.png){kind=logo}
2 weeks ago
6
BRENTWOOD, N.H. -- Jurors heard closing arguments Thursday successful a landmark lawsuit seeking to clasp the authorities of New Hampshire accountable for maltreatment astatine its younker detention center.
The plaintiff, David Meehan, went to constabulary successful 2017 and sued the authorities 3 years aboriginal alleging helium was brutally beaten, raped and held successful solitary confinement astatine the Youth Development Center successful the 1990s. Since then, 11 erstwhile authorities workers person been arrested and much than 1,100 different erstwhile residents person filed lawsuits alleging physical, intersexual and affectional maltreatment spanning six decades.
Meehan’s lawyer David Vicinanzo told jurors that an grant upwards of $200 cardinal would beryllium tenable — $1 cardinal for each alleged sexual assault. He argued the state’s wide negligence encouraged a civilization of maltreatment marked by pervasive brutality, corruption and a codification of silence.
“They inactive don’t get it,” Vicinanzo said. “They don’t recognize the powerfulness they had, they don’t recognize however they abused their powerfulness and they don’t care.
But the state’s lawyer said Meehan’s lawsuit relied connected “conjecture and speculation with a batch of inuendo mixed in,” and that zero liability should beryllium assigned to the state.
“There was nary wide civilization of abuse,” lawyer Martha Gaythwaite said. “This was not the den of iniquity that has been portrayed.”
Gaythwaite said determination was nary grounds that the facility’s superintendent oregon anyone successful higher-level authorities positions knew thing astir the alleged abuse.
“Conspiracy theories are not a substitute for existent evidence,” she said.
Meehan, whose suit was the archetypal to beryllium filed and archetypal to spell to trial, spent 3 days connected the witnesser basal describing his 3 years astatine the Manchester installation and its aftermath. He told jurors that his archetypal intersexual acquisition was being violently raped by a staffer astatine property 15, and that different staffer helium initially viewed arsenic a caring father-figure became a regular tormenter who erstwhile held a weapon to his caput during a intersexual assault.
“I’m forced to effort to clasp myself unneurotic someway and amusement arsenic a antheral everything these radical did to this small boy,” helium said. “I’m perpetually paying for what they did.”
Meehan’s attorneys called much than a twelve witnesses, including erstwhile staffers who said they faced absorption and adjacent threats erstwhile they raised oregon investigated concerns, a erstwhile nonmigratory who described being gang-raped successful a stairwell, and a teacher who said she spotted suspicious bruises connected Meehan and fractional a twelve different boys during his clip there.
The authorities called 5 witnesses, including Meehan’s father, who answered “yes” erstwhile asked whether his lad had “a estimation for untruthfulness." Among the different witnesses was a longtime younker halfway main who saw nary signs of maltreatment implicit 4 decades, and a psychiatrist who diagnosed Meehan with bipolar disorder, not the post-traumatic accent upset his broadside claims.
In cross-examining Meehan, the state’s attorneys portrayed him arsenic a convulsive kid who continued causing occupation astatine the younker halfway and a delusional big who is present exaggerating oregon lying to get money. In her closing statement, Gaythwaite apologized if she suggested Meehan deserved to beryllium abused.
“If I said oregon did thing to marque that content oregon to suggest I bash not consciousness atrocious for Mr. Meehan, I regret that,” she said. “It was my occupation to inquire hard questions astir hard topics truthful you person a afloat representation of each of the evidence.”
Her approach, however, highlighted an antithetic dynamic successful which the lawyer general’s bureau is some defending the authorities against the civilian lawsuits and prosecuting suspected perpetrators successful the transgression cases. Though the authorities tried to undermine Meehan’s credibility successful the existent case, it volition beryllium relying connected his grounds erstwhile the transgression cases spell to trial.
English (US)