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Explore the series The Youth Development Center
Transcript
EPISODE 3: Sober Algebra
David Meehan was in a bad way.
It was 2017. David was in his mid-30s. Married, with three kids.
But he was about to take his life off the rails.
[David Meehan] Over the course of a week, I… acquire a firearm… spent my rent money on a real nice outfit… and a lotta heroin.
David did all these things… because he was planning to murder someone.
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It had been nearly 20 years since David had left YDC. He was an adult now. He ran a construction company.
But the pain of YDC, it never left him. For years, he had nightmares. He tried using heroin to numb his feelings.
David was detained at YDC from 1995 to 1999. And during that time, David says he was raped and beaten hundreds of times by at least four YDC staffers. But he says one staffer preyed on him the most: a guy named Jeffrey Buskey.
Back when he was at YDC, David says Jeffrey Buskey was warm and encouraging at first. He says Jeffrey gave him extra snacks and then a coveted job inside the cottage David was detained in. He even arranged to have a spot for David on a high school basketball team outside of YDC.
[David Meehan] Honestly, I, at that point, I have a father figure. I-It’s… I have a, a… I have a man in my life that I’ve built a relationship with.
In retrospect, of course, David was being groomed. David says Jeffrey Buskey began raping him regularly. David was a teenager, confused.
[David Meehan] Being somebody that I-I-I trusted, that I thought was… not just there to help me – somebody that I thought cared for me… (long pause) I was hurt. I was hurt ‘cause I couldn’t comprehend… what he was even doing.
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Twenty years later, David wanted revenge for what Jeffrey did to him. He walks out on his family. He buys a gun. He buys some heroin. He remembers it happened on a Friday.
[David Meehan] And as I’m sitting there that Friday afternoon, just came out of CVS, I got a fresh bag – I haven’t touched this shit in years! …Something comes over me in that moment.
David changes his mind. He says he throws the gun and the heroin into a river. And then, he gets a text message from his wife that says something like, “I wish you would just explain it to me.”
After decades of holding it in, David decides he’s ready to talk.
[David Meehan] So, I meet her at Applebee’s in Epping. And… it just kinda comes out. S- I see her standing there… (sighs) …So, we hug and I start crying. And I can’t… get out anything other than, “They raped me.”
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That hug at Applebee’s is arguably the moment that the reckoning over abuse at YDC began.
It would set in motion investigations, lawsuits, and legislation. It would inspire hundreds more alleged victims – and balloon into one of the largest youth detention abuse scandals in the country.
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Everyone you’ve already heard from: Andy Perkins, Karen Lemoine, John Doe #441 – they came forward because David went first.
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After decades of alleged abuse, the kids of YDC have grown up – and they want justice.
From New Hampshire Public Radio, I’m Jason Moon and this is The Youth Development Center.
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The day after that hug at Applebee’s in 2017, David Meehan goes to the police. And something serendipitous happens.
David ends up talking to a state police detective named Sgt. Kelly Healey. And it just so happens that Kelly used to be the PE teacher at the YDC school for 16 years.
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And not just that – as a YDC employee, Kelly witnessed a staffer physically assault a kid – and she spoke up about it. This was way back in 1997. Kelly was just a trainee at the time.
When Kelly saw the assault, she wasn’t sure what to do, so she asked another staffer for advice. And Kelly reported back in the ‘90s that the other staffer told her, quote: “Don't bring it upon yourself. Wait until someone asks you."
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Later, Kelly did testify about what she saw before a state board. And that employee was fired.
And so, long before she became a state trooper, Sgt. Kelly Healey had witnessed for herself the violence of YDC and the culture of silence that surrounded it.
And maybe because of that personal experience, Kelly takes David’s story very seriously.
[WMUR report] Fifty-two-year-old Jeffrey Buskey left Hillsborough County Superior Court without comment, moments after waiving his arraignment. Buskey has been indicted on 56 charges of aggravated felonious sexual assault. Officials alleging the assaults took place at the… (fade under)
Sgt. Kelly Healey’s investigation picks up steam. In 2020, the New Hampshire attorney general’s office creates a special “task force” to investigate YDC. By 2021, 10 more former state employees are charged with sexual assault.
Meanwhile, while the state is pursuing justice through criminal prosecutions, David Meehan sets his own course. He and a few dozen others who went through YDC together become the first to sue the state of New Hampshire. The lawsuit accuses the state of allowing the abuse to happen through its negligence.
Eventually, almost 1,300 other people would file similar lawsuits: about 200 women and 1,100 men, alleging abuse spanning more than 60 years, from 1960 to 2021.
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Most of these people say they were harmed at YDC, but there are many who say they were abused at other youth facilities in New Hampshire that operated under state contracts, like group homes and wilderness therapy camps.
For virtually all of the alleged victims, it was the first time they were making public their allegations of abuse.
My team and I read every single account of abuse in these lawsuits. We collected and analyzed data from them. And what it all adds up to… honestly, it is hard to put it in words.
The sheer scale of the alleged abuse is staggering. This was not isolated to a few staff, or a few victims, or even a few decades.
Take, for instance, a staffer named Frank Davis. He was criminally charged for alleged sexual assaults of two kids at YDC. But according to our analysis, 114 people name him as an abuser in their lawsuits. The first allegation against Frank is from 1972. The last one is from 1999. One-hundred and fourteen alleged victims over 27 years.
Frank Davis, who is in his 80s now, was later found not competent to stand trial, and the criminal charges against him were dismissed.
Another staffer who you’ve heard about, Lucien Poulette – the guy that told Andy Perkins:
[Andy Perkins, reading] “You know they won't believe you if you say anything.”
Lucien is facing criminal charges for allegedly sexually assaulting at least seven kids at YDC. In the lawsuits, 100 people name him as an abuser.
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James Woodlock: criminally charged for alleged sexual assaults of three kids at YDC. Named as an abuser by at least 38 people.
Stephen Murphy: criminally charged for alleged sexual assaults of four YDC kids. Named as an abuser by at least 40 people.
Gordon Thomas Searles – one of the two staffers who left finger marks on Andy’s neck when they were quote-unquote “guiding” him to the bed: criminally charged for alleged sexual assaults of one kid at YDC. Named as an abuser by at least 52 people.
Jeffrey Buskey – the staffer David Meehan considered murdering in vengeance: criminally charged for alleged sexual assaults of four kids at YDC. Named as an abuser by at least 20 people. By the way – Buskey was a part-time employee at YDC. His other job? A police officer. One of Buskey’s alleged victims says Buskey showed the kids at YDC his police badge.
All of these former YDC staffers have pleaded not guilty. As I record this, they’re all still awaiting trial. They all either declined to comment through their attorneys or did not respond to my request for comment.
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That list is not even all of the former YDC staffers facing criminal charges. And yet, it’s important to point out the criminal charges represent just a tiny fraction of the total amount of abuse being alleged.
Altogether, at least 300 different staffers are named as abusers. At least 54 of them are accused of abuse by five or more different people.
Some alleged victims are frustrated. They don’t understand why their abuser hasn’t been criminally charged.
In some cases, the statute of limitations makes it impossible. In New Hampshire, child sexual assault cases can be brought up until the victim turns 40. But according to an analysis by the Associated Press, there are more than 200 allegations of abuse that the state could still prosecute, but hasn’t.
The state has declined to comment on why that might be. But in a recent court hearing, prosecutors acknowledged the criminal investigation into YDC is already winding down.
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The state has a confusing, contradictory, some would say, conflicted role in this reckoning.
It is criminally prosecuting some alleged abusers, but it’s also being sued for its part in the abuse. YDC is a state-run facility.
But the state denies any responsibility. They say abuse at YDC was the work of “rogue” employees, but alleged victims disagree.
And this has set up a big question of justice: Who do we blame? The staffers who allegedly carried about the abuse, or the system they were a part of?
In April 2024, that question went on trial. And a jury gave us an answer. That’s after the break.
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The Youth Development Center took over a year to report and a lot of resources – research, interviews, analyzing data, editing, fact-checking… It is so worth it, but we cannot do this work without your help. If you’re in a position to do so, please consider making a donation to New Hampshire Public Radio. To give now, click the link in the show notes. And thank you for supporting local, longform investigative journalism.
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***** MIDROLL *****
Since David Meehan was the first person to sue, his was the first case to go before a jury. The stakes were high. It was the first time a jury would be weighing in on whether the state was responsible for David’s abuse. Millions and millions of dollars in damages were also on the line. Taxpayer money.
[David Vicinanzo] You’ve heard the expression, “the direction or the tone comes from the top?” Another expression is, “the fish rots from the head.”
That’s one of David Meehan’s attorneys, David Vicinanzo, giving his opening statement.
David Meehan’s legal team called a slew of witnesses to testify about what YDC was like in the ‘90s – including one voice that’ll be familiar to you.
[David Vicinanzo] Did your – Was it your experience that this was a wholesome, caring environment?
[Karen Lemoine] No, it was my experience that it was a horrendous nightmare!
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Karen Lemoine, who you heard in episode two, testified under oath to a toxic culture at YDC. So did four other former staffers.
One of them was Wayne Eigabroadt. He was a cop who was hired at YDC to help train the staff and to conduct internal investigations of resident complaints.
He told the jury he had a really hard time actually getting YDC staff to show up to his trainings. So, he went to the YDC superintendent, a guy named Ron Adams, and asked him for advice.
[Wayne Eigabroadt] And he said, “Well, back when this was a working farm is when I first came to work here.” He said, “We worked right out there in that field.”
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And he said, “My supervisor brought me out to the field, pointed at the kids, and said, ‘If anyone one of these kids gives you any shit, beat the fuck out of ‘em.’”
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Wayne says Superintendent Ron Adams, the guy in charge of YDC, also told him:
[Wayne Eigabroadt] “Never take a resident’s word over a staff member’s word.”
David Meehan’s lawyers cast this superintendent, Ron Adams, as one of the main villains of this story. He worked at YDC from 1961 to 2001.
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And for a large chunk of that time he was either deputy superintendent or superintendent. He was in charge when David says he was being beaten and raped, daily.
I talked with Ron Adams after the trial. At the time, he hadn’t said anything publicly about the allegations of abuse at YDC.
[Jason Moon] So, why decide now? What about this moment made you want to talk about all this?
[Ron Adams] Well, ‘cause you asked me.
Ron is 87 now. He claims he always took allegations of abuse at YDC seriously. He says he’s in disbelief that this many kids could’ve been harmed there.
[Ron Adams] When we discovered it, we took some kind of action. I never let anything like that glide by.
Ron says he never told staff to beat up kids or to never believe a child over a staffer.
For Ron, YDC was a good place that fulfilled its mission. He glowed with pride as he recalled stories of kids who he says really improved at YDC.
When we finished speaking, Ron handed me a small stack of documents. One of them was a program from an 8th grade graduation at the YDC school in 1976. I think Ron offered it to me as proof that, see, kids were being educated there – it wasn’t this hellscape.
Later, I opened up the program and spotted a name I recognized: Father Francis Talbot. He gave the invocation at the 8th grade graduation. Talbot was a Catholic priest who was later convicted of sexually abusing a boy for eight years. He was the chaplain at YDC.
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Talbot is named as an abuser by at least six of the people now suing the state. Some of them say Talbot abused them at YDC.
YDC may have seemed like a nice place to Superintendent Ron Adams. But while he was in charge there, hundreds and hundreds of people say they were abused.
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The trial lasted almost a month. David Meehan himself testified for over three days. The tape you heard of him describing that hug with his wife at Applebee’s – that’s part of what David told the jury.
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As I watched the trial, I was really curious to see how the state was going to treat David.
Ever since David came forward, there’s been a kind of split-screen response from the state. On one side, there was the criminal investigation, the arrests. The state believed David and it went after the staff he accused of abuse. David is probably prosecutors’ most important witness – one of their victims in the upcoming criminal trials.
But on the other side, where David was suing the state for their role in the abuse, the state has been fighting him at every stage.
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“You were an angry and violent young man, weren’t you?”
That was one of the first questions an attorney for the state fired at David during his cross-examination. This would turn out to be a big theme of the state’s defense.
Here’s Martha Gaythwaite, a private attorney hired by the state to help with this case, questioning David on the stand.
[Martha Gaythwaite] Sir, can you tell the jury how old you were when you stole a loaded revolver and hid it in the bedroom wall of your parents’ house?
[David Meehan] I was 13.
[Martha Gaythwaite] And how old were you when you robbed a New Hampshire state liquor store?
[David Meehan] I was 13.
Martha Gaythwaite spent a lot of time painting a portrait of David as a dangerous kid, who got sent to YDC for good reasons.
And then she went further: She suggested that David was exaggerating the abuse or maybe even making it up entirely – even though, again, the same state Martha was representing is criminally prosecuting the people David accuses of abuse.
By her closing argument, Martha was telling the jury that the notion of a widespread culture of abuse at YDC was absurd.
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[Martha Gaythwaite] Conspiracy theories are not a substitute for actual evidence. Are you really supposed to believe that all these staff people coordinated (coughing in the background) their notes… to cover up… for the heinous acts, for the crimes, of Mr. Buskey? Are you supposed to believe that?
It only took the jury about three hours of deliberation to announce what they believed. The jury found the abuse did happen. And that the state of New Hampshire was responsible for it.
Then, they awarded David Meehan $38 million in damages.
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According to David’s attorneys, it is the largest civil jury award in state history.
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You’d think that would be the end of the story for David’s lawsuit, but it isn’t. As I record this, the state is arguing that the $38 million award should really be capped at less than half a million. That’s because of a state law that limits the state’s liability to that amount “per incident.” This is still being litigated and it’s unclear what amount David will ultimately end up with.
Meanwhile, the state also filed a separate motion to have the judge throw out the verdict completely. The judge, Andrew Schulman, denied that motion in scathing language.
He wrote that the state’s negligence and failure to protect David had been proven to a “geometric certainty.”
The judge added, quote: “YDC leadership either knew and didn’t care or didn’t care to learn the truth.”
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…
David Meehan’s lawsuit is just one of hundreds. The next trial is scheduled for the fall.
Rather than have every single one go to trial, in 2022, the state Legislature created a YDC settlement fund. It’s basically a giant pot of money to pay out settlements for abuse at YDC.
The idea is that it’ll be easier on victims – they won’t have to go through the kind of cross-examination David Meehan did. And it’ll be cheaper for the state; payouts through the settlement fund are capped at $2.5 million.
But then, there’s the problem of exactly how much money to pay out each abuse victim. To solve this, the state developed a formula. It’s a sobering kind of algebra.
Anal or genital rape is worth $200,000. Oral rape, $150,000. Physical abuse resulting in permanent or life-threatening bodily injury: $50,000. And so on.
Those are the base amounts. The next step in the formula is to apply a “frequency multiplier” for each type of abuse based on how many times it happened.
Then, you apply aggravating factors: Did the rape result in a pregnancy? Add $200,000. An STI? Add $100,000. On and on.
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The settlement fund is the state’s biggest, most tangible acknowledgement that abuse happened at YDC. But it’s not an apology.
In fact, there has been no apology from the state.
The closest the state came was during a legislative hearing about the settlement fund. The state Attorney General, John Formella, testified before a committee of state reps.
[John Formella on mic] I continue to believe that the state, as much as we should be ashamed of what happened at YDC, that we should be proud that we’re making these efforts to, to make it right.
By April 2024, the settlement fund had paid out more than $66 million to over 130 people. Hundreds more claims are still pending.
One of the people who filed a claim with the settlement fund is Andy Perkins.
We talked about it the first time we met. I asked him, if he received a payout, would that be justice?
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[Andy Perkins] The money doesn't feel like justice, no. It– None of it feels that way ‘cause of how long it went on. But knowing that people know it happened, you know, that's good. It's going to have to be good enough, you know?
A few months later, Andy told me the settlement fund had awarded him $450,000. After his attorneys’ fees, he took home $300,000.
According his ex-girlfriend, Amy Cousins, Andy has been giving a lot of it away to people who helped him in his life.
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Andy texted me when the check cleared. He said, “I don’t need much to make me happy.” And then he typed out a smiley face.
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Here’s the last big question people have been sorting out in the wake of all this: What do we do with YDC? The actual facility where these things happened?
The place hasn’t actually hasn’t been called YDC officially since 2006.
That year, the state spent around $30 million building a new facility on the same property. YDC was renamed the Sununu Youth Services Center, after a former governor. Some of the old cottages have been demolished.
Judges still send kids to the facility today. Though many fewer than they used to. These days, there are usually around a dozen kids there at a time, even though the facility was designed for about 150.
That’s part of a nationwide trend in juvenile justice. People are beginning to think maybe we didn’t need to send all these kids to jail to begin with. There’s now lots and lots of research that says juvenile jail is harmful to kids and their development. And by the way, now that we’re jailing fewer kids, it’s not like there’s been a spike in juvenile crime – in fact, it’s been the opposite.
Meanwhile, abuse at these types of facilities? Pretty common. One report in 2015 found evidence of systemic maltreatment in the juvenile corrections facilities of 29 states.
Recently, the New Hampshire Legislature declared it was going to close down the YDC property for good. The state is still going to incarcerate kids, just somewhere else. The plan is to build a new facility in a different part of the state. The state promises it will be much smaller, less correctional, more therapeutic, and more home-like.
That’s the vision anyways. But then again, that was always the vision for YDC.
Back in the 19th century they said it was a, quote, “pleasant home.”
By 2005 – over a hundred years later – an official described YDC this way, quote: "It's not a Youth Detention Center. It's a Youth Development Center… We don't want it to feel like a prison."
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So, why does this keep happening? Why can’t we seem to treat kids the way we say we mean to in these facilities? How is it possible that instead of giving them a safe, “home-like” environment, we were letting these kids get raped and beaten for decades?
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Child abuse happens in all kinds of institutions. Schools, churches, clubs, families. But what made the kids at YDC especially vulnerable, what still makes them vulnerable even now – and what helped to keep this story in the dark for at least 60 years – was the fact that we put them in a juvenile jail to begin with.
As one of David Meehan’s lawyers told me: They were looked on as throwaway kids. Easy to forget they existed, easy to not believe them, easy to not care quite as much what happened to them. After all, they did something bad, right?
During David Meehan’s civil trial, attorneys for the state put a lot of effort into reminding the jury of all the bad things David had done as a kid.
Finally, he lashed out. He basically said the state was still treating him like a throwaway kid, even in his 40s.
[David Meehan] It’s the, it’s the – I’m fighting against the same thing.
[Rus Rilee] Is it safe to say that you –
[David Meehan] –‘Cause what, I’m the bad guy? I was a bad kid so I deserved it? Or I was a bad kid, so that proves I’m a bad man now and I fuckin’ made it up? …That hurts.
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A reminder that 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.
A huge shout-out to Holly Ramer of the Associated Press. She was the first to write about David Meehan and the lawsuits alleging abuse at YDC. She continues to do great reporting about it today. It was her work that got me interested in this story. Thank you, Holly.
Fact-checking by Dania Suleman.
Our website, one last time, is YDCpodcast.org. It was made in collaboration with Russell Samora and Alvin Chang at the digital publication The Pudding, with the help of original illustrations by Julia Louise Pereira and Jan Diehm.
Thanks to my colleagues Sara Plourde, Zoe Kay, Olivia Richardson, Casey McDermott, Todd Bookman, and Taylor Quimby. Thanks also to Gaby Lozada, Raquel C. Zaldivar, and the New England News Collaborative.
NHPR’s News Director is Dan Barrick. Rebecca Lavoie is Director of Podcasts. Leah Todd Lin is Vice President of Audience Strategy.
And finally, one more thank you to Joelle Wiggin.
This reporting was supported by the Data-Driven Reporting Project.
The Youth Development Center is a production of the Document team at New Hampshire Public Radio.
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