Last week, a 19-year-old boy named Owen Labrie was found not guilty of felony sexual assault on a girl who had been his schoolmate at St. Paul’s, a very prestigious private school in Concord, New Hampshire. The trial was big news because it involved an exclusive school (Secretary of State John Kerry went there as did many other famous and distinguished people) and the upper classes behaving badly is always news. But also it made news because of a supposed tradition known as the “Senior Salute,” in which seniors try to score with younger schoolmates just before graduating. Whatever the truth about the Senior Salute, that was irrelevant to the trial.
And while Labrie was found not guilty of the most serious charges, which could have landed him in jail for a very long time, he was found guilty of several misdemeanors involving statutory sexual assault because the girl was only 15 at the time, and 16 is the age of consent in New Hampshire. Far worse, he was also found guilty of using the Internet to lure a child. That is a felony, punishable by up to seven years in jail. Conviction also requires registering as a sex offender for life.
If this conviction stands, and, unfortunately, Mr. Labrie did use email to communicate with the girl, his life lies in utter ruins even if he does no jail time (and God save him from sexual assault if he does). With him wearing the scarlet letters of felony and sex offender, virtually all jobs worth having will be closed to him, despite his evident capacities (he was admitted to Harvard).
And if this conviction stands, it will be a grotesque miscarriage of justice. The laws regarding the age of consent are not meant to protect teenage girls from their teenage male friends. They are meant to deter older sexual predators from preying on the young and vulnerable. Some states have what are known as Romeo and Juliet laws to exempt teenagers who are close in age but in which one is under the age of consent. New Hampshire does not. It should.
Likewise the law against using the Internet is meant to keep older men from misrepresenting themselves (saying, for instance, that they are a 21-year-old Harvard senior when they are, in fact, a 52-year-old shoe salesman) in order to get teenage girls to agree to meet. Mr. Labrie did not misrepresent himself, he just emailed the girl and suggested a meeting, a meeting to which she agreed, knowing exactly who he was. Had he run into her in the dining room at lunch, or used his cell phone (or sent a carrier pigeon for that matter) he would not now be facing the ruin of his life, for he would have broken no law. But he used email and so he does. One wonders how many millions of teenage boys, reading about this case, are saying to themselves, “there but for the grace of God go I.”
This case is exactly what Mr. Bumble was talking about in Oliver Twist when Charles Dickens famously had him say, “the law is a ass, a idiot.” I hope the judge will do justice, not blindly follow the law because it is the law. If he doesn’t he will be guilty of the moral equivalent of a far worse assault than Mr. Labrie has ever been guilty of.
