A graduate of an exclusive New England prep school was cleared of felony rape but convicted of misdemeanor sex offenses Friday against a 15-year-old freshman girl in a case that exposed a campus tradition in which seniors competed to see how many younger students they could have sex with. A jury of nine men and three women took eight hours to reach its verdict in the case against 19-year-old Owen Labrie, of Tunbridge, Vt., who was accused of forcing himself on the girl in a dark and noisy mechanical room at St. Paul's School in Concord, N.H., two days before he graduated in 2014. Labrie ... was acquitted of the most serious charges against him - three counts of felony rape, each punishable by 10 to 20 years in prison - but was found guilty of three counts of misdemeanor sexual assault and other offenses. Each count carries up to a year behind bars. The 159-year-old boarding school ... has long been a training ground for politicians, Nobel laureates, corporate executives and other members of the country's elite. The rape was part of Senior Salute ... described to detectives as a competition in which graduating seniors tried to have sex with underclassmen and kept score on a wall behind a set of washing machines. Alumni of St. Paul's include Secretary of State John F. Kerry, who graduated in 1962 alongside former FBI Director Robert Mueller. Three Pulitzer prize winners ... also attended the school, as did at least 13 U.S. ambassadors.
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