By DAMIEN FISHER, InDepthNH.org
MANCHESTER — Bradley Asbury’s family gasped and cried in shock when the jury foreman announced two guilty verdicts for his accessory role in the 1998 rape of a child held in the Sununu Youth Services Center, then called YDC.
Across the aisle from Asbury’s family, the victim, Mike Gilpatrick, wept as his wife, Kelly Gilpatrick, held on to him.
“God is good and the truth prevailed,” Gilpatrick said as he was leaving Hillsborough Superior Court — North in Manchester on Tuesday. “And I was believed.”
Asbury, 70, once a house leader in the YDC system which is now at the center of multiple abuse claims in the YDC scandal, becomes the first former staffer convicted for the abuse. He was found guilty on two counts of being an accomplice to aggravated felonious sexual assault for his role in holding Gilpatrick down while two other men allegedly committed the rape. Gilpatrick, now 41, was described as a scrawny 14-year-old at the time of the rape.
The other suspects are James Woodlock who allegedly helped hold Gilpatrick down, and Stephen Murphy and Jeffrey Buskey, who allegedly committed the rape. These men have yet to go to trial, though Murphy’s case is likely to go before a jury in January.
Asbury was immediately taken into custody and will be held pending his sentencing hearing, which has yet to be scheduled.
The jury began deliberations late Friday morning, worked through Monday and most of Tuesday before reaching its verdict in the afternoon. The trial itself only took less than two and a half days.
The jury had to rely mostly on Gilpatrick’s testimony from the witness stand, as the state presented little corroborating evidence.
Assistant Attorney General Adam Woods expressed gratitude for the jury after the verdict was read.
“We’re relieved the jury considered Mike’s testimony,” Woods said. “You never know what’s going to happen in a jury room, how long they’re going to take.”
Asbury is the first convicted, but not the first to go to trial. This year, a jury deadlocked in the case against Victor Malavet, resulting in a mistrial. The state has yet to say if it will retry that case.
In 2019, then Attorney General Gordon MacDonald created the YDC Task Force to investigate and prosecute the alleged abusers. The task force indicted 11 men in 2021, but none since despite hundreds of named abusers in the lawsuits who could be charged under the statute of limitations.
Since the first and only round of indictments, one of the abuse suspects, Gordon Thomas Searles, died. Another, Frank Davis, was deemed incompetent to stand trial.
More than 1,000 survivors have filed lawsuits against the state, which the state is actively challenging in civil court. The first civil trial for survivor David Meehan resulted in a $38 million damages award, which the state is trying to bring down to $475,000. That dispute is now going to the state Supreme Court.
The state of New Hampshire has paid out more than $102 million in out-of-court settlements to more than 200 YDC abuse survivors and will likely pay millions more. The state essentially acknowledges that hundreds, possibly thousands, of children were abused in its care by virtue of having the settlement fund.
Attorney General John Formella, who was not in court for any of the trial, issued a statement Tuesday following the verdict.
“I would like to thank the jury for their service and our entire trial team for their excellent work in this case. We are grateful for this result and will continue our work to seek justice for YDC victims,” Formella said in the statement.
