Boarding School Student Sexually Assaulted in Annual 'Dating Rite'
LatestIn recent years, much necessary attention has been focused on the devastating and infuriating sexual assault epidemic at colleges nationwide. Unfortunately, though, campus sexual violence isn’t limited to institutions of higher learning — it plagues high schools as well.
At St. Paul’s, an elite boarding school in Concord, N.H., students partake in an annual end-of-the-year “dating rite” called the Senior Salute — two days before graduation, seniors reach out to younger students with whom they’d like to hook up before departing for college. During this year’s event, a freshman student alleges that she was lead into the woods by Owen Labrie, 18, and sexually assaulted while she repeatedly told him no. According to investigators, Labrie may have been partaking in a competition with his friends to see how many hook-up conquests each could rack up. In related news, this world is utterly terrible.
According to the Boston Globe, Labrie sent a Senior Salute to the freshman student two days before the alleged assault. She declined, so Labrie asked another freshman to put in a good word for him. The young woman then agreed to meet with him; she later told investigators that she was under the impression that she and Labrie would be “kissing or making out and ‘that’s all.'”