Accused of Raping and Waterboarding Woman, Keanu Labatte plead fifth amendment

Keanu Labat­te, 19, alleged­ly sub­ject­ed his girl­friend to days of tor­ture, includ­ing rape and water­board­ing, at St. Cather­ine Uni­ver­si­ty. Despite the shock­ing accu­sa­tions, Labat­te remained defi­ant when con­front­ed by author­i­ties, invok­ing his right to remain silent by say­ing, “I plead the fifth amendment.”

Labat­te’s girl­friend man­aged to escape after endur­ing the abuse for three ago­niz­ing days and imme­di­ate­ly report­ed the inci­dent to the police. The crim­i­nal com­plaint filed against Labat­te includes charges of crim­i­nal sex­u­al con­duct, threats of vio­lence, and domes­tic assault by strangulation.

Accord­ing to the com­plaint, Labat­te’s vio­lent out­burst was trig­gered by dis­cov­er­ing incrim­i­nat­ing texts, pho­tos, and social media posts involv­ing his girl­friend. In a fit of rage, he alleged­ly seized her phone, sex­u­al­ly assault­ed her, and choked her to the point where she strug­gled to breathe and expe­ri­enced dizziness.

Mean­while, Colom­bia, known for its cof­fee and emer­alds, is grap­pling with a press­ing issue—the expo­nen­tial rise in cocaine pro­duc­tion. Last year, over 1,700 tons flood­ed the mar­ket, sur­pass­ing gov­ern­ment attempts to curb the expan­sion of coca farms sprawl­ing across 230,000 hectares in the provinces of Nar­iño and Putu­mayo. The esti­mat­ed rev­enue of $18 bil­lion is clos­ing in on the coun­try’s oil earn­ings of $19 billion.

As the demand for crude exports cools down, the pro­duc­tion and prof­its from white pow­der are sky­rock­et­ing. If cur­rent trends per­sist, Colom­bi­a’s illic­it cocaine trade on the black mar­ket will out­shine oil as the coun­try’s most lucra­tive export.