This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Boys at an elite New Hampshire prep school, where a former senior is accused of raping a 15-year-old freshman girl, rubbed the carved name of a man from the class of 1947 on a campus wall for good luck during an annual spring game of sexual conquest, according to a prosecutor.



Defendant Owen Labrie, 19, and his friends would touch the name of a man they dubbed “The Slaymaker” as they plotted to “slay” female classmates during a long tradition at St Paul’s school known as “senior salutes,” deputy Merrimack County attorney Catherine J Ruffle said outside the courtroom.



“‘Slay’ was the term the defendant and his friends coined,” Ruffle told a jury in Concord on Tuesday at the start of Labrie’s trial.



Rape case puts focus on elite prep school's alleged sexual tradition Read more

The alleged victim began testifying on Tuesday and sobbed as she identified Labrie in the courtroom as the senior whose emailed invitation she first rejected. She later agreed to meet him after a boy she trusted persuaded her that she had nothing to fear.



Labrie denies he had sexual contact with the girl after he took her to the rooftop of a campus building and will testify in his defense, his attorney said.



“The evidence will show they never did have sex,” his attorney, JW Carney Jr, told the jury. “The evidence will show Owen’s boxers never came off,” he said.



Carney described Labrie as an excellent student from a modest background who won a scholarship to attend the elite school, where tuition tops $50,000 per year. Labrie, who wore a tweedy sport coat with elbow patches to court, had been accepted at Harvard, where he planned to study religion, before his arrest last year.

Romantic email and Facebook exchanges between Labrie and the alleged victim before and after their meeting on the roof will prove the encounter was consensual, Carney said.

In one exchange Carney displayed to the jury on a poster, the girl said she was not using birth control and asked Labrie if he wore a condom during their meeting. Labrie replied he did.

Labrie also called the alleged victim a “gem,” in an email after they met.

“You’re not so bad yourself,” she replied, Carney said.

“Does this sound like texting where she was unwilling that night?” Carney asked the jury of 11 men and three women.

In his opening statement, Carney implied the alleged victim wanted her encounter with Labrie to remain secret because her older sister had advised her not to see him. She did not speak out about their meeting until days later when another student posted about it on social media, he said.

The multiple-count indictment accuses Labrie of three felony counts of aggravated rape, including performing oral sex on the girl against her will. He is also accused of child endangerment and assault by biting her on the chest.

Prosecutor Ruffle said she will show the jury evidence about DNA collected from the victim’s underwear.

Labrie planned his attack on the girl for months, Ruffle claimed. She showed the jury a list of girls’ names Labrie planned to invite to meet him as “senior salutes.” The victim’s name was the only one capitalized, she said.

The trial has cast a spotlight on the social culture at St. Paul’s, which counts among its alumni three former candidates for US president, including secretary of state John Kerry, former FBI director Robert Mueller and 13 US ambassadors.

In a brief interview outside the courtroom, prosecutor Ruffle did not disclose the name of the man from the class of ’47 whose alleged reputation inspired Labrie and his friends. She said he has no direct connection to the case.

She told the jury other students from St Paul’s would testify about the tradition of ‘senior salutes’, which also can be made by senior girls to boys.

“It really comes down to the defendant. It’s not about St Paul’s school. This case is about Owen Labrie sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl,” Ruffle said.

Jurors on Tuesday toured the top floor of the building at the school where Labrie is accused of bringing the girl. The jury also was scheduled to tour the Concord police headquarters where Labrie’s attorney said officers interrogated him alone for more than three hours when he voluntarily appeared for questioning.

The school’s rector, Michael G Hirschfeld, said Monday in a statement: “Allegations about our culture are not emblematic of our school or our values, our rules, or the people that represent our student body, alumni, faculty and staff.”

“We will move past this as a school community, stronger, united, and committed, as always, to ensuring our students’ safety and wellbeing,” Hirschfeld said.

The trial is expected to last at least seven days.