Boyfriend accused of holding his new girlfriend captive and raping her in her dorm for three days agrees to a deal

A man accused of raping, beating and waterboarding his girlfriend at a Minnesota college has agreed to a plea deal that will see him sentenced to up to seven and a half years in prison.

Keanu Avery Labatte, 20, of Granite Falls, Minnesota, has pleaded guilty to an amended charge of second-degree sexual abuse.

Labatte admitted to choking and sexually assaulting the woman, his new girlfriend, in her dorm room at St. Catherine University last September.

In return, prosecutors agreed to drop four additional charges.

Labatte’s lawyer, Thomas Beito, said Labatte admitted to choking her during the attack.

“He has not admitted to the other offensive details at play here, such as waterboarding, taking her hostage or kidnapping her,” Beito told The Pioneer Press. “We deny that any of that happened.”

Labatte remains free on $80,000 bail ahead of his sentencing in November.

Beito said he would ask Judge Kellie Charles for probation “due to his age and the fact that he has no significant criminal history.”

Dennis Gerhardstein, spokesman for the Ramsey County District Attorney’s Office, said prosecutors would ask the judge to give Labatte the full seven-and-a-half-year prison sentence.

According to the complaint, Labatte went to campus on a Thursday to visit his girlfriend, whom he had been dating for two months.

After finding texts, pictures and social media content that “infuriated him,” he took her phone and began his brutal campaign, the complaint states.

It’s unclear what he saw on her phone that triggered his anger, but the criminal complaint says he strangled her with both hands around her neck and threatened to kill her while calling her an asshole.

She says she felt dizzy and saw stars during the strangulation.

Labatte threatened to kill her family and reminded them that he had previously held a knife to the throat of a former girlfriend.

She was strangled, threatened with a knife and forced to lie in a bathtub while Labatte covered her face with a washcloth and poured water on her. She was also sexually assaulted, the indictment says.

The St. Catherine’s student said she was so frightened that she lay down next to her abductor and did not move, fearing what he would do next.

She says the worst torture occurred on Saturday, when the waterboarding took place.

Labatte filled a bucket, forced her to lie down in the bathtub, where he put a washcloth on her face and poured water over her.

On the same day he threatened her with the knife, he held her arm and said he was looking for the right vein to cut so deep that she could no longer be saved.

It wasn’t until three days later, on Sunday morning, that she persuaded him to let her go and get something to eat from the cafeteria.

He gave the victim her phone and told her she had to send him pictures of her whereabouts so he could track her.

After leaving the dorm, she went to the campus security office and told them that she had been physically and sexually abused by her boyfriend.

Campus security then called the police. Officers noticed marks on her neck, the complaint states.

While speaking with police, Labatte repeatedly called the victim and she told authorities that he was paranoid because she was not in the dorm and was ready to leave campus.

Labatte was found in the dormitory and arrested. After being read his rights, Labatte said, “I invoke the Fifth Amendment.”

When searching the room, police found an orange/black/silver folding knife and a wet red washcloth in the front pocket of a green backpack.

The mattress was found on the floor. According to the victim, Labatte moved it so that others would not hear the squeaking of the bed during the sexual assault.