Appalling

[soxmom]

Well, now SPS’s attempts to force a reveal of the victim’s identity is moot, as she’s decided to go public herself. I imagine that it takes a lot of guts for a young woman to speak out about what happened to her, so good for her! http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/08/30/owen-labrie-victim-speaks-publicly-for-first-time/29TyjHzOs16mldjAbBIXHN/story.html

[Periwinkle]

I saw that. So an attempt to make the family shut up about their child’s injury has catapulted the story to the front page. As of right now, a Google search turns up four pages of stories. The interview on Today was 7 minutes long.

So, the attempt to make the publicity go away backfired.

[PetraMC]

It seems like every school mishandles cases like this when they start circling the wagons. But the fact that current SPS parents helped pay for Labrie’s defense but did nothing for the victim makes me sick.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/08/25/prominent-paul-parent-helped-pay-for-accused-rapist-defense/jCp5G2Xls6tPqk21JK7qAO/story.html

[Center]

@PetraMC what would you have them do for her? pay her?

[PetraMC]

I would expect current parents not to get involved at all.

[soxmom]

I’m with you, @PetraMC. I was surprised about the reports of current parents contributing to the defense costs. The only way I would have been ok with that is if they’d raised the money, but then split it with half going to his defense costs and half going to a victim’s rights or rape awareness charity, or something of that sort. Otherwise it feels like they were choosing sides, against the victim.

[Sue22]

I wonder if some of the parents who contributed to Laurie’s defense fund had boys in his class and were worried that if he were convicted it would make it more likely there would be further digging into the “Senior Salute” resulting in charges, or at least disapprobation, for their boys.

[GnocchiB]

Good point, @Sue22. I would have to hope that the parents who gave, did so with no idea what Owen Labrie was really like (which was revealed by the transcripts of the texts/emails/FB posts he wrote). And I hope they were sickened by their own support when and if they followed the trial and discovered what he was like when he thought no one was looking.

[GoatMama]

Here is a comment an SPS parent posted to one of the Globe articles. I hope it helps put things in perspective:

whiteysmith08/26/16 02:21 PM

My daughter is a student at St. Paul’s, and I’ll continue to post my somewhat rambling perspective on the school in hopes it will clear some misconceptions.

@news1234: Unfortunately, rape happens everywhere, not just boarding schools. I trust St. Paul’s and believe my daughter is safe there. But I also talk to her about her personal safety on and off campus, and I’ve done what I can to make her aware of situations to avoid and ways to protect herself. What else can anyone do, as a parent, unless the whole world changes?

@bostonpeace100: Owen Labrie STOLE the keys he used to access the remote rooms in the science building. If you read his (I think) Facebook conversations with friends as he planned this event, he first considers taking the victim to a vacant apartment in the art building, one that is used by visitors or artists-in-residence. He later decides to go to the science building, using the keys he took, because the apartment is too close to the center of things, or it would be more likely they would be overheard there (or some similar reason). Since the court case, ‘having keys’ to school buildings has been outlined as an offense punishable by expulsion in the St. Paul’s Student Handbook. So has participating in ‘games’ of one-upsmanship.

The Senior Salute is not a longstanding tradition, and many recent alums will tell you they never heard of it. I would, however, call your attention to the word “Slaymaker” that Owen Labrie used on his yearbook page. He writes “Slaymaker47, 'nuf said.” I have no idea if that was a tradition, but it seems the game he was really playing with his friends was something he called “slaymaking.” Instead they attribute this game to Senior Salute, which I understood to be something recent and certainly more innocent.

People, as I understand it, gave money for the defense because Owen Labrie came from nothing and couldn’t pay for it himself. Also, they believed him. This brief history has shown that EVERYONE believed him, all of the time. The victim believed him, his friends, the staff, the alumni believed him. To hear them tell it at SPS, he was one of the most beloved students at the school. A straight A (well, at SPS it’s High Honors) student, captain of the soccer team, full ride to Harvard and planning to go to Divinity School to be a minister. Sounds like a dream! But his actions have shown something else was going on below the surface. More than one person at the school has told me how much he broke their hearts, how flabbergasted they were, when they found out he had such a dark side (read his Facebook messages for evidence). Someone told me “We never saw it coming, he seemed practically perfect and we were so proud. We’re devastated.” The prosecutor in the case even said something to the effect that these kinds of guys, great guys, high fliers, politicians, sports stars, handsome, charming . . . are what rapists look like . . . the guy you’d least expect.

We should also note that Labrie (if I remember correctly) emailed friends and alumni to ask for money for his defense, in clear violation of the judge’s instructions to NOT do that. Again, he thinks the rules don’t apply to him.

I’m very sorry for the victim and worried about her. I’m on her side and believe her. The trial was gut wrenching – even to listen to – we will never know what she has gone through and what she sacrificed to stand up for herself. I wanted to punch Jay Carney right through the television for the way he treated her. I know many women who have had this happen, and this is a world where sadly, all women and a lot of men need to be on guard at all times. I believe that no amount of rules or culture change at SPS could have stopped the perpetrator. He has demonstrated before, during, and after the trial a complete lack of respect for rules and law. He acts as though the rules do not apply to him. His writings show an obsessive, laser focus on attaining his goal. His friends knew of his intentions, one even writing something like “Dude, we’re going to have to bail you out, wasn’t that girl like 13?” Why didn’t THEY do more to stop him?

However, perhaps what needs improvement is the culture that drove the victim from the school after she bravely returned in the fall of 2014. The bullying and ostracizing should have been addressed and punished. I’ve heard people say the school cautioned that they might not be able to keep the students from making her life miserable. Was anything done? Following the Labrie situation, another girl on campus was injured by her boyfriend (and there is a debate about how serious or not it was, but the school, rightfully, let the police decide) and that girl was also ostracized. This definitely needs some scrutiny.

I try, at the same time, to imagine how a public school would control bullying in this situation. Would it be any different? Is it hard, or impossible, to keep teenagers from acting this way? How could a girl who accused the coolest guy on campus, as far as most students were concerned, ever manage? She is a brave, brave person for even going back in the first place. I don’t know if I could do it. I’ve worked in corporate HR departments and can say unequivocally that people who prosecute for sexual harassment or assault at work are also, sickeningly, marginalized – and that’s among adults.

This case is a microcosm. The whole world could use a dignity and respect upgrade.

[Center]

@PetraMC yes I agree but you wrote “But the fact that current SPS parents helped pay for Labrie’s defense but did nothing for the victim makes me sick.”

[PetraMC]

@Center The optics would have been slightly less bad if they would have, I don’t know, offered to help pay for her mental health counseling? Something? Anything? But they should have stayed out of it completely.

[rhandco]

Many of us have found ourselves in situations which we have later regretted.

I let someone walk me home in college when I was drunk, and was almost raped while passed out.

But I also moved in with a guy three days after my first date with him, and have a still running 30 year relationship from it.

The sad part is that we all have to take chances in life, and we don’t know where they will lead. The two situations were very similar, with a “gentleman” walking me home to my dorm room. How do you know the gentleman from the rapist when they are both Ivy League students?

[Center]

@rhandco Very true. Personal reponsibility is also an important issue on the part of young women and young men. I think the young people at UVA and Duke that were falsely accused might have a different perpspective

[doschicos]

I find it frustrating that, given the HUGE volume of sexual assault cases, some victim blaming poster always wants to trot out a story or two about false accusations. Studies have shown that false accusations are a minuscule percentage. It detracts from the discussion and the addressing of a legitimate issue to post that constant refrain rather that dealing with a serious, recurring problem.

[Center]

a great many of these cases are not cut and dry. In most the young woman desperately wanted to be with the boy in question: things turned south mid rendevous. The rest is he said she said… The SPS “victim” engaged willingly per her own testimony…then according to her, own statement, couldn’t say no. Now that is appalling.

[AppleNotFar]

then according to her, own statement, couldn’t say no

These situations should not be about not saying no. If there is silence, consent should NOT be assumed. If there is respect between the parties, there should be a clear “yes”.

[Periwinkle]

In her testimony, the St. Paul’s victim stated under oath she said no. http://nymag.com/thecut/2015/08/where-the-st-pauls-school-rape-case-stands-now.html

There is a huge reluctance to believe victims; there are far more silent victims than those who step forward. Few accusers does not mean nothing happened. Yesterday the report about St. George’s came out. If posters want to discuss it in detail, please start a new thread.

Of interest to the current discussion, though, is the sheer scale of the incidents the investigator found in the alumni of the '70s and '80s:

The most egregious case of abuse centers on Al Gibbs, an athletic trainer who, according to the report, allegedly abused 31 of the 51 victims of staffers. Murphy said nearly one in five girls who attended the school from 1972 to 1980 made first-hand reports of abuse by Gibbs, who “began sexually assaulting female students nearly as soon as” the campus went coed in 1972 and continued until he was fired.

The total is probably higher, Murphy said, since many victims choose not to report: “We expect the number of women actually abused by Gibbs substantially exceeds the reported figure.”

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/09/01/stgeorges/4so7ElWQwjTsnDkv5eI3NJ/story.html

If you recall, when the first St. George’s victims spoke up as adults last year, they also recounted how the school had made their accusations go away. One victim had given up, after the school’s attorneys played hardball:

When she filed her suit against the school, Scott faced a different kind of pain, in the tactics of St. George’s lawyers. They told the court that Scott either could be lying or could have had consensual sex with the trainer, who was 67 years old when the assaults began. She was 15.

Court records revealed that four other girls had told school authorities that Gibbs had also molested them, MacLeish said.

School attorneys also sought to change it from a “Jane Doe” case and reveal Scott’s real name. “Maybe people will come forward and say the plaintiff is a, with all due respect to those in the court, has a tendency to lie, and that would be relevant, also,” said defense attorney William P. Robinson III of the Providence firm Edwards & Angell. (In 2004, Robinson was appointed to the Rhode Island Supreme Court. Robinson did not return calls from the Globe.)

https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/2015/12/14/stgeorges/QBq1IfsItk6relwmPQJbRP/story.html

At the time, at St. George’s School, the actual tally of abuse victims at the hand of this one man was not one victim; it wasn’t four victims. It was almost 20% of all the female students. It is very sad the school put all its effort into making the scandal “go away.”

At St. Paul’s School, Owen Labrie deleted 119 of his online messages. Competitions are about racking up a score, aren’t they? Do you think there was only one case of statutory rape in this “Senior Salute?” I don’t, although I certainly understand if some victims and their families choose not to go through the public torture of a statutory rape trial.

[MAandMEmom]

I mostly read the St. George’s report and oh my! There are no excuses for what’s written in there but it was certainly a different time and I get that.

The St. Paul’s situation seems like the institution has made a wrong turn at every.single.juncture. If the school accepts any Federal $$ they must comply with Title IX and oh by the way, it’s the right thing to do! I know I’ve spent the summer educating my daughter on issues such as what happened there. I actually had her read all The Boston Globe articles on this case, including the comments so she gets a better idea about perceptions regarding the type of school she will soon attend.