There is a very long history of promising young athletes being protected from the consequences of sexual misconduct by their parents, their coaches, their teams, their communities, their schools and even by the courts. Shrugging it off as "boys will be boys" is wrong but at the same time I am not sure that penitentiary would be the right punishment.
I am extremely lenient in regards to juvenile crimes with the caveat being that no one gets hurt.
You have a small amount of drugs on you, you steal something, you race and wreck your car, you urinate in public and get caught, etc. Sure, I'm all for giving you a slap on the wrist and "boys will be boys..."...
But not rape. Not hurting someone. what if he had gotten a girl pregnant? Now she has to decide to carry her rapist's baby to term or have an abortion and that is no choice I would ever want to force on someone.
Sorry, there has to be a line drawn somewhere and I'm more than comfortable drawing that line at rape.
And here is the reason why. Had he done that to my little sister, I would break bones on him and possibly kill him. You don't get to shrug off raping my sister with a "Oppsy, sorry, my bad..." apology.
I think we sometimes make the mistake of understanding the true purpose of law. Sure, Justice is a nice fringe benefit, but Justice is not the primary purpose of law. It is a nice secondary purpose. But the primary purpose of law is "Order".
SO the question becomes, what happens to social stability if raping females carry no significant penalty? How is the populace going to respond to females getting raped?
And as for someone who was raised in the South, sorry, we take honor very seriously and are very protective of our loved ones. And if someone gets away with the crime of rape with a slap on the wrist, you better believe there will be X% of folks who decide to take matters into their own hands... And that would undermine the entire system as a whole.
So that is why he needs to go to jail. Him not going to jail threatens the entire system.
