By DAMIEN FISHER, InDepthNH.org
One of the attorneys who represents most of the YDC abuse victims suing the state said Fund Administrator John Broderick’s latest report should sound an alarm bell for folks in state government.
Mark Knights of the firm Nixon Peabody said, “The fund has already spent over $100 million on awards to claimants, the Administrator’s expenses, and the Attorney General’s outside lawyers.
“That leaves a little less than $60 million left, with nearly $360 million—almost six times as much—in pending claims, and hundreds of claims for millions of dollars more still to be filed.”
“That points to a looming shortfall,” Knights said, “and if the state doesn’t allocate more soon to ensure that claims get paid on a timely basis, the fund is going to fail despite the positive progress we’ve made recently to improve it.”
Broderick’s second quarter report, released Wednesday, said there were 134 new claims in the last quarter, bringing the total number of abuse survivors filing claims up to 552 since the fund started.
Of the claims filed, 186 are now completely resolved and the state has paid out $95,627,500. Of the resolved claims, most survivors have received between $500,000 and $1 million. A dozen survivors received between $1 million and $1.5 million, the former max amount for people who were raped and abused as children while under state care.
Total cumulative expenditure of claims administration costs through the second quarter were $1,645,648.
The Attorney General’s Office costs (special and outside expenses only) as of the end of the second quarter were $2,449,241, with pending to be paid in the third quarter of $349,254.
According to Broderick’s report, of the 186 resolved claims, 148 involve survivors who were both sexually and physically assaulted; 26 who were sexually assaulted; and 12 who were physically assaulted without reporting any sexual assaults.
More Sununu Youth Services Center, then called YDC, abuse survivors are opting for the New Hampshire settlement fund system after the legislature upped the amounts it will pay to people raped and beaten and held in solitary confinement as children by state employees.
Broderick told officials his office received an influx of claims in the last fiscal quarter thanks to changes made to the fund payouts.
“These amendments raised the recovery caps, expanded the categories of compensable abuse (‘other abuse’) and extended the deadline for filing claims in the administrative process an additional year to June 30, 2025,” Broderick wrote in his quarterly report.
The revised state law said that is a six-month extension to file claims, not one year.
A key to the new payouts includes Broderick’s discretion to pay the awards over time up to 10 years, which has victims concerned, especially those who have borrowed against their claims at high interest rates.
“One of the significant features of the amended claims statute is my authority to make any award payable over a number of years at 5 percent compounded annually. While not appropriate in every case, I suspect it will be appropriate in many,” Broderick reports.
The original settlement fund program was criticized by lawyers for the more than 1,200 plaintiffs who have filed lawsuits against the state. The changes made this year met with some approval and Broderick expects more survivors to sign on.
New Hampshire is facing years of litigation from the survivors who are still in court. Though Broderick states that 283 survivors who had filed lawsuits opted for the settlement fund process instead, there are still hundreds pursuing claims in court.
Earlier this year, a jury found the state liable for the rapes and abuse of one YDC survivor, David Meehan. Meehan’s $38 million jury award is currently being disputed by the state, but it is a warning of what could go wrong for New Hampshire. The state has no insurance to cover the awards, and all the money for survivors will have to come from taxpayers.
Broderick says his staff is gearing up for more people to come through the claims process. An online application system will be ready in September, which could speed up the process as the number of claims continues to rise.
The statutory changes and the expectation that more claims will migrate to the fund from Superior Court required Broderick to expand his staff, he said.
By fall Broderick said he will have two hearings teams in place instead of one and additional intake specialists.
He also noted the need for the temporary hold on some claims processing to Aug. 31.
InDepthNH.org reporter Nancy West contributed to this report.
