Rape-trial defendant told police he had ‘moment of self restraint’ and stopped

By Allison Manning
Boston.com
August 25, 2015

http://www.boston.com/news/local/new-hampshire/2015/08/25/rape-trial-defendant-told-police-had-moment-self-restraint-and-stopped/p51fd2Jhd1DtWWeAfm8vDK/story.html

Owen Labrie listens to testimony in Merrimack County Superior Court Tuesday in Concord, New Hampshire. Photo by Jim Cole

Concord police Detective Julie Curtin testifies about her interview with Owen Labrie. Photo by Jim Cole

Detectives who investigated the sexual assault of a 15-year-old girl described on the witness stand Tuesday the stunned arrogance of their suspect when he was questioned days after his encounter with the younger classmate.

Owen Labrie, now 19, admitted he’d been with the girl days before he graduated from the elite St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire, but no, it wasn’t rape, he said. They didn’t have sex, he told detective Julie Curtin. Her underwear didn’t even come off.

Yes, he’d invited her to check out a secret spot on the roof of a campus building on May 30, 2014, part of a tradition called the Senior Salute, where upperclassmen invite students to hang out, or hook up, before they graduate. But what happened with her “was never a means to an end.”

Labrie repeatedly denied having sex with her. He told Curtain all the reasons why he wouldn’t have: his age, her age, and his position as a student leader.

The detective recalled him saying, if he had penetrated her, it “would be the end of my life.”

The now 16-year-old girl, who Boston.com is not naming, painted a very different picture in her testimony last week. She said that despite her protestations, Labrie pulled at her underwear, and she had to hold them up to stop him. When he put his face between her legs, she told him no, to stop. She recounted holding her bra on, and him biting her chest. She felt him penetrating her, with his hands and penis.

Labrie’s defense lawyers say that she was willing, laughing and giggling during the encounter, raising her hips to help slide her shorts off. They also say he didn’t actually have sex with her. But his friends who testified Monday about what he told them after the encounter contradicted his account.

Labrie told detectives he went as far to put a condom on—as a way to “tease” the girl, he said—but had a “moment of self restraint and stopped.” It was a “moment of divine inspiration,” he said.

He pulled his pants up, condom still on, kissed the girl goodbye and sprinted from the room, he told detectives.

Days later, the girl told police she was raped. The age of consent in New Hampshire is 16. Labrie is facing a slew of charges, including aggravated felonious sexual assault.

Curtin and her partner drove up to Labrie’s tiny Vermont town, about 90 miles northwest of Concord, and knocked on the door. Nobody was home, so she left a card.

When Curtin finally met with Labrie and his mom, they seemed to “want to present Owen to us, to tell us who he was and what his accomplishments were,” instead of discussing the issue at hand.

They met at a coffee shop in Concord, something the detectives said they didn’t want to do, but Labrie insisted. They eventually persuaded Labrie and his mom to come back to police headquarters, and then suggested to Labrie that he might not want to talk about his sexual activity in front of his mom.

“She cannot unhear those things,” Curtin said she told Labrie. He agreed to speak to detectives alone for the next 3 hours and 45 minutes. At times, he was both cooperative and seemed annoyed, they said, when it didn’t appear the detectives were believing what he was saying.

He wasn’t under arrest, Curtin said, and was free to leave. But defense attorney J.W. Carney suggested that it didn’t seem to Labrie that he could go at any time. The way Curtin and her partner went about things, they were trying to catch Labrie off guard, from knocking on his door in Vermont, to taking him away from the public coffee shop, to keeping him away from his mother.

“Only after you said it again and again and again and again and finally they said, ‘Okay, we’ll go to the police station,’” Carney said with a raised voice. Once there, Carney said, he was outnumbered.

Had the police been notified just a few days before, they would have to ask Labrie’s de facto parents—St. Paul’s School—for permission to talk to him at his home, Carney said.

After the interview, Labrie went home to Vermont with his mom. Before the night was over, he sent a few emails to Curtin, including the essay he’d sent with his college applications. Curtin wasn’t sure why.

Also Tuesday, two different forensic investigators with the New Hampshire state police crime lab testified about the physical evidence in the case, of which there was little.

No signs of seminal fluid or sperm were found inside the girl, which is typical days after an assault, they said. But inside the girl’s underwear, there was DNA found that was a minor match to Labrie. A second sample taken to test the sperm found in the underpants was inconclusive and couldn’t be matched to anyone.

The prosecution rested its case after 16 witnesses that included the accuser, her mother, her best friend, two nurses, a doctor, five friends of Labrie, two detectives, a St. Paul’s dean, and the two scientists.

Labrie is expected to take the stand Wednesday morning.