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Explore the series The Youth Development Center
Transcript
EPISODE 2: If You Let a Dog Bite You
[Karen Lemoine] …’Specially when I first shook your hand and walked in here ‘cause I thought you were going to be some creepy guy. I would be like, I ain't talking to him. Um.
[Jason Moon] Well, I'm glad you don't think I'm creepy.
[Karen Lemoine] I– Now, but to look at you, see you eating pizza and smilin’? I-It's… Do you have any idea what that's like for me to have to tell you the shit? I don't want you to hear this. You shouldn't have to hear this – any of it!
[Jason Moon] But there’s a lot of power in telling it–
[Karen Lemoine] –Is there? …Is this going to be the same thing as when here I thought I was helpin’ him all the time I was working there, all it was doing was fuelin’ those guys to hurt them worse.
This is Karen Lemoine, a former employee of the Youth Development Center. The juvenile jail in New Hampshire.
For the last 30 years or so, she’s been afraid to speak publicly about YDC.
But after she decided I was not some creepy guy, Karen told me her story. And… it was like a dam breaking loose. She had so much to say.
We spoke for six hours in a studio, across two days. We stopped only for Karen’s smoke breaks and for me to eat that pizza she mentioned.
Karen is a really warm and earnest person. She feels this story deeply – even all these years later.
[music in]
Karen’s story begins with her first day on the job at YDC back in 1989 – just a couple years before Andy Perkins from the last episode was there.
[Karen Lemoine] There really was no training. I wasn't told anything other than, “Here's the key and it works for every door in here. And check – hit the clock.” There's a clock you turn to prove that you checked everybody and you have to do that every 15 minutes. One’s on one end of the building, the other clock’s on the other end of the building. So, what that would show is you have walked through every room. And that was the amount of training that I got.
[music post]
Karen is 31 years old when she starts at YDC. She just moved to New Hampshire as a single mom with four kids.
This job at YDC seemed like a good fit for her. She could walk to work, which helped because she didn't have a car. Plus, Karen had worked for a couple of police departments in Massachusetts. She’d spent time in jails and around incarcerated people, including kids. She was even thinking about a career in juvenile justice.
[music out]
Karen says she believed that the juvenile justice system was there to help kids, not punish them for what they did.
[Karen Lemoine] We'll show you the real world of how things could work, and you could have a smooth life that would lead you on a, you know, to a happy, fulfilling life, the best you could.
So, Karen starts her new job with that earnest, maybe a little idealistic, attitude.
Karen works the overnight shifts in a few of the boys’ cottages at YDC. She would get there at 8:45, just before bedtime for the kids. They’d go to sleep in their cells, and then every 15 minutes Karen would do her rounds.
[Karen Lemoine] Every 15 minutes, you would take a flashlight, you would look visually at each kid through the window. You didn't open the door for the most part. You would just look. I – What I did was count to make sure they were breathin’ three breaths and then go to the next one.
It doesn’t take long for Karen to start noticing a few things. Like, the kids seem unusually frightened of her. She says sometimes, if she needed to come into a kid’s cell, they’d get out of bed and stand as far away from her as they could. Like, up against the wall.
[Karen Lemoine] They didn’t even have a response. They didn’t even say “get out,” or “I hate you,” or “I don’t want to be here.” There was no response. They were just frozen or crying uncontrollable, but no words.
About a month in, Karen notices a kid with a bruise. She takes her colleagues aside, asks them about it. And the story they give her, it seems kind of plausible? But also not.
Eventually, Karen decides to go to her bosses. She complains to her supervisors about these things she’s noticing.
[music in]
[Karen Lemoine] Not complained. I made staff aware of different incidents. I keep using the word “complained.” I made who I thought was an authority aware of some of the incidents that were happening ‘cause I thought they was – should be aware. I was told I'm not a psychiatrist, I'm not a psychologist, and I need to not delve into their personal mental problems because these kids are in here because they lie, they manipulate adults, and I didn't know what I was doing. And it was just something in my gut instinct that knew that that was not true!
[music up and out]
Karen didn’t arrive at YDC looking to start trouble.
She needed this job and Karen believed in the work. She bought into YDC’s mission to nurture, protect, and educate the kids.
But Karen was about to learn the real culture of YDC: a culture of violence, retaliation, and secrecy. A way of doing things that was harmful not only to the kids – but to anyone who didn’t go along.
[theme music in]
In the last episode, we saw inside the black box and heard how the power dynamic between staff and kids helped create the conditions for abuse. Remember that warning Andy Perkins says he received? “You know they won’t believe you…”
Well, in this episode: a staffer who does believe a kid, who tries to do the right thing, and what that ends up costing both of them.
From New Hampshire Public Radio, I’m Jason Moon and this is The Youth Development Center.
[theme music up and out]
Karen is beginning to realize YDC is not what she’d hoped it would be. She hasn’t witnessed any abuse firsthand, but the red flags are starting to pile up.
Then, things get a lot more serious.
It starts with a kid we’re going to call John Doe. We agreed to not use his real name.
John is in his early 50s now. When we met, he wore a silver chain necklace and wraparound sunglasses that sat on top of his head. He was nervous to talk about what happened to him at YDC – so nervous, his hands were shaking. His wife came with him to support him.
[John Doe] Ya know, I almost canceled today. I, I… I was sick to my stomach on the way down, um… smokin’ like a chimney, um… and I almost didn’t come down.
Today, John owns an antique store and likes to work on cars.
As a kid, he says his journey to YDC began with an abusive father. I heard that a lot from people who ended up in YDC – they came from abusive and chaotic homes, had parents with addictions.
[John Doe] I was a hard kid to deal with. Um, my parents didn't know how to, I guess, control me. I was just, you know, I was a kid, you know. Kids get out of control.
John says he runs away from home and a judge puts him in foster care. Then, he says he sets his foster parents’ barn on fire (he says it was an accident). And that sends him bouncing around the juvenile justice system for pretty much the rest of his childhood, from 1984 to 1991, ages 11 to 17. This included several stays at YDC.
A heads up that this next part discusses attempted suicides. If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, please call or text the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 9-8-8.
John Doe attempts suicide multiple times while he’s held at YDC.
In fact, this is how Karen says she first learned about John Doe because she says some staff were joking about it.
[Karen Lemoine] The guys would just laugh about it, talk about it, say it loud enough for the whole tier to hear it. “Well, next time we hope he kills himself. Oh my gosh! You know, I mean, we could hang him up like Carrie.” Apparently, I didn't know it at the time – “Carrie” was a movie that had blood in it somehow?
[music in]
Karen was disgusted by the jokes about John Doe. By this point, she had become the butt of off-color jokes herself. Karen says some of her male coworkers were regularly sexually harassing her– even in front of the kids.
[Karen Lemoine] Um… “She's your new night shift. Look at her beautiful ass. You know why? ‘Cause she rides horses.” I felt my role there in the eyes of the male staff who were doing these things, was… as like a prop… as a show to show these boys what kind of authority that they could have over this building, over them, and over me.
[music out]
One night, Karen says she was assigned to the cottage where John Doe was held. She went to do one of her usual rounds. And then, she sees something weird.
And just a heads up that we’ve beeped out any time where Karen uses John Doe’s real name.
[Karen Lemoine] So, I go to look into BEEP’s room and there's a staff member there bendin’ over… at the door.
A staff member bending over near the closed, locked door to John Doe’s room.
Karen says in the days before this moment, the kids had told her they’d seen a mouse around the cottage. They wanted to keep it, asked Karen if they could train it.
So, Karen says when she sees this staffer bent over looking at the floor, she thinks, “Oh, he must’ve caught the mouse.”
[Karen Lemoine] And I said, “Did you get it?” And he's like – he stood up and looked at me, and it kind of startled me.
Karen says this staff member wasn't assigned to work the cottage that night, which she thought was strange. So, she walked over to him and they both stood outside John Doe's cell door. Karen looked inside.
[Karen Lemoine] And BEEP was standing at the do– I could see he was standing up.
[Jason Moon] On the other side of the door?
[Karen Lemoine] On the other side of the door. I could see him through the window. So, I just took my key and I didn't really know what to do. And I unlocked the door and I said, “BEEP, are you alright? Is that mouse in here?” And he looked at me… I was lookin’ for a mouse and he looked at me like a– he saw a ghost.
Karen says John Doe would not answer her. The other staffer kept standing in the doorway.
Karen can’t quite make sense of what’s going on. Obviously, it’s not about a mouse. Maybe there was some kind of exchange underneath the door?
Karen says she searches the room, but she doesn’t find anything.
[Karen Lemoine] So, I locked the door and said, “Alright, go back to go back to sleep.” And I thought the incident was over.
The next morning, when the day staff arrives, Karen says she tells a YDC administrator in the main office about what happened: Someone on staff – who wasn't supposed to be working – was hanging around John Doe's cell last night.
[Karen Lemoine] He has no idea what I'm talkin’ about. No staff would possibly be in that building that wasn't clocked in to work there. And… it-it hadn't happened. I was like, “Oh, this is just so weird.”
Karen says the very next night, she’s at work in a different cottage when she sees the nurse go running. Something had happened with John Doe.
[Karen Lemoine] She came back and she said, “This blood, this is all from BEEP. He tried to kill himself, and he cut himself really bad this time.” I was like, “What!?” Right away, my head thought, “What did that guy give him?”
[music in]
It was a razor blade, slid under the door of John Doe’s cell, as a kind of taunt about his suicide attempts.
John told me about it. He says it actually happened more than once.
[Jason Moon] And did they, were they, uh, saying anything to you, or was the implication clear enough?
[John Doe] The implica– yeah, it was clear enough. On occasion, they'd say something, but they'd knock on my door, and then I'd hear shhht underneath the door and it'd be a razor blade.
[music up and out]
John Doe recovered. And Karen says the suicide jokes resumed.
Karen had had enough. So, she went to a supervisor again to complain about the jokes.
[Karen Lemoine] And he said, “They're only kidding. And it's, you know, I mean, it's a stressful job. They were there when he had that suicide attempt. They saw it. And they're just trying to de-escalate their stress” basically, is what the message I got. “You weren't there. So, you know, you didn't have to deal with it. They're just trying to, you know, take it the best they can.” I could see that nobody was listening to me, even at the point where somebody would die. And I was – at that point, I was scared. I realized I was workin’ in the wrong place.
[music in]
After a break, Karen says it’s her own life that’s in danger at YDC. And John Doe tries to protect her.
[music up and out]
***** MIDROLL *****
Some time after the razor blade incident, Karen says she came in for a night shift and the boys weren’t getting ready for bed like usual. It was a holiday – Karen can’t remember which one – but the kids were being allowed to stay up late in the cottage living room.
Karen says most of the kids were doing some kind of crafts. But off to one side, she noticed two boys who weren’t really doing anything. One of them was John Doe.
[Karen Lemoine] I had said, “Hey, you know somethin’? Do you guys know how to make cookies?” I said, um, “Do you want to learn? I have the ingredients in here, in this building.” I was like, and they was fascinated, like, “Yeah, we'll eat cookies with ya!” I said, “No, we're going to learn to make ‘em!”
So, Karen gets the ingredients out. Bowls and spoons. They start mixing. One kid is making chocolate chip, the other oatmeal.
[Karen Lemoine] And I could see they were, like, interested ‘cause they wanted to eat them. But they were also like, (whispers) “We want to talk to you.” They kept sayin’, (whispers) “We want to talk to you!”And I did blow it off because I didn't want any personal talk between us.
[Jason Moon] So, what did you say to them when they said that?
[Karen Lemoine] I-I just kept talkin’ about the cookie. I just kept talkin’ about what we were doing. “A-Alright, that’s good.” And I hate to say it, but the truth is, I thought they were up to something, because they were looking at each other and then saying that to me. So, I thought, “Alright, this is going to be a problem somehow.”
But the kids don’t give up. Karen says the kid next to John Doe finally gets her attention. Just a heads up we’re going to beep out his name, too.
[Karen Lemoine] BEEP looks me right in the eye and said, “We need to talk to you. These guys are plannin’ to attack you.”
[music in]
[Karen Lemoine] I was like, “Wha!?” I c– I almost fell out of my chair and I thought, “Alright, I'm being manipulated. They're just trying to screw with me – the boys!” I said, “You shouldn't be talkin’ that way about people who work here.” I said, “Really,” I said “A– you guys are goin’ too far.” I said, “I, you know, we can sit and do this and you can, we can chit chat, but you can't be accusin’ people of stuff like that.” I really didn't believe ‘em at that point.
[music post]
[Karen Lemoine] So, I started to just say, “Alright, well, give me your three bowls and we'll bake some of these.” And BEEP…
This is the other kid, not John Doe.
[Karen Lemoine] …just pushed a– all three of those bowls out of the way, and he leaned over the table. And never that I worked there – unless it was, like, some physical problem where you had to restrain the kid – had any of those kids ever touched me. And he put his hand over my hand, and he held my hand – which I thought was so odd, but in a nice way – and he looked me right in the eye, and he said, “Karen, they're gonna rape you.”
John Doe and this other kid tell Karen they heard YDC staff trying to bribe kids into assaulting her.
[Karen Lemoine] Couldn't fuckin’ believe it. My heart sank to my stomach. I – at that point, I believed him. And BEEP said, “That's true.”
John Doe confirms this story. He says he and the other kid warned Karen because they liked her. And they wanted to protect her from the other staff.
[John Doe] The staff were trying to get together a group to actually rape and beat her, um… because she wasn't conforming. When she first came there, she made an impression on a lotta kids. She made the impression that she wasn't there for the money. She was there to make a difference. Uh… She bucked a lot of the staff members. The staff members did not like that.
Back at the table with the bowls of cookie dough, Karen is reeling.
[Karen Lemoine] I don't even know if we baked those cookies. I was just terrified because all these people are in this room with me, this staff, right that second. I– Everybody went to bed and I finished out the rest of my shift, uneventful. And literally, I-I don't even remember the rest of it because I felt like a zombie. I was petrified. I was walkin’ down that dark, echoin’ hallway by myself, wonderin’ who was behind me.
[music in]
John Doe says the staff were planning this assault on Karen because she wouldn’t conform. She was speaking up – resisting the toxic culture of YDC.
Other YDC staff who resisted faced similar blowback.
Another YDC employee from the 1990s says she tried to raise the alarm about abuse in the girls’ cottage. She says she complained to one of the same supervisors Karen did. She says staff told her she was, quote, “digging her own grave.” Then, one day, this staffer says she left work, got in her truck to drive away, and then the wheels of her truck came off. Someone had loosened the lug nuts. This is corroborated by an internal YDC memo.
Another former staffer says he received reports about employees getting mysterious, threatening phone calls at home after they filed complaints at YDC. This staffer says twice an employee’s tires were slashed – once at YDC and once at an employee’s home.
Multiple former employees say there was a time when many YDC staff wore stickers that read “no rats.” It was taken as a warning.
[music out]
Karen was scared. She didn’t feel safe going to work. But yet again – she decides to speak up and tell a supervisor. This time, one who’s not assigned to her cottage. And to her surprise, there’s a response.
According to Karen, the supervisor interviews some of the kids. And eventually, Karen says, one staffer emerges as the culprit, a guy named Bob Oulette. Karen says there’s a disciplinary hearing and Bob gives his side of the story.
[Karen Lemoine] He said, “That's not really accurate at all. I said that they could have sex with you.” Like, you know, and I'm thinkin’, “Well, semantics here,” you know?
[Jason Moon] But he admitted to that?
[Karen Lemoine] Oh, no, he had absolutely admitted to it. He took the fall for everybody, yeah. So, he admitted, yes, he had done that, but it was a joke and he didn't know how it got spread through there because there were a bunch of teenage boys. One heard it, they repeated it, they all heard it.
According to Karen, the result of this hearing is that Oulette will give a public apology to the whole cottage for starting this joke.
But Karen says on their next shift, that apology never comes.
[Karen Lemoine] And I waited and I waited, and I said, “Alright, wait a minute. Bob, don't you have somethin’ – You boys all be quiet.” I said, “Don't you have somethin’ that you want to say to them?” And he said, “No, I don't.” I said, “What do you mean?” I said, “We agreed to that. That was in that hearing.” He's like, “You shut up about that hearing.” And I was like, “Wait a minute, you guy– I want you boys to realize…” You know, and I started to say it, that “Bob here wants to apologize” and he said, “No, I don't – fuck her.” And it got really hostile in that room.
Bob Oulette died in 2014.
A few days after Bob’s non-apology, Karen says she sees the nurse go running again.
[Karen Lemoine] Like, I mean, I mean, running with stuff behind her – didn't even put it on her coat. And she said, “Oh my god, BEEP cut his finger off!”
It’s John Doe.
[Karen Lemoine] And a couple of hours later she came back and she's like, “Oh yeah, kid was throwing such a struggle. We don't know what happened, but he wouldn't get in his cell. And he had a fistfight with one of the staff, and his – part of his finger got cut off.”
[John Doe] Somehow it was found out that it was me and this other individual that blew the whistle. Uh… The beatings almost started the next day. Uh… (exhales) This is where it gets hard. They subdued me with a pressure point behind the ear, um… and put my hand in a door… and… slammed the door. They… let go at the last minute. I got most of my hand out, except for this one.
John Doe opened his hand and showed it to me. He was trembling a little. I saw a long scar near the tip of one finger.
[John Doe] They took me over to the infirmary and I was forced to tell him I slammed my own hand in the door.
John Doe says it was just the beginning of months of beatings that he received in retaliation.
Meanwhile, Karen thinks the whole episode is over.
[Karen Lemoine] Well, it wasn’t. (exhales)
One night, Karen says she was attacked. It happened while she was letting the kid out of his cell to use the bathroom.
Karen says she was able to fight him off, but she was badly hurt. Her teeth were knocked out, blood was dripping from her mouth.
She says there was supposed to be another staffer with her during the bathroom checks. Instead, he was downstairs and only came up after the struggle was over.
[Karen Lemoine] He said, “What the hell happened!? What happened!?” I mean… and I don't know. I wasn't sure if I should be thinking, “You bastard, you set that up with them. You let them set that up.”
Karen wasn’t sure what to think except that she knew it was finally time to quit. After a little less than two years on the job, Karen left YDC in 1991.
[Karen Lemoine] Suddenly, you can't feed your kids. Suddenly, y-y-you have no power in the world. You have no job reference in the world.
From her telling, the parting was not amicable. She says she was forced to sign a document that said she wouldn’t talk about her time at YDC with anyone – under penalty of perjury.
Remember the black box of juvenile privacy laws? Karen’s story was put inside of it.
Karen left New Hampshire. Today, she lives hours away from YDC in a rural spot where she rides horses. She came to YDC optimistic about working in juvenile justice. She left disillusioned.
[Karen Lemoine] And I'm sure I wasn't the only one. Who knows what happened years after that or years before me? But I guarantee you it got worse after I left… because if you start lettin’ a dog bite you and thinkin’ it’s… “Oh, it's okay, the dog bites” – it's going to escalate. Of course it is!
If you let a dog bite you once, it will happen again. This was Karen’s way of saying that when you have a culture where it’s ok for staff to joke about a kid’s suicide attempts… or to sexually harrass a female colleague in front of the kids... it creates an environment where even more serious types of abuse can flourish.
…
As for John Doe and the other kid who warned her, Karen says she never saw them again.
[Karen Lemoine] I genuinely feel BEEP saved my life, that I wouldn't have lived through that. They changed my kids’ lives – my life – um, at risk to their own. I never forgot them.
Then, one day, about 30 years later, Karen Lemoine saw something on the news about YDC, just like Andy Perkins from the last episode. And she picked up the phone.
Karen found out there was reckoning brewing.
[theme music in]
Investigations had been launched into YDC. Lawyers were putting together massive lawsuits.
Karen spoke to the investigators, and then the lawyers. And she told them about John Doe.
The lawyers tracked him down, but John wasn’t sure he wanted to talk to them. The things that had happened to him at YDC – he buried them, he said.
But then, John Doe thought about the possibility that this kind of abuse might still be happening and it lit a fire inside of him.
[John Doe] No kid in this world des – If somebody did something like that to my granddaughter, I would kill them. E… Nobody deserves that. Nobody!
John Doe decided he was in. And that’s how he became John Doe. Actually, he’s John Doe #441. Because he was the 441st person to file his lawsuit over abuse at YDC.
The reckoning had arrived.
[theme music post]
[Jason Peters] There was this hypocrisy in what we were told to do. Like, you cannot be violent, you cannot be aggressive whatsoever, rebellious whatsoever, but we can do whatever the hell we want… to you.
[Michael Gilpatrick] They were beatin’ us. They were grown men and we were children.
[Chuck Miles] I don't have them as, quite as frequent anymore. But I used to wake up shakin’ and sweating and just horrified! I'd have dreams I was locked in a room again.
[Ronalda Bruner-Cummings] The horror of the whole thing is not what they did to us. It’s just nobody believed us. Just somebody fuckin’ pay attention!
[John Doe #141] Being violated, you know… they look at you different. You gotta be the stronger person and be tough to show that you're not that type of person, nothin’ like that happened to you.
[Andrea Martin] Justice in my eyes? If they were all dead. Yeah, that was – that’s how I feel. I would like to personally line ‘em up, each one of ‘em, and shoot them dead through the fuckin’ head. That’s how I feel. I’m sorry if that’s too graphic, but that’s my honest opinion. And then, I would sit down and have a steak and potatoes and have a better life.
[Chuck Miles] What I-What I wanted was to hear, somebody look me in the eye and say, I'm sorry. Sorry! They're not SORRY! The only thing they're sorry is – they’re sorry that we’ve come forward! That's what they're sorry about. They're sorry me, Chuck Miles, victim number whatever I am, is comin’ forward and I'm sayin’, “You're going to meet me in the eye! You're going to know my face, and you're going to know what you did to me!”
This flood of almost 13 hundred people who’ve come forward to allege abuse…
It all started with one man.
[David Meehan] They didn’t just hurt me. This is generational!
That’s next time on The Youth Development Center.
Just a reminder: If you’ve suffered abuse and need someone to talk to, you can call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673. If you’re in a mental health crisis, call the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 9-8-8. You can also find these numbers in the show notes.
The Youth Development Center is reported, written, and produced by me, Jason Moon.
It’s edited by Katie Colaneri.
Additional editing by Lauren Chooljian, Dan Barrick, and Meribah Knight.
Fact-checking by Dania Suleman.
To fully wrap your head around the sheer scale of the abuse allegations at YDC go to our website: YDCpodcast.org.
We partnered with Russell Samora and Alvin Chang with digital publication The Pudding to analyze data from more than one thousand of these YDC lawsuits. They visualized the findings in a way that gave me goosebumps when I first saw it. There’s a timeline of the alleged abuse from 1960 to 2021, examples of patterns that emerge across all the alleged victims’ accounts, and much, much more. It’s all done with the help of original illustrations by Julia Louise Pereira and Jan Diehm.
There are also gorgeous and empowering photos taken by Gaby Lozada and Raquel C. Zaldivar of some of the voices you’ve heard so far, including Andy Perkins, Karen Lemoine, and John Doe #441. Again, it’s YDCpodcast.org.
Huge special thanks this episode to Joelle Wiggin. And to those people who shared their stories of abuse that you heard at the end, including Jason Peters, Michael Gilpatrick, Ronalda Bruner-Cummings, John Doe #141, Chuck Miles, Andrea Martin, and David Meehan.
Thanks also to my colleagues Sara Plourde, Zoe Kay, Olivia Richardson, Casey McDermott, Todd Bookman, and Taylor Quimby.
NHPR’s News Director is Dan Barrick. Rebecca Lavoie is Director of Podcasts.
Original music by me, Jason Moon.
The Youth Development Center is a production of the Document team at New Hampshire Public Radio.
[theme music out]