WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — A 44-year-old man whose conviction of sex assault against a minor was dismissed by a trial judge before being reinstated by the state Supreme Court finally was handed down a prison sentence on Thursday.

Larry Labrecque was sentenced to 10 years to life in prison, all suspended except for the four years he has already served, meaning will not spend any more time behind bars providing he adheres to the terms of probation.

Labrecque was residing in Hartford when charges initially were brought against him in 2018. In 2022, a jury found him guilty on a single count of sexual assault, without consent, against a female victim who was known to him and under 18 years old when the crime occurred.

At the sentencing, a victim’s advocate read a handwritten statement from the victim, who attended Thursday’s hearing. Now in her early 20s and a mother, the woman said until the assault, she had always trusted Labrecque like a “father figure … so for him to do what he did to me still hurts and haunts me to this day.”

“I wanted to take my own life,” she said of trauma. “… I was a year away from graduating (from high school), and I wanted to die.”

Labrecque has denied the allegations and, in court filings, his attorney suggested that the victim’s allegations were motivated by a desire to “remove” Labrecque from their home “in an attempt to prevent her family from moving” out of the area.

Labrecque replied obliquely when the judge asked him on Thursday if he there was anything he wished to tell the court.

“I’m sorry for this whole situation and that I’ll do whatever the court needs me to do; just trying to get on with life, be a good person to society,” Labrecque said. “I’m not trying to get into trouble or anything like that, just trying to go to work every day and mind my own business, be a good person.”

In order to comply with the terms of their probation successfully, sex offenders “must take ownership of the crime,” meaning acknowledged cognizance of their offense during a sex offender treatment program, Edward Adams, a probation officer in the Department of Corrections’ Hartford Probation and Parole office, explained to the court on Thursday. According to the DOC’s pre-sentencing investigation report last October, Labrecque “had not yet taken ownership,” Adams said.

Following Labrecque’s conviction, the trial judge dismissed the case on the grounds that he had been denied the right to a speedy trial. For more than four years prior to the trial, Labrecque had been held in prison without bail, as the COVID-19 pandemic that caused delays in Vermont’s judicial system.

Windsor County prosecutors subsequently appealed the dismissal to the Vermont Supreme Court, which earlier this year overturned the trial judge’s decision and remanded the case back to Windsor County Superior Court to be concluded.

On Thursday Judge John Treadwell, the same judge who earlier had ordered the dismissal, imposed a sentence that was more severe than the defense was seeking but less harsh than the one sought by prosecutors, who wanted Labrecque sent back to prison.

“The fundamental question for the court is what period of incarceration is an appropriate punitive component in light of defendant’s conviction,” Treadwell said from the bench. “Given the defendant’s history, the slightly more than four years that (he) has served in a correctional facility satisfied the punitive goal of sentencing in this matter.”

Labrecque’s probation, which remains in effect indefinitely until the court orders otherwise, includes numerous special conditions; violating any of them could send him back to prison to serve the underlying sentence, including successful completion of sex offender treatment. They include electronic monitoring, no contact with females under the age of 18, periodic polygraph examinations and no contact with the victim.

The judge denied the defense’s request for a lighter sentence of three years to life and 10 years probation.

The case extends back to 2018. The victim, who was 16 years old at the time, alleged that Labrecque, then 39, assaulted her on a May morning before school and further alleged he had been assaulting her for two years.

In July 2018, Labrecque was arrested and charged with three felonies: repeated aggravated sexual assault, repeated aggravated sexual assault of a child and sexual assault without consent, and he was jailed without bail pending trial.

After the pandemic struck in March 2020 and Vermont closed courthouses, Labrecque began filing a series of appeals — four in total and all denied — to the state Supreme Court, arguing his right to a speedy trial was being denied.

In May 2022, in one of the first criminal cases to go to trial in Windsor County after the court had been closed to the public for more than two years, a jury acquitted Labrecque on the charges of aggravated sexual assault but found him guilty on the lesser offense of sexual assault.

Following the verdict, Labrecque immediately filed a motion for acquittal, arguing that there had been a “substantial delay” in conducting his jury trial.

In November 2022, six months after the jury verdict, Treadwell ruled that Labrecque’s right to a speedy trial had been denied. The case was dismissed, and Labrecque was released from detention.

Windsor County prosecutors appealed Treadwell’s dismissal to the state Supreme Court. This past July, the five-member court granted the prosecution’s appeal, remanding the case back to Treadwell’s courtroom “for further proceedings,” which returned the case to post-conviction status and ready for sentencing.

The sentencing hearing was then set for eight weeks later back in the same courtroom and before the same judge where Labrecque had been tried.

In her written statement to the court, the victim said she wanted Labrecque “to go away for a long time because I don’t want another young girl like me to go through that. I am a mother now. I have a daughter to protect from people like Larry. I don’t think the time he served was enough.”

Despite the long and complex history of Labrecque’s prosecution, his case may yet have a another trip to the state Supreme Court.

Ember Tilton, Labrecque’s attorney, said it is standard practice to appeal convictions of life sentences, such as the one imposed on Labrecque.

He said his client is currently weighing that option, “but no decision has been made yet.”

Contact John Lippman at jlippmab@vnews.com.