By NANCY WEST, InDepthNH.org
BRENTWOOD – Karen LeMoine testified Wednesday she feared being raped or worse after she complained about the treatment of incarcerated children when she worked at the Youth Development Center in Manchester for two years until 1991.
On the second day of the civil trial in David Meehan’s lawsuit against the state Department of Health and Human Services, LeMoine testified about complaining to her supervisors and top administrators only to be warned there would be trouble if she continued to be a “rat.”
Under questioning by Meehan’s lawyer, David Vicinanzo, LeMoine said a male resident confided in her that some of the staffers had been telling male residents for months that if they behaved and did what they were told, they could have sex with her.
“I felt terrified” knowing staffers were conspiring to teach teenage boys how to rape her, Lemoine testified.
LeMoine pressed to have staff held accountable and she wanted to make sure the boys were told what happened, feeling they had been victimized as well and that what they had been told was wrong.
There was finally a brief hearing in a small room with two men who she was told were lawyers from the union, but she thought it was preliminary hearing.
Near the end of that hearing LeMoine testified that she was told to sign a document saying she wouldn’t tell anyone about what went on at YDC. She said she was told she could be sued or go to jail for violating the confidentiality laws that still surround juvenile justice and juvenile incarceration in New Hampshire.
As a single mother of four children, she worried about what would happen if she did.
“They said that could happen if I was to bring any of these matters outside this agency,” LeMoine said. ”They said if you’re in jail, what’s going to happen to your kids.”
LeMoine continued to press for accountability and finally walked into Superintendent Ron Adams office unannounced to find out what was going to happen next.
“He stood up and pointed at me and said get the expletive out of here. I felt like defeated,” LeMoine testified.
Civil Trial
Meehan’s is the first civil trial against the Department of Health and Human Services related to the scandal involving more than 1,000 people who claim they were emotionally, physically and sexually abused as children while in the custody of the state.
The state claims Meehan filed the lawsuit too late and the department wasn’t responsible, blaming the abuse on some “rogue” employees.
Meehan claims he was raped hundreds of times, beaten and locked in his cell in solitary confinement for months at a time at YDC starting when he was 14 years old from 1995 to 1999.
LeMoine worked at YDC mostly on the night shift and weekends from the end of 1989 to the fall of 1991.
LeMoine said she didn’t have a problem when she worked at the girls’ cottage, but started to see troubling signs of abuse when she began working in the boys’ cottages.
“As time went on I started to notice especially boys with marks right here (pointing to her forearm) where obviously you would grab somebody – big red hand marks,” she said.
Karen LeMoine’s ’s son, Gerard LeMoine, who is now a police officer in Caribou, Maine, also testified Wednesday that when he was 14, his mother told him about the abuse at YDC, but didn’t get into a lot of details to protect him.
At the beginning she didn’t have lot to say about YDC, but as time went on she became troubled about what she witnessed, Gerard LeMoine said.
“She felt the kids there were being abused,” Gerard LeMoine told the jury. She told him that she saw some kids there “with no clothes on for days at a time by themselves,” he said.
“She was very troubled. She tried to get help from supervisors there, but it really didn’t go anywhere,” he said.
His mother went to higher levels of the administration but the more she tried the more staffers called her a trouble maker, a rat, a complainer.
“She continued to go to work into 1991,” then she couldn’t go there anymore, he said.
Wayne Eigabroadt also testified about his experience working as a trainer at YDC. He was a part-time police officer and also worked as a trainer at the New Hampshire Police Standards and Training where police are certified.
He said he was told by superintendent Ron Adams to never believe a resident over the staff.
And also recounted to Eigabroadt what Adam’s supervisor had told him: “If any of these kids gives you shit, you beat the expletive out of them.”
“I just walked away,” Eigabroadt said when asked what he did after Adams’ comment.
Testimony is set to resume Thursday morning in Rockingham Superior Court in Brentwood.