Lawyer Alleges That a Youth Detention Center in New Hampshire Treated Teen Like Sex Slave, Punching Bag

Workers at New Hampshire’s youth detention center treated a teenage boy like a “sex slave and a punching bag,” and the state itself laid the groundwork for the abuse, an attorney argued Tuesday as the first of more than 1,000 lawsuits alleging similar horrors went to trial.

David Meehan, who spent three years at what was then called the Youth Development Center, returned to the Manchester facility for the first time in 25 years Tuesday afternoon, along with jurors who will decide whether the state is responsible for the abuse he alleges. During opening statements earlier in the day, an attorney for the state argued that responsibility lies with “a small group of rogue employees who acted in secret for their own purposes.”

“The law has sympathy for victims, but it also has sympathy for protecting anyone, including the department, a state agency, from having to pay money for something that someone else did, or having to pay more money than is fair,” said Assistant Attorney General Brandon Chase.

Read the source article at Associated Press