A former youth detention center resident testifies about ‘hit squad’ attack

BRENTWOOD, N.H. — A former resident of a New Hampshire juvenile detention center testified Thursday that his House leader and another staffer restrained him in a stairwell while two other workers sexually assaulted him.

The four members of what he and other teens called “the hit squad” then carried him back to his room and threw him in, he said.

“I felt like I was floating over it and looking at it,” Michael Gilpatrick said as he wiped away tears in Rockingham Superior Court. “My body just went blank.”

Gilpatrick, 40, was the first former resident to testify at the first civil trial seeking to hold the state accountable for alleged abuse at the Sununu Youth Services Center, formerly called the Youth Development Center. The three years he spent at the Manchester facility in the late 1990s overlapped with the plaintiff, David Meehan, who alleges that the state’s negligence in hiring, staffing and training led to the near-daily rapes, assaults and long periods in solitary confinement he endured. However, the state claims it was not responsible for the actions of what it calls “rogue” employees.

Meehan has yet to take the witness stand in the trial, which began last week and includes testimony from several former employees. He and Gilpatrick, who will continue to testify Wednesday, are among more than 1,100 former residents who have sued the state. Eleven former state workers are facing criminal charges, including several accused of abusing Gilpatrick and Meehan.

Meehan’s lawyers showed police booking photos of the so-called “hit squad” on Tuesday, alongside a photo taken of Gilpatrick when he arrived at the center at the age of 14.

“The four of them rolled up and went to different houses and beat children,” he said. “They literally came over and just went door to door and beat all of us, across the board.”

“They were grown men, and we were children, and they literally knocked us to the ground, knocked our heads off the ground and twisted our arms behind our backs,” he said. “They did whatever they wanted to do.”

Gilpatrick testified that he ended up at the center after running away from several group homes, committing a burglary and stealing food to survive on the streets. The assault in the stairwell happened after he ran away while on leave, he said. He had already spent several days locked in his empty room, dressed only in his underwear, when workers took him to the House leader’s office and then to the stairwell, he said.

Gilpatrick said he called House leader Bradley Asbury “Hitler.”

“He was a very bad man,” he said. “He not only had power over all the children, but also over the staff.”

Asbury has pleaded not guilty to a charge of aiding and abetting Gilpatrick’s attack. Earlier Tuesday, jurors heard from a former ombudsman who said Asbury was particularly resistant to her efforts to investigate complaints and demanded to be present for any interviews with his staff.

“He definitely sent a message to the students and staff that I wasn’t going to investigate anything there, and if I did, he was going to micromanage the process,” said Rochelle Edmark, who started her job just before Meehan opened the facility left.

Edmark testified that she often felt that staffers were stonewalling her investigations and that administrators were not acting on her recommendations. Attorneys for the state, however, suggested that statements she made to investigators in the criminal case painted a different picture.

“They didn’t micromanage you, they weren’t controversial with you, they contacted you for periodic updates and complimented your work,” said attorney Martha Gaythwaite.

Gaythwaite also took issue with Edmark’s testimony that the cottages did not provide a therapeutic environment, noting that residents received individual and group therapy.

“My concern was more about the tone of the cottages than the services provided,” Edmark said.

The youth center, which once housed more than 100 children but now typically serves fewer than a dozen, is named after former Gov. John H. Sununu, father of current Gov. Chris Sununu. Since Meehan left the police force in 2017, lawmakers have agreed to close the building, which now houses only those accused or convicted of the most serious violent crimes, and replace it with a much smaller building in a new location . They also created a $100 million fund to settle abuse claims.