Owen Labrie is not the scalp activists hoped for

By Ashe Schow, Ashe Schow

Published December 20, 2015

St. Paul's School student Owen Labrie will spend a year in jail, be on probation for the five years after that and registered as a sex offender for the rest of his life. But not because he raped his accuser — he was given these punishments for sleeping with a classmate that was underage.

While activists might cheer that they "got one" with Labrie, the fact of the matter is that this is yet another high-profile rape accusation that didn't pass muster.

Jeannie Suk, a Harvard Law professor, notes in The New Yorker that Labrie was found not guilty of "aggravated felonious sexual assault."

"For a conviction, the prosecution needed to prove that the accuser had shown, by speech or conduct, that she did not freely consent, and that the accused knew or should have known she was not consenting," Suk wrote. "But the jury acquitted him of these charges, meaning that it did not regard the acts as lacking consent."