BRENTWOOD, N.H. — Jurors heard closing arguments Thursday in a landmark case that found the state of New Hampshire responsible for abuse at the juvenile detention center.
The accuser, David Meehan, went to police in 2017 and sued the state three years later, alleging he was brutally beaten, raped and held in solitary confinement at the Youth Development Center in the 1990s. Since then, 11 former state workers have been arrested and more than 1,100 other former residents have filed lawsuits alleging physical, sexual and emotional abuse over six decades.
Meehan’s attorney David Vicinanzo told jurors that a reward of more than $200 million would be reasonable: $1 million for each alleged sexual assault. He argued that the state’s apparent negligence fostered a culture of abuse, characterized by pervasive brutality, corruption and a code of silence.
“They still don’t understand,” Vicinanzo said. “They don’t understand the power they had, they don’t understand how they abused their power and they don’t care.
But the state’s attorney said Meehan’s case was based on “conjecture and speculation with a lot of innuendo in it” and that the state should not face liability.
“There was no widespread culture of abuse,” attorney Martha Gaythwaite said. “This was not the den of iniquity depicted.”
Gaythwaite said there is no evidence that the facility’s superintendent or anyone in senior state positions knew anything about the alleged abuse.
“Conspiracy theories are not a substitute for factual evidence,” she said.
Meehan, whose lawsuit was the first filed and the first to go to trial, spent three days on the witness stand describing his three years at the Manchester facility and its aftermath. He told jurors that his first sexual experience was a violent rape by a staffer at age 15 and that another staffer whom he initially viewed as a caring father figure became a daily tormentor who once held a gun to his head during a sexual assault.
“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.”
Meehan’s lawyers called more than a dozen witnesses, including former staffers who said they faced resistance and even threats when they raised concerns or investigated, a former resident who described being gang-raped in a stairwell , and a teacher who said she noticed suspicious bruises on her knees. Meehan and half a dozen other guys.
“The rot started at the top,” Vicinanzo said Thursday. “The fish is rotting from the head down. The tone starts there.”
The state called five witnesses, including Meehan’s father, who answered “yes” when asked if his son had “a reputation for untruthfulness.” psychiatrist who diagnosed Meehan with bipolar disorder, and not the post-traumatic stress disorder his side claims.
In cross-examining Meehan, prosecutors portrayed him as a violent child who continued to cause problems at the youth center and a delusional adult who exaggerates or lies to get money. In her closing statement, Gaythwaite apologized for suggesting Meehan deserved to be abused.
“If I have said or done anything to give that impression or to suggest that I have no sympathy for Mr. Meehan, I regret it,” she said. “My job was to ask tough questions about tough topics so you get the full picture of all the evidence.”
Her approach, however, revealed an unusual dynamic in which the attorney general’s office both defends the state against civil lawsuits and prosecutes suspected perpetrators in criminal cases. Although the state will rely on Meehan’s testimony in the criminal cases, it has sought to undermine his credibility in the current case.
Along those lines, Gaythwaite reminded jurors Thursday that logs and other records show Meehan suffered a groin injury while playing in 1998 and not from a rape in which he said he was knocked unconscious and left on an athletic field. It wouldn’t make sense for multiple staffers to coordinate their reports, she said.
“Even if all those people were motivated to help someone cover up a crime, do you really have to believe they would pull it off?” she said.
“Do you know of any government agency that could be so efficient and so organized?” she said. “We couldn’t even get our witnesses here to court in time.”
But Vicianzo pointed out that the employee who initially documented the injury was promoted despite an ombudsman’s recommendation that he be fired for hitting a teenager.
“The denial, the entitlement of our state government, our state bureaucrats, is unbelievable,” he told jurors. “It’s hard to accept. You don’t have to accept it, and I’m confident you won’t.”
The jury will begin deliberations on Friday after hearing further instructions from the judge.