Paul, Minnesota (AP) – A plea agreement calling for a term of up to 7 1/2 years has been reached by a man who was accused of raping, beating, and waterboarding his girlfriend while holding her captive in her dorm room at a Minnesota college for three days.
Granite Falls resident Keanu Avery Labatte, 20, entered a guilty plea on Friday to a revised charge of second-degree criminal sexual conduct. He acknowledged that in September at St. Catherine University, he had sexually assaulted and choked the woman in her room. Prosecutors agreed to drop four further charges in exchange, according to the St. Paul Pioneer Press.
Labatte acknowledged choking her during the attack, according to his lawyer Thomas Beito. According to Beito, “he did not confess to the other kind of scandalous aspects that were involved here, like waterboarding, holding her prisoner, or kidnapping.” “We refute the existence of any of that.”
A $80,000 bond keeps Labatte free until his sentencing on November 4. Due to his age and the fact that he has no substantial past criminal history, Beito stated he will want probation from Judge Kellie Charles.
According to Dennis Gerhardstein, a spokesman for the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office, the court will be asked to grant Labatte the entire seven and a half-year term by the prosecution.
The allegation states that on a Thursday, Labatte visited his two-month-old girlfriend on campus. He confiscated her phone after seeing texts, images, and social media posts that enraged him, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit claimed that she was sexually abused, threatened with a knife, made to lie in a bathtub while Labatte covered her face with a washcloth and poured water on her, and choked.
She talked him into letting her go so she could obtain food from the cafeteria that Sunday morning. However, she reported that she was being mistreated to the university’s security office. They called the police, who saw marks on her neck, according to the complaint.
