CONCORD, N.H. (AP) – Jurors deliberating the fate of a prep school graduate charged with raping a freshman were left to decide Thursday who was more credible: the defendant who credited “divine inspiration” with helping him end their escalating sexual encounter or the accuser who couldn’t recall telling a friend what sex acts she was prepared to perform.
Nineteen-year-old Owen Labrie, of Tunbridge, Vermont, faces six sexual assault charges, three of them felonies, over his encounter last year with the 15-year-old girl in the attic of a near-deserted building at St. Paul’s School. Prosecutors say it happened as part of Senior Salute, a school tradition of sexual conquest in which seniors try to romance or have sex with underclassmen before graduation.
Jurors began deliberations Thursday afternoon after hearing closing arguments and instructions from the judge.
Labrie contends the two had consensual sexual contact but not intercourse on May 30, 2014, two days before his graduation.
His lawyer, J.W. Carney, told the jury that the girl testified she had no recollection of her conversation with her best friend before meeting Labrie because to admit she stated graphically what conduct she was prepared to engage in “would destroy the whole image she’d been trying to create.”