Rape case points to sordid tradition at elite prep school

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20150816/us-prep-school-rape-trial-a83c41859b.html

Aug 16, 1:12 PM (ET)
By LYNNE TUOHY

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — St. Paul's School boasts a glittering roster of alumni that includes senators, congressmen, a Nobel laureate and the current secretary of state. The elite prep school also allegedly has a sordid tradition of sexual conquest where graduating boys try to take the virginity of younger girls before getting their diplomas.

The practice known as "Senior Salute" was spelled out in stark terms by a former prefect at the New Hampshire school who is charged with raping a 15-year-old girl on the roof of a campus building in May 2014.

Owen Labrie, now 19, has pleaded not guilty to several felonies. When his trial begins Monday, prosecutors are expected to call current and former students to testify about the sexual culture at one of the country's most selective boarding schools.

Labrie, of Tunbridge, Vermont, talked openly about the tradition when he was interviewed by Concord police. On a campus where upperclassmen studiously avoid their younger peers in most settings, Labrie told a detective some students "take great pride" in having sex with younger students before they leave school.

Labrie also told the detective of a contest where boys compete to "score" with the most girls, keeping a running tally written in indelible marker on a wall behind washing machines. The school kept painting over the scoreboard so it eventually was moved online. He acknowledged to the detective he was "trying to be number one," the detective wrote.

A counselor who contacted police after hearing from the alleged victim's mother also told an investigator about the tradition, the Concord Monitor reported last year, citing a police affidavit. The same affidavit said the school had been trying to educate students against "sexual scoring."

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He told the detective that he tried to educate other students not to engage in "Senior Salute" and that the school wasn't doing enough to curtail the tradition.

"The school has to put its foot down on this culture," Labrie is quoted in a police affidavit. "It's not healthy."

Founded in 1856, St. Paul's is an Episcopal school nestled on 2,000 pastoral acres on the outskirts of downtown Concord, New Hampshire's capital. It enrolls about 530 students and admitted girls for the first time in 1971. Tuition, room and board currently clocks in at $53,810.

The school belongs to the Eight Schools Association, a sort of Ivy League for prep schools that includes Choate Rosemary Hall and Hotchkiss in Connecticut, Phillips Academy Andover, Deerfield Academy and Northfield Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts, The Lawrenceville School in New Jersey and Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire.

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Secretary of State John Kerry graduated from St. Paul's in 1962, alongside former FBI Director Robert Mueller. Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau is an alum as are 13 U.S. ambassadors, three Pulitzer Prize winners, two World Series of Poker winners, actor Judd Nelson and sons of the Astor and Kennedy families, according to the school's website.

The school also has a robust international presence: 17 percent of the 2014-15 class came from 25 countries and notable alums include Bernard Makihara, the former CEO of the Mitsubishi Corporation, and Edmund Maurice Burke Roche, a conservative member of the British Parliament and the maternal grandfather of Diana, Princess of Wales.

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