Prep School Rape Trial: Teen Testifies She Worried About Offending Her Alleged Rapist
The teenage girl at the center of the prep school rape trial testified this week that she worried about offending her alleged rapist, a popular senior student at St. Paul’s School, even as he “scraped” the inside of her body, bit her, and spat on her during their alleged encounter in the school’s mechanical room.
The student—then a 15-year-old freshman—said she initially resisted Owen Labrie’s invitation to join the Senior Salute, an annual sex competition where senior students try to sleep with as many underclassman as possible.
But she relented, she said during a testimony Wednesday, after a friend told her Labrie was genuinely interested in her. She thought that they might kiss, she testified, “but nothing more.”
Instead, prosecutors say, he took her to a mechanical room, where he allegedly groped, bit, and spat on her before penetrating her with his hands and penis.
Her testimony, which began Wednesday and continues this week, paints the picture of a naive young woman deeply afraid of causing a scene—even as she was allegedly being raped. From the New York Times:
“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. Moments later, she said, he penetrated her, and with both of his hands visible near her head, she added: “It had to be his penis.”
Her voice shook as she described the encounter escalating. “I wanted to not cause a conflict,” she said. It began to hurt, she said, but she did not know what to do: “I felt like I was frozen.”
She says she worried about making a bad impression and told a nurse the encounter was consensual because she didn’t want to ruin graduation, which was happening that weekend.
“I didn’t want to come off as an inexperienced little girl,” she said, according to the Times. “I didn’t want him to laugh at me. I didn’t want to offend him.”
That fear, she says, explains why she later participated in seemingly lighthearted text messages with Labrie, asking him to keep the encounter a secret, questioning if he wore 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 reportedly 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’s attorneys say the pair never had intercourse and have suggested that participating in the Senior Salute is “a great source of pride for younger students.”
