Granite Falls Man Pleads Guilty to Criminal Sexual Assault

(Learfield News/St. Paul, MN) — A man from Granite Falls has agreed to plead guilty to charges of second-degree criminal sexual conduct after prosecutors say he held his girlfriend captive for four days in her dorm room at Saint Catherine University in Saint Paul, raping, beating, and waterboarding the victim before she escaped.

The Star Tribune reports that the plea deal calls for 20-year-old Keanu Labatte to be sentenced to no more than seven-and-a-half years.

When Labatte was arrested, he was on probation for violating a restraining order obtained in Yellow Medicine County by a 17-year-old who had been his girlfriend.