ST. PAUL, Minn. — A man has agreed to a plea deal that calls for a sentence of up to 7 1/2 years in prison. He was accused of raping, beating, and waterboarding his girlfriend in her college dorm room for three days.
The charge against Keanu Avery Labatte, 20, of Granite Falls was changed, and he pleaded guilty on Friday to second-degree criminal sexual behavior. He said that in September, he choked and raped the woman in her room at St. Catherine University. “In exchange, prosecutors agreed to drop four other charges,” the St. Paul Pioneer Press said.
Thomas Beito, his lawyer, said Labatte admits to choking her during the attack. Beito said, “He didn’t admit to the other more sexy things that happened in this case, like waterboarding, holding her hostage, or kidnapping her.” “We don’t believe any of that happened.”
Labatte is still free on a $80,000 bond until his hearing on November 4. Beito said he would ask Judge Kellie Charles to give him probation “because of his age and because he doesn’t have a significant criminal history.”
A spokesman for the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office, Dennis Gerhardstein, said that the prosecution will ask the judge to give Labatte the full 7 1/2-year sentence.
There is a report that Labatte went to campus on a Thursday to see his girlfriend of two months. The lawsuit said that he took her phone after finding texts, pictures, and social media posts that made him angry. The lawsuit said she was sexually assaulted, strangled, and threatened with a knife. It also said she was forced to lie in a bathtub while Labatte covered her face with a washcloth and poured water on her.
She talked him into letting her go get food from the diner that Sunday morning. But she told the university’s security office that she was being abused. The complaint said that when they called the cops, they saw marks on her neck.
