendant had consent training both as a student at the school and, additionally, as a prefect. His buddies are also guilty of playing this callous game with him and of misogynistic treatment of the females on campus, but at least 2 of them testified that they cautioned Labrie that the girl was too young. That didn’t stop him from his pursuit which to me does seem predatory.
Earlier, another poster stated, “Every guy in his class was picking girls to whom they wanted to send a senior salute and presumably, he was not the only one that carried one out.” I can tell you as a FACT, this is untrue. To lump all the graduating males into this group is a fallacy. It’s unfair to lump all into the actions of a few.
Lessons for young people to learn (one of the few benefits of this nightmare is that I think people will learn something from this case):
Treat people with kindness and decency. People are not objects to be used.
If you ignore step 1, don't be stupid enough to put evidence of your actions on your computer or phone.
If you ignore steps 1 and 2, don't talk to the police without representation. If you do, remember that the police don't care about your straight As, your Harvard acceptance, or your college essay as none of them are pertinent to the case they are investigating. In fact, your arrogance will work against you.
When you get good representation, listen to what they are advising you. Don't shop around until you hear the answer you want rather than the answer you need to hear. (I am of an opinion that Carney did Labrie no favors either in his advice regarding bringing the case to trial or in Carney's defense tactics.)
Go back to step number 1 and follow it. Do NOT proceed to steps 2, 3, and 4.
Labrie’s father is in his life. Labrie is extremely intelligent and that, and his education, are resources many others do not have. If anything, I hold him to a higher stand because his intelligence should enable him to understand the training he had in consent.
As for me, I do believe Labrie was rightly found guilty of statutory rape. The statute was clear, and he violated it. Period. I also find it was a moral failing of his, regardless of the statute. I do not believe this conduct should land him on the sex registry, but I believe he deserves public shame.
I don’t believe that calling this girl promiscuous or loose or sexually sophisticated is wrong IN MY OPINION. I am entitled to be old fashioned about what both sexes -boys and girls- express, and how they behave, to others. This does not mean that she was not statutorily raped. She was; and a jury agrees with me.
I also believe that a defendant’s circumstances should be considered in sentencing, so in answer to your last paragraph, IN MY OPINION all such circumstances should be considered, black, white, rich, poor. Their circumstances go a long way toward explaining their intent, which I think is key to determining punishment.
I’ve been gone all day; had a long talk with my daughter about the case, and was going to come here to say something – but jonri pretty much said it all in her post #708. Thank you for saying that, jonri, and for your comments here. My daughter’s reaction to this case was, “the guy was a stalker and the girl said no, so she was raped.”
I don’t have a lot of sympathy for Labrie. He pursued this girl, after she turned him down many times, and he didn’t pursue her because he had a crush on her or wanted a relationship. He had one thing in mind, and scheduled their “date” for the amount of time needed to get that done. She didn’t have a crush on him – she was very wary of going out with him and had to be convinced, convinced he was a good guy. He manipulated the situation and took advantage of her. If she hadn’t told her mother, and if her mother hadn’t gone straight to the cops, he would have gotten away with it, just like countless boys have for decades. Sorry, I’m just can’t cry any tears for him.
Two other random comments.
I know a lot about Vermont salaries. Both $31,000 and $47,000 would have been considered good salaries in 1999. Heck, $47,000 would be considered a good salary today.
I been reading the responses to this case and like many others I’m quite disturbed by what has happened. This is one case but I am sure that in different high schools similar things are happening. I just finished reading a news report of a 17 year old boy raping a 9 year old girl at a state fair. What is going on in the minds of these teenage boys and why does it not click in their brain that this behavior is not acceptable. In their families do they see men abusing women. (fathers and mothers) and think this is normal? Have they not learned or been taught to respect women? Is there no positive male role model. In this situation it was a school tradition. These boys don’t have fear of getting caught or paying the consequences for their actions. I find this quite scary. He was smart enough to get into Harvard but didn’t have the maturity or common sense to know what he was doing was wrong. If he had gone on to Harvard he would have been doing the same thing there. As for the girl knowingly or unknowingly she was playing with fire. She could have shown no interest in him. Did she not have any self respect for her own body. If boys were proposing the senior salute then girls too were accepting it. The tradition wouldn’t have lasted if there was no response from the girls. Was she not taught to have respect for her body. I understand kids are going to do what they want to do but for future reference what is it that we need to be teaching our kids. We can say don’t do this and don’t do that but the situation has gotten to the point where mothers of daughters are afraid to let their daughters go alone to a public bathroom. If it was my daughter or son I would have questioned what they hell were you thinking? I don’t think I would have been able to control my own anger towards my own child for even considering participating in something like this. This is not the first time I have heard of games like this. Few years ago I heard of something similar happening at a local private school.
Forgot about the high school, most hight schools I have run into were 9-12, including the one I went to. Some school districts have k-6 as grade school, and 7-9 as junior high, then 10-12 for senior high school, where I have run into that generally were some districts down south. I seem to recall that the 10-12 “senior high’ was a lot more common years ago, but that at some point the k-5, 6-8, and 9-12 took over (and interestingly, a lot of what used to be called 'junior high” are now called “middle schools”, though older people still refer to them as Junior high.
@raclut, I too am appalled at how boys and girls behave these days. Re: this girl, what if Labrie hadn’t penetrated her? What if they just met up and she “just” let him take her clothes off and go to second base?
Are people actually ok with this? Between a 15 yr old girl and an 18 yr old boy? I am not ok with it, even though in my scenario there would be no crime in this encounter. Gladly, Labrie got some punishment. But have we become so loose as a society that it’s “not PC” to call a 15 year old girl who plans even a “second base” encounter with an 18 year old boy sexually promiscuous??
@prospect Maybe I am too conservative in my thinking but this is going too far. But then what can we expect these days when we have adults getting caught in the Ashley Madison situation. If you look in the news we have so many adults getting caught in messy situations that it has become the norm. In my mind wrong is wrong even if everybody is doing it and right is right even if most people don’t agree with it. And NO means NO not maybe or yes. Feel sorry for parents of young kids growing up these days. Kids don’t have a childhood these days. Crazy environment our kids are growing up in.
When I went to high school, it was 9-12 grade. However, there was some variation by areas. Middle school was usually 7-8, but sometimes 6-8, 5-8, or 7-9 (the last one causing high school to be 10-12).
“As to registering, the guy will have to deal with this in any situation so I’m not sure it makes any difference in the long run. He’ll always be “that guy”.”
Being a registered sex offender is many orders of magnitude worse than being “that guy.” It’s a whole different world. Landlords who rent out cheap apartments don’t care whether you’re “that guy” with a Google problem. But chances are, a sex offender can’t live there. Being a sex offender usually means you can’t go home to live with your family, can’t have a smart phone, can’t go to college – you can’t live.
I correct a lot of parents who talk about their kids’ lives being ruined. But if you have to register, that ruins your life.
The following comments are not about this case specifically. Rather they are in response to quite a few posts about sexual activity and the age of teenagers. I commented many pages ago when this also came up, but I guess I feel compelled to do so again, in light of several recent posts on that subject…
We all come from different backgrounds and comfort levels of what may be normal or permissible in terms of sexual activity at certain ages…what some are calling right or wrong or promiscuous behavior, etc. There are comments as well with regard to freshmen being intimate with seniors (again, not talking of this case in the news). I’m in my 50s. Back when I was a freshman in high school (it was grades 9-12), I dated seniors. I do not think I would have been considered promiscuous. By the way, I was quite familiar with “fingering” when I was 15. People here are commenting that they are surprised a 15 year old girl knows what that is. Girls tend to mature faster than boys. My brother was a senior in fact. I did not have intercourse but I was intimate. As someone mentioned here about a 15 year old “going to second base,” well, I did. Yet, I was a virgin until I was 19 and met my husband-to-be when I was 18. I don’t think that stands out as all that odd or “advanced.” Speaking of a daughter of mine, she was pretty mature at a young age. She dated boys throughout high school. She went to college while still 16. I am not naive as to what took place in these relationships. I think it is entirely the norm for teens to be intimate in some capacity with one another…it was in my day and it was in my kids’ high school days. And yes, 15 year olds are part of that. I understand the discomfort some of you have with that, but I would not characterize some very “normal” teens as being very promiscuous who engage in some form of sexual behavior. I think it is typical of a large number of teens. I’m not talking of any legal definitions, but purely about what is fairly normal for teenagers.
It maybe acceptable here but in some very traditional conservative cultures this behavior is completely inappropriate. In some cultures premarital sex is strictly forbidden even in this day and age and the families respect and honor come into question. Like it has been stated above each persons views are based on what values they were brought up with. There are women out there who have never dated and have had arranged marriages even today. Their first relationship is with their spouse.
I agree with @soozievt wholeheartedly in that each person has his/her own definition of “promiscuous” and that’s completely fine as long as the people engaging in consensual behavior do not run afoul of the law.
It would not have been illegal for Labrie and this girl to engage in heavy petting, however offensive I might find that. To each his own. If I want to brand that type of activity by a 15 year old girl “promiscuous,” that is my right. If I want to brand that type of activity by her 18 year old partner as “immoral,” that is my right. However, it would be perfectly legal for them to engage in non-penetrative relations (and in many states, it would even have been perfectly legal for them to have consensual intercourse). So, my opinion is absolutely meaningless, and what two such people do is none of my business.
Here, of course, a statute was violated in this state, and so the violator will be punished. I am glad he will be punished. I just think that branding him a sex offender for life is ridiculous. He has been condemned to life as an outcast, a leper, an “untouchable” as it were. Does anyone really think this kid deserves that? For engaging in conduct that might have been found legal (albeit immoral) in many other states?
This case is different because there was no alcohol to impair judgement, it involved premeditation - crafting and strategizing a plan ahead of time involving “every trick in the book”, we know the defendant was given consent training - and warnings from his peers, and he possesses an intellect much higher than the average person which should have allowed him the reasoning to stop at so many points throughout the time he first started talking about her to his friends and carrying out his assault.
I’d agree to that. Maybe. My question was why people are upset to have this guy labeled a sex offender when nobody makes a squawk if HS kids are labeled the same when they make mistakes. Which is worse is hard to say. In HS parties, girls may not have been as savvy as the girl in this case.
tom, that’s a hard one. I think with rape it’s quite uneven how laws are applied.
I think that the people who are casting aspersions on the girl are discounting the staggering amount of sexual information and content available on the internet. If a kid has access to data, they know way more about sex than we ever did at the same age. And if you think your kid is innocent because you monitor their use, you still have no idea what they are looking at on their friend’s phones and computers.
So, if the girl seems promiscuous to you because she knew about shaving, etc. it could very well be that she Googled things so she wouldn’t seem naive to an older boy she was trying to impress. Or she could have been previously sexually active. Even so, if she didn’t want to have sex that night she had every right to say no.