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Owen Labrie testified at his trial in Merrimack Superior Court in Concord, N.H., on Wednesday.Credit Charles Krupa/Associated Press

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CONCORD, N.H. — The student accused of rape in a case that has drawn national attention and shined a harsh light on the sexual culture at St. Paul’s, an exclusive New England boarding school, took the stand on Wednesday, presenting himself as a model of virtue — a high-achieving soccer captain who won an award for his character before graduating last year.

As the girl who has accused him of rape watched from the front row alongside members of her family, Owen Labrie, 19, began his testimony by calmly telling the jury that he was not a wealthy boarding school student, noting that he was a child of divorce who would never have been able to attend St. Paul’s without a scholarship.

He emphasized that his relationship with his accuser before the encounter was nothing out of the ordinary, calling it “pretty flirty, nothing serious.” He said a list of girls he and a friend put together a few months before graduation was simply a way to identify “girls that we thought were cute.”

And, he said, “score” — a term he often used, according to previous testimony — did not necessarily suggest sex, but rather, should be interpreted as “synonymous with dating.”

The upbeat self-portrait Mr. Labrie presented on Wednesday at the beginning of his testimony broadened his image and clarified his background, highlighting his achievements, including plans to attend Harvard and possibly become a minister.

But it also clearly was a sharp contrast with the testimony of his accuser, who got up and rushed out of the courtroom just after 11 a.m. as Mr. Labrie read aloud messages they had exchanged.

Mr. Labrie and his lawyers are now confronting not only what the girl has said, along with other witnesses, but also Mr. Labrie’s own words.

“Welcome to an eight-week exercise in debauchery, a probing exploration of the innermost meanings of the word sleaze bag,” Mr. Labrie wrote in an email to friends as the end of their senior year was approaching — a time that some seniors saw as their last chance for sexual encounters with younger students there.

That email was among a litany of messages read earlier this week by several friends of Mr. Labrie. As they took the stand, most clad in dark blazers and light pants, as if in uniform, they grudgingly described a backslapping world of sexual conquest with its own lexicon of synonyms for dating and hooking up, like “slay” and “score” — a world in which, some messages suggested, Mr. Labrie was something of a bombastic ringleader.

Mr. Labrie had invited the girl for a so-called senior salute — a custom among some students at the all-residential boarding school in which students in their final year would invite a younger student to join them for a walk, a kiss, or more.

Mr. Labrie said Wednesday that his email was innocent. “I wanted to ask her out,” he said. He said the senior salute was simply a way to ask younger students “to hang out before the older student graduated.”

The girl initially sent him a sharp rejection, which, a detective said, Mr. Labrie later described as “sassy.”

“He said, ‘I don’t get talked to like that,’ ” said Detective Julie Curtin of the Concord Police, who testified for the prosecution on Tuesday.

But another student, a minor who also took the stand on Monday, intervened on Mr. Labrie’s behalf. He told the girl that she should give Mr. Labrie a chance.

Mr. Labrie expressed his gratitude to the student, adding that he owed the friend 10,000 sexual favors.

And after Mr. Labrie’s encounter with the girl, which she says was a rape, he told several friends they had had sex, according to their testimony.

“He eventually told me that, in his words, he had boned her,” said Andrew Thomson, Mr. Labrie’s former roommate. When a prosecutor asked what that meant, he said, “in that context, I assume it would mean they had sexual relations.”

Mr. Thomson said he asked Mr. Labrie if that had meant taking the girl’s virginity. “He confirmed that it was,” Mr. Thomson said.

Another friend of Mr. Labrie’s, Tucker Marchese, haltingly read messages the two had exchanged after the encounter.

“How’d it go from ‘no’ to ‘bone’?” Mr. Marchese wrote.

“Just pulled every trick in the book,” Mr. Labrie responded.

“Congrats,” Mr. Marchese wrote later. “I hope it was everything you imagined.”

Mr. Marchese read another message he received from Mr. Labrie, in which Mr. Labrie wrote that the “thing” with the girl “will blow over,” adding, “Denied until I die tonight.”

In his interview with Detective Curtin after the episode, Mr. Labrie said he never had sex with the girl, who was 15 at the time.

“He said he wouldn’t have penetrated because of her age, his age, and his position,” Detective Curtin said on Tuesday.

Detective Curtin said when she asked Mr. Labrie why the girl would lie about their having sex, Mr. Labrie suggested that, for some students, having sex with an older student could be a source of pride.