Elite Prep School-St. Paul, Rape Trial

A school tradition called Senior Salute and what it stands for came under the microscope. The Senior Salute had been a tradition at St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, since the late 1970s: seniors wooed incoming freshmen and kept score of which of them could entice the most freshmen.

The tradition took an ugly turn when Owen Labrie, a grade-12 student, invited a fifteen-year-old freshman to Senior Salute. She accepted because she thought it was a harmless tradition. She expected they might kiss — but when Labrie tried to force himself on her, she felt scared and knew he had crossed boundaries.

Labrie pleaded not guilty to the charges. The 2015 trial, which opened in August, was expected to run about two weeks.

After the incident, the two exchanged text messages — which she explained as fear. She told the court she later sent seemingly lighthearted messages to Labrie, asking him to keep the encounter secret, asking if he had worn a condom, and telling him "You're not too bad yourself" when he called her "a gem."

"I wanted control in a situation where I completely lost control," she testified. "I wanted to tell myself I had the control of the situation. 'I can make it better. I can do this, it's all on me.'"

Labrie had been accepted to Harvard's Class of 2018, where he planned to study divinity.

Update: On August 28, 2015, the jury acquitted Labrie of three felony sexual-assault charges and one misdemeanor simple-assault charge, but convicted him of three misdemeanor sexual-assault counts, one misdemeanor count of endangering the welfare of a child, and a felony count of using a computer to lure a minor — which required him to register as a sex offender. He was sentenced to one year in jail.