New Mexico Jury Awards $485 Million in Lawsuit Alleging Child Sex Abuse

A Rio Arriba County jury late Friday awarded a staggering $485 million in a lawsuit filed on behalf of a girl who was sexually abused in a specialized foster care program designed to provide her with behavioral health treatment, according to an attorney who represented the child.

“I think the jury’s award and verdict show the little girl she is valued and that what happened to her shouldn’t have happened,” attorney Josh Conaway of the Fadduol, Cluff, Hardy & Conaway law firm said in a telephone interview Friday evening.

Conaway said the jury deliberated for six or seven hours Friday following a two-week trial in the state district courthouse in Tierra Amarilla before delivering its verdict in favor of the child’s court-appointed guardian, Shasta Inman.

Read the source article at Santa Fe New Mexican