The outlines of the story were infuriating yet familiar: A young man of privilege was accused of a serious crime, arrested, prosecuted and then treated gently by a judge.

This week, it was a New Jersey teenager identified in court documents only as G.M.C., who prosecutors said raped an intoxicated 16-year-old girl at a party, made a cellphone video of the act and then shared the video with friends, adding: “When your first time having sex was rape.”

The judge dismissed the young man’s own description of what he did. Instead, court documents said, the judge wondered if the accuser and her mother had considered the devastating effect on the boy’s life this charge might have. The boy “comes from a good family who put him into an excellent school where he was doing extremely well,” the judge said, noting that the young man was an Eagle Scout.

“He is clearly a candidate for not just college but probably for a good college,” Judge James Troiano of Superior Court, sitting in Monmouth County, said last year.