A New Hampshire jury awarded $38 million to the man who blew the lid off abuse allegations at the state's youth detention center Friday, in a landmark case finding the state's negligence allowed him to be beaten, raped, and held in solitary confinement as a teen. David Meehan went to police in 2017 and sued the state three years later, the AP reports. Since then, 11 former state workers have been arrested and more than 1,100 other former residents of the Youth Development Center in Manchester have filed lawsuits alleging physical, sexual, and emotional abuse spanning six decades.
Meehan's case was the first to go to trial, and the outcome could affect the criminal cases, the remaining lawsuits, and a separate settlement fund the state created as an alternative to litigation. Over the course of the four-week trial, the state argued that it was not liable for the conduct of "rogue" employees and that Meehan waited too long to sue. The defense also tried to undermine his credibility and said his case relied on "conjecture and speculation with a lot of inuendo mixed in."
In her closing statement Thursday, attorney Martha Gaythwaite said, "Conspiracy theories are not a substitute for actual evidence." Meehan's attorneys accused the state of encouraging a culture of abuse marked by pervasive brutality, corruption, and a code of silence. "They still don't get it," David Vicinanzo said in his closing statement, per the AP. "They don't understand the power they had, they don't understand how they abused their power and they don't care." (More child abuse stories.)
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