A 19-year-old prep school graduate was acquitted Friday of felony sexual assault of a younger classmate, but was convicted of several lesser misdemeanor charges in a case that put a spotlight on one of the country’s most prestigious boarding schools.  Owen Labrie was accused of raping a then-15-year-old freshman girl in May 2014, two days before his graduation from the elite St. Paul’s School in Concord, N.H., when Mr. Labrie was 18.  He was found not guilty of the most serious charges against him—three counts of felony rape, each punishable by 10 to 20 years in prison. He was found guilty of four misdemeanors, including sexual assault, each carrying up to a year in prison, and a separate felony charge, of using a computer to arrange a physical encounter with someone under age 16, which carries up to seven years.  Mr. Labrie will have to register as a sex offender for life, a prosecutor said Friday. Sentencing has been scheduled for Oct. 29.  The verdict indicated that the jurors—nine men and three women—rejected the prosecution’s argument that Mr. Labrie had sex with the girl without her consent. But they did believe he had sex with the girl when she was under the age of 16, the age of consent in the state.  Mr. Labrie, a former St. Paul’s soccer team captain from Tunbridge, Vt., testified otherwise, saying that he had a physical encounter with the girl, but said he halted it before intercourse. The girl, now 16, testified that the physical contact began as consensual, but advanced to intercourse despite her saying “no” three times.  The trial in Merrimack County Superior Court in Concord, N.H., drew national attention to the highly selective 159-year-old boarding school, with Mr. Labrie acknowledging that his encounter with the girl was part of a “senior salute,” which he portrayed as a campus rite in which graduating seniors seek out younger classmates for trysts that can include sexual intercourse.  Mr. Labrie, who had been headed to Harvard University before his arrest, wept when he heard the verdict, according to the televised court proceedings.  St. Paul’s issued a statement commending the “courage and strength” displayed by the girl “who has suffered through this nightmare.” The school said it is its responsibility to ensure that students live in a safe and respectful environment and that “anything short of that cannot and will not be accepted.”  St. Paul’s rector and president of the board of trustees also addressed the verdict and testimony from the trial separately in an email to the school community on Friday, saying the school’s rector had first learned about the “senior salute” in spring 2013, and that “it is not a decades-old ‘tradition’ as some have alleged.” The email said the phrase, senior salute, was “never understood to include the conduct engaged in by Owen Labrie.”  “That behavior was never condoned by the school,” the school wrote.  In closing arguments Thursday, a prosecutor portrayed Mr. Labrie as determined to have intercourse with the girl before he graduated, noting he had led her to a dark and loud mechanical room in a math and science building, bringing a blanket and a condom.  “This happened at St. Paul’s School, where there’s a tradition called the `senior salute,’ where, by the defendant’s own words, older students take great pride in taking the virginity of younger students,” said prosecutor Joseph Cherniske, who said Mr. Labrie “had to confuse and manipulate a 15-year-old girl to get what he wanted.”  Defense attorney J.W. Carney portrayed the girl as lying about the encounter to protect her own reputation after rumors began swirling on campus. He focused on apparently cordial emails the girl sent to Mr. Labrie after the physical encounter, and said the girl testified that she didn’t recall telling a friend about sexual acts she would possibly perform on Mr. Labrie.  “She was willing to tell a lie about a critical fact right in front of you,” Mr. Carney told the jury.  Mr. Carney also implicated the boarding school, saying “St. Paul’s School failed the children with their attitude toward the senior salute.”  Write to Jennifer Levitz at jennifer.levitz@wsj.com  Corrections & Amplifications: St. Paul’s said in a statement that it is the school’s responsibility to ensure that students live in a safe and respectful environment and that “anything short of that cannot and will not be accepted.” Also, an email from the school’s rector and president of the board of trustees said the phrase, senior salute, was “never understood to include the conduct engaged in by Owen Labrie.” An earlier version of this article misquoted those statements.
A graduate of an exclusive New Hampshire prep school was cleared of felony rape, but convicted of other sex offenses, in a case that exposed a campus tradition where some seniors competed to see how many younger students they could have sex with.