It’s so bizarre to me that people (not here, I don’t mean) attack this young woman, saying she was somehow complicit in her rape, or deserved to be raped, because she drank too much and became unconscious. Would they say the same if a 16-year-old boy drank too much, passed out, and then was beaten to within an inch of his life? Or if a couple of bullies thought it was funny to throw his limp body down the stairs and he broke his leg? Would they say it was his fault, for getting drunk and passing out?
Owen Labrie interview with Newsweek.
“Labrie’s interviews with Newsweek were his first since his arrest—a chance to explain his life, his hurt, his efforts to rebuild. “I’d do it the exact same way,” he says of rejecting the plea deals. “It was the only thing that sustained me, knowing I had told the truth. I had done what was right. I walked out of the courthouse with my chin up.” His words might seem to strain credulity, since he had been looking at only three weeks in jail reading books, but he insists that “not caving” was one of the things that kept him going.”
I really don’t understand why he doesn’t do the jail time and get on with his life. I read elsewhere that the clock on the sex offender status doesn’t start ticking until the jail time is served.
@MaterS, I can’t get to the article - does it make the point that the jury thought he was lying about the encounter? Is it fair to the victim or does it seem slanted one way or the other?
I thought it was well written.
“The verdict reflected the conflicting evidence. The jury threw out the sexual assault felony charge, which was a huge victory for Labrie, but found him guilty of a series of misdemeanors, essentially statutory rape, meaning jurors seemed to believe he’d had intercourse with her.”
The Newsweek’s delicate description of the Senior Salute:
That’s one way of describing it. The other way to describe it is Labrie and his friends had a contest where they’d get points for having sex with younger students. Somehow, Newsweek forgot to mention the contest, the points, the record of the contest on a wall somewhere, or the fact that Labrie made it clear in his communications with his friends that the girls he was having sex with were merely means to the end of victory in the contest. In other words, the story left out everything about the story that people found so appalling.
I also found this disturbing.
"Labrie was also found guilty of Section 649-B of New Hampshire’s criminal code, which makes it a felony “to seduce, solicit, lure, or entice a child or another person believed by the person to be a child” for sex or lewd behavior on the Internet. It carries a sentence of up to seven years. Most states have a version of that law. The problem for Labrie and the rest of us is that troubling results can stem from it. What teen today doesn’t use the Internet to hook up? “If you’re two doors away, you’re using Facebook,” says Labrie’s attorney, Jaye Harcourt. “It’s an absurd result because the underlying crime wasn’t a felony.”
Harcourt’s statement is misleading. Labrie couldn’t be convicted on the felony computer charge without being found guilty on the felony rape or misdemeanor rape charge. A consensual sexual encounter arranged by Facebook is not in violation of this law.
“Over vegetarian hash, I tell him I think the email felony sentence, even with its seven-year penalty generously suspended by the judge, was excessive.”
Hmm… this leaves little doubt what the author thinks. I wonder how much Labrie got paid for this “interview”.
Just got back from the nail place, where I read the December '15/January '16 issue of Town & Country with an article about St. Paul’s and the Labrie case. In case there are any inquiring minds here who have not seen it, I learned 3 new things: (1) apparently Labrie was also admitted to Yale, Princeton and Stanford; (2) he still may be able to matriculate at Harvard; and (3) when the St. Paul’s administrators read some of the email exchanges, they barred an unnamed SPS friend of Labrie’s from coming onto campus as an alum. I wonder if any of those points are true.
I read item three in another article. But some journalists just quote from another article without verification.
@GnocchiB - Items 1 and 3 from your post #1347 are true. The unnamed friend mentioned in #3 was one of those who testified at the trial.
I have read the Newsweek article now, though I did not when it was first linked here. I agree with Cardinal Fang that practically all of the elements that made this situation disturbing were omitted from the Newsweek account.
A Facebook friend recently posted a quotation from Kurt Vonnegut (http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1889-hello-babies-welcome-to-earth-it-s-hot-in-the-summer) with advice to babies just arriving on Earth. It concludes with “you’ve got to be kind.”
The Newsweek article was not in the least kind to the young woman. Nor were students at St. Paul’s when she bravely returned at the beginning of the year (and then decided that she had to leave).
What is done is done. But I hope that any journalists covering future developments in this case–there are bound to be some–will keep in mind that the young woman is still a minor, and so deserves double consideration.
I felt todays Law & Order seemed to reflect this prep school case.
Definitely this episode tonight is “ripped from the headlines!”
I didn’t watch the whole episode, just the last 20 minutes of it.
Episode title?
Law & Order Special Victims Unit
“A Misunderstanding”
Aah! Thanks, raclut and skieurope.
SVU is the least favorite of all the Law &Order franchises for me. I would never call it simply Law & Order actually. I just call it SVU.
Well, it’s the only one still in first-run, so while I also call it SVU, I knew what she meant 
I don’t watch it enough to know the difference. The last time I watched it the storyline was about a family like the Duggar family.