BRENTWOOD, N.H. — A man who says he was beaten and raped as a teenager at New Hampshire’s juvenile detention center testified Friday that he both tried to kill himself and years later plotted to kill his abusers before saying anything.
David Meehan, who spent three years at the Youth Development Center in the late 1990s, went to police in 2017 and sued the state three years later. Testifying for a third day in his civil trial, he described the downward spiral of his life after leaving the facility, including a burglary committed to feed a heroin addiction and multiple suicide attempts. He said he stopped using drugs after a prison sentence in 2012, but was barely functioning when he woke up from hernia surgery in 2017, overwhelmed by memories of his abuse.
“I’m going to go home, I’m going to heal a little bit, and as soon as I know I’m stronger, I’m going to walk away from my wife and my kids,” he said. “Because this time I really think I’m capable of taking Jeff Buskey’s life.”
Buskey and 10 other former state workers have pleaded not guilty to charges of sexual abuse or complicity in the abuse of Meehan and other former residents. Meehan, who claims in his lawsuit that he was attacked almost daily, testified that he tracked down his alleged abusers more than a decade later and even bought a gun with the intention of killing Buskey, but that he threw it in a river and his had confided in colleagues. woman instead.
“That’s not who I am,” he said. “I’m not going to be who they thought they could turn me into. I’m not going to take another life because of what they did.”
Meehan’s wife took him to a hospital, where he was referred to police. That led to an unprecedented criminal investigation into the Manchester facility, now called the Sununu Youth Services Center. But as the state prosecutes former employees, it is also defending itself against more than 1,100 lawsuits filed by former residents alleging that its negligence enabled abuse.
One group of state attorneys will rely on the testimony of former residents in the criminal trials, while others seek to discredit them in the civil cases, an unusual dynamic that played out when Meehan faced cross-examination on Friday.
“You were an angry and violent young man, weren’t you?” asked prosecutor Martha Gaythwaite, who showed jurors a report concluding that Meehan falsely accused his parents of physical abuse when they tried to enforce rules. Meehan disagreed. He previously testified that his mother had attacked and burned him with cigarettes.
Gaythwaite also pressed Meehan on his disciplinary record at the youth centre, including an instance when a boy he hit fell and smashed his head open. According to internal reports from the center, Meehan later planned to take the boy hostage with a stolen screwdriver as part of an escape attempt.
“It’s fair to say that someone who has already been the victim of one of your vicious attacks might not be too thrilled about being held hostage by you as part of an AWOL attempt, right?” she asked.
Meehan has said the escape plan took place at a time when Buskey was raping him every day, while another staffer was assaulting him about twice a week. The abuse became more violent when he started fighting back, Meehan said. And although he was submissive later, “it never got easier,” he said.
“Each one of these takes a little piece of me with them to the point where they’re done. There’s really not much left of David,” he said.
Meehan also testified that he was locked in his room for 23 hours a day for weeks, hidden from view while his injuries healed. Under questioning by Gaythwaite, Meehan reviewed a report in which an ombudsman said he saw no signs of injury, however.
Meehan, who suggested the investigator was lying, said his few attempts to get help were rebuffed. When he told a House leader that he had been raped, the staffer, who is now facing criminal charges, told him, “That doesn’t happen here, little guy.” When asked if he had ever filed a written complaint, he referred to instructions on the complaint forms stating that residents should refer all issues to their counselor.
“What am I going to do, write ‘Jeff Buskey makes me have sex with him,’ and hand it to Jeff Buskey?” he said.
The trial will resume on Monday.