BRENTWOOD, N.H. — The man who blew the lid on decades of abuse allegations at New Hampshire’s juvenile detention center continued to testify at his civil trial Thursday, describing how he was treated for gonorrhea after being raped at age 15.
But the real turning point, he said, was the first of many attacks by a man he had come to love as a father figure.
In the seven years since David Meehan went to police, the state has set up a $100 million fund for former residents of the Sununu Youth Services Center in Manchester and brought criminal charges against 11 former state workers, including four accused of assaulting Meehan. have abused.
But faced with more than 1,100 lawsuits from former residents, the state also argues it should not be held liable for the actions of what it calls “rogue” employees.
That unusual dynamic began to manifest when Meehan’s lawsuit — the first filed — went to trial last week. On Thursday for a second day on the witness stand, Meehan acknowledged that he had lied on intake papers about having sexual experiences before arriving at the facility in 1995 at age 14.
“Do you ever really need to feel badass in some way?” he asked jurors. “It was just another form of protection for my own survival.”
In reality, his first sexual experience came when a youth center worker forcibly raped him under the guise of a strip search, he said. He was later quarantined in the infirmary due to gonorrhea, he said.
“Did you lose your virginity to Frank Davis?” asked attorney Rus Rilee, referring to a former employee who has pleaded not guilty to sexual assault.
“I’m not going to accept that in my life anymore, so no,” Meehan said. “As a little boy I was raped by someone who should not have done that.”
Over the next few months, Meehan said his assigned youth counselor, Jeffrey Buskey, began grooming him, giving him soda and snacks and arranging for him to play basketball with a local high school team.
“At that moment I have a father figure. I have a man in my life that I felt a relationship with,” Meehan said, wiping away tears after his lawyer asked him if Buskey, who has also pleaded not guilty, treated him like a son.
“How I thought I might be treated, yes,” he said. “Better than my own father.”
But that changed in the fall of 1997, when Buskey forced him to call his girlfriend and break up with him and then forced him to perform a sex act, Meehan said.
“I’m angry as I sit here trying to talk about it and keep these emotions in check,” he said. “But that’s when it starts, okay? Then it starts.”
Within days, other staffers also began abusing him, said Meehan, whose lawsuit claims he was raped hundreds of times over three years. He said Buskey told him it was “his” but if others wanted something, he had to go along.
“It went from someone I trusted, who I thought was not just there to help me, to someone I thought was looking out for me, to hurting,” he 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. In recent years, lawmakers have approved closing the facility and replacing it with a much smaller building in a new location.
The trial ended early in the day after Meehan failed to describe an incident in which he said Buskey forced a girl to perform a sex act to “teach” Meehan what to do.
“This is the only beginning, and I’m doing everything I can now to keep myself together because I know where this is going. I don’t want to have to say it out loud all the time,” says Meehan, adding that he often struggles to feel safe.
“I’m forced to somehow hold myself together and show up as a man what these people did to this little boy,” he said. “I continually pay for what they did.”