Prep school sex assault victim: ‘I feel ready to stand up and own what happened to me’

Before Owen Labrie, a student at the prestigious St. Paul’s School in New Hampshire, was convicted last August for sexually assaulting a younger student, his accuser Chessy Prout had spent days testifying about the effects of her assault.

But for two years, she remained anonymous, her voice disguised in her testimony and her face omitted from the coverage of the case.

On Tuesday, Prout spoke up publicly for the first time, saying she felt “ready to stand up and own what happened to me.”

“It’s been two years now since the whole ordeal,” she told Today’s Savannah Guthrie. “I’m going to make sure that other people, other girls, other boys know that they can own it too and they don’t have to be ashamed either.”

Prout made the decision to go public shortly after her family agreed to be named in a civil lawsuit against St. Paul’s, following the school’s request in federal court to deny Prout the anonymity that she had had during Labrie’s trial. The school cited the Prouts’ criticism of the school in asking for them to be named and four days before the Today interview aired, her parents said they would allow being named in the lawsuit, the Concord Monitor reported.

Prout was 15 and a freshman at St. Paul’s when she was sexually assaulted by Labrie, then 18, in an equipment room on campus in May 2014. Prout had accepted a date from the graduating senior, who was participating in a campus tradition called Senior Salute that encouraged males to have sex with younger classmates.

When she appeared on the stand anonymously last summer, Prout described the email from Labrie asking her out on a date that she expected would go no further than a kiss. She initially said no, according to the New York Times. “I thought it came with bad intentions.”

But when Labrie responded to her rejection with snippets of French, Prout reconsidered and accepted, so long as their date would remain between the two of them. Labrie wrote, “What a golden change of heart,” Prout recalled on the stand.

Labrie assaulted Prout after their date, over her objections and attempts to keep him from touching her.

“I said no no no no,” Prout testified at the time, describing how Labrie had tried to take off her clothes and sexually assaulted her. After the incident, Prout described to Today why she had continued to exchange friendly messages with Labrie, and how his defense attorney had asked at trial why she was “so hazy during that period.”

“I looked at the defense attorney in disbelief and said, ‘I was raped... I was just trying to go smoothly and try not to cause any waves,’ ” she recalled.

Prout told Today that the effects of her assault had led to panic attacks “when I am rocking on the floor and punching my legs trying to get myself to calm down.” Her younger sister, Prout said, “will try to give me the biggest hug” when she does.

“I just can’t imagine how scary it is for other people to have to do this alone,” she added. “And I don’t want anyone else to be alone.”

Prout said she would have been willing to walk away from the criminal case that followed, if only Labrie had been willing to apologize.

“We had been prepared to just move forward with our lives, and let them just move forward with their lives,” she said. “But, you know what, in the pursuit of justice, I would have done anything.”

Instead, Labrie went to trial, charged with several counts including felony rape. He was convicted for misdemeanor sexual assault last year, sentenced to a year in prison and required to register as a sex offender. Though he was free on bail pending an appeal, a chance interview with a reporter revealed he had missed required curfews and Labrie was ordered back to jail in March. He was released again in May.

Prout returned to St. Paul’s briefly, but “none of my old friends that were boys would talk to me,” she recalled in Tuesday’s interview. “They didn’t even look me in the eyes.”

St. Paul’s, she added, also didn’t take action in response to her case. “They weren’t trying to prevent it from happening to anyone else.”

She eventually left the school and her family filed the civil suit against St. Paul’s, alleging the school had not done enough to ensure her safety and care.

The school, in a statement to Today, denied the basis of the suit.

“We feel deeply for her and her family. We have always placed the safety and well-being of our students first and are confident that the environment and culture of the school have supported that,” according to the statement.

Prout said she was upset that Labrie had not been convicted for felony rape after her assault. “The fact that he was still able to pull the wool over a group of people’s eyes — that bothered me a lot and disgusted me.”

But she said that she doesn’t think of Labrie, except to “hope he gets help.”

“If he doesn’t learn, he will do it to another woman,” she told Guthrie.

This story was originally published August 30, 2016 at 9:41 AM with the headline "Prep school sex assault victim: ‘I feel ready to stand up and own what happened to me’."