By John T. Broderick Jr., Former Administrator, YDC Claims Administration and Settlement Fund
For more than two years I was privileged to sit in den-like settings multiple times a week aided by incredible trauma-informed professionals listening to often crushing stories of full adults who, when they were children, suffered all manner of sexual and physical abuse while detained in YDC facilities in our state. Some of the abuse went back to the 1960’s and some was sadistic and perverse. All of it was a betrayal of young lives. Shockingly, it happened at the hands of state employees who remained in their jobs at those places for decades.
The youngest claimant who shared his ordeal of state-sponsored abuse with me was 19. The oldest was 78. Sometimes in the telling or retelling of their stories the claimants surrendered to tears and outbursts of anger. But mostly they seemed grateful—although understandably reluctant and undeservedly ashamed—to share their pain and trauma in a confidential setting with those who had pledged to listen. Many stories were hard to hear because of their cruelty, sadness, and intensity. But my staff and I did listen. We wanted to. We were hired to.
The abuse went on unabated for more than 50 years. The common denominator for most of those kids was being born into families that didn’t exist. Their homes were most often broken. It was a steep uphill climb for them at a very young age. Their young lives were not “misspent” as some have ignorantly suggested, but were often fractured and impacted by the drugs, alcohol, violence and mental illness around them. Not surprisingly, they often ran away just to get away, were truant from school, or acted out their anger and hopelessness in ways that brought them into contact with group homes, foster care, and ultimately the juvenile justice system before many of them arrived alone, abandoned and afraid at a locked YDC facility. Many of those kids who were first victimized by absentee or broken parents were about to experience untold abuse at those state-run facilities. If they shared their story with any staffer, they were often told to “stop lying” or that no one would believe them. But most often they were threatened by staff to say nothing. Not surprisingly, they were scared into silence.
After 50 years of fear-induced silence those long-ago kids broke free of their shame and trauma just long enough to file hundreds of lawsuits in the superior court to hopefully secure some closure, compensation and accountability against the state that had abused them and callously eviscerated their remaining childhoods.
At first, when publicly confronted with disturbing allegations of sexual and physical abuse, the state denied any abuse had ever happened but, if it had, there were legal defenses. As the lawsuits mounted, and the financial risks of large jury verdicts became clearer, public pressure built “to do something.” The legislature ultimately chose to create and fund an administrative claims process that it mandated be confidential, trauma-informed, and victim-centered. It knew that a public jury trial was not fair to those it abused because it would likely re-traumatize and humiliate them—the very people the state had earlier abused. The confidential process also protected the state from disturbing press, large jury awards, and the endless expense of jury trials. The state identified the types of abuse the claims process would allow and how much each type of abuse could be compensated. Hence, protected from downside financial risk and demonstrating an apparent sensitivity to claimants, the legislature created the administrative claims process that opened for business on January 1, 2023. I cut the “office” ribbon on January 3, 2023.
I had been asked by the Attorney General and the claimants’ counsel to become the administrator of the claims fund. My years as a trial lawyer, appellate judge, and mental health awareness advocate underscored their reasons for asking me. I was confirmed by the N.H. Supreme Court to my post. I could only be removed for “good cause” and only by the Court. Because I would have the authority to hear and decide cases that were binding on the state if my awards were accepted by claimants, the “good cause” removal provision gave me the assurance that I could do my job without fear or favor.
The legislature promised to appropriate $75 million a year until FY 2032 for the claims fund. It knew that resolving the abuse claims would be expensive but it was willing to step up. Many claimants believed that the state was finally, after years of denial, committed to taking responsibility for what it did to them. Hundreds of cases began to migrate from the superior court into the fund. That is exactly what the state wanted. But there were still hundreds of claimants who thought that the fund needed to recognize additional categories of sexual and other abuse they had suffered and that there needed to be a new category for “egregious sexual abuse.”
In July 2024 after protracted public discussions with the Attorney General and claimants, the legislature did amend the statute and its guidelines, as agreed, to accommodate the expressed concerns. As a result, hundreds of additional claimants committed to leave the superior court and file in the confidential administrative process. It was exactly what the legislature wanted to accomplish. The number of claimants had swollen to almost 1300 by then but at least both sides had a process they could trust. That number is higher now.
The claims process the legislature created in 2022 and modified in 2024 was ingenious: it protected both the state and those it had traumatized. It was compassionate in its confidential trauma informed approach while also saving the state the enormous expense of trials over many years and the budget-busting prospects of huge jury verdicts (last year the only jury verdict returned to date was $38 million). The fund was working and claimants were accepting their awards.
Then everything changed with Governor Ayotte’s election. Her budget proposal in February of this year contained no money, zero, for the claimants who had been promised a fund replenished with $75 million each fiscal year. Claimants understandably felt betrayed. Their counsel described it as a “bait and switch.” Whatever it was it certainly was not what everyone had agreed to. I asked to meet with the Governor and she responded that we would meet “at the appropriate time.” That time, inexplicably, never came.
In the months after the Governor’s budget address, legislative leaders said they couldn’t find the money to replenish the fund as promised or even much support for the fund itself—the very fund the legislature had created. Even the Attorney General, who proudly spearheaded the fund’s creation as “the right thing to do,” stopped advocating for it. He even said he would testify against any additional funding.
Reluctantly, the legislature agreed to put in $20 million in the near abandoned fund for FY 26. But that is even less than it seems because much of it is already committed to claimant awards payable over time.
Equally disturbing was an eleventh-hour amendment that passed the Senate Finance Committee by a 6 to 2 party-line vote, without any public hearing or notice to claimants, that eliminated the fund’s independent administrator/decision maker appointed by the N.H. Supreme Court. It allows the Governor to make the administrator a political appointee who she could remove for any reason at any time. She won’t need “good cause” as is currently the case. In a further breach of trust with claimants, the new administrator’s decisions can be vetoed by the Attorney General. The “neutral and independent” administrator the legislature thought was necessary for the fund’s credibility only 3 years ago is now a fiction. In what world does a defendant get to choose and remove the judge in their case and get to reject any jury verdict with which it disagrees? Certainly, none that we would respect.
By the time the legislature eliminated the “neutral and independent” administrator post near the very end of June, virtually all claimants had migrated to the administrative claims process and its foundational promise of neutrality and independence. The legislature’s last-minute statutory change, under the cover of budgetary darkness, created a fundamental unfairness and a further breach of trust. The state now will have 100% control over the administrator and any award he/she may make while keeping up a facade of fairness despite actually gutting it.
Many claimants will find it almost impossible to describe their anal and oral rapes and other sexually deviant behavior in a public courtroom. Many of us would, too, if we were in their shoes.
The real value of the confidential hearing was that it provided a safe place for a claimant to describe the worst moments of their young lives. Because a “neutral and independent” administrator is no longer running those hearings and the Attorney General can veto any award, many claimants will be shortchanged. But because many claimants are in difficult straits they may be inclined to accept whatever the Attorney General allows knowing they could never withstand the trauma of a jury trial. The state knows that, too. They will benefit from a claimant’s trauma, brokenness and embarrassment. For those strong enough to reject an often-inadequate offer in a hearings process completely controlled by the state, they will find they will need to wait years in line for a jury trial and will need to fight off the Attorney General’s dispositive claim that they waited too long to sue.
But even those brave souls might die, move away or just give up. Who could blame them? That
would end their chance for recovery. The state knows that, too.
It is shameful what has happened in our names; in fact, it is beyond shameful. The silence of people who knew better allowed the YDC scandal to go on for five decades. I hope our current silence in the face of recent and unconscionable legislative developments doesn’t mean we condone it. Maybe nobody knew about them. But we know now. If there was ever a time to speak up in the face of injustice, now is that time. These were children, after all, and OUR state abused them.” Let’s not continue to traumatize them with a facade of justice. We’re better than that. I know we are. It’s just not right.