Student at John Kerry's former school gets a year in jail for sex assault

Owen Labrie could have faced 11 years in jail

Owen Labrie has pleaded not guilty to ten charges (AP)

A graduate of an exclusive New England school was sentenced on Thursday to a year in jail for sexually assaulting a 15-year-old female student as part of a tradition in which pupils about to graduate sought the sexual conquest of younger pupils.

Owen Labrie, 20, of Tunbridge, Vermont, could have received 11 years behind bars.

Labrie was originally charged with rape and accused of forcing himself on the girl in a nearly deserted academic building in 2014, just before his graduation. He was 18 at the time.

A jury in August cleared him of rape and convicted him instead of the lesser charge of sexual assault for having intercourse and other sexual contact with an underage girl.

The case scandalised St. Paul's School in Concord, a 159-year-old institution whose alumni include Secretary of State John Kerry, former FBI Director Robert Mueller, at least 13 US ambassadors and three Pulitzer Prize winners, including Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau.

Owen Labrie has pleaded not guilty to ten charges

His arrest exposed a competition at the $55,290-a-year boarding school called Senior Salute, in which students kept score of how many younger students they had sex with, the Associated Press reported.

Labrie, an aspiring divinity student and captain of the soccer team, told authorities the two had consensual sexual contact but not intercourse, saying he stopped short in a moment of "divine intervention."

During the trial,he acknowledged bragging to friends that he had intercourse with her.

In a videotaped statement played in court o Thursday, the girl, now 17, said she was subjected to verbal and physical retaliation from other students after her return to St. Paul's and has been living in almost constant fear since the assault.

She said she has been made to feel as if she “didn't deserve to live" and "would be better off being dead.” She also said she has problems concentrating in school.

Prosecutors asked Superior Court Judge Larry Smukler to give Labrie three to seven years in prison, while Labrie's lawyer, JW Carney, argued for probation and community service, saying that what the jury called sexual assault was really a "consensual encounter between two teenagers."

Carney also said his client felt "enormous remorse" about the encounter and was humiliated by the crude language he used to describe the girl to others.

"He's now known by so many people as the St. Paul's rapist even though the jury rejected that moniker," Mr Carney said.

"His life has been one of trauma trying to deal with these allegations and the emotion of the trial."

In the wake of the scandal, Labrie lost his full scholarship to Harvard and has been all but disavowed by St. Paul's, which stripped him of a religion award and refused to add his name to an engraved list of graduates.