By DAMIEN FISHER, InDepthNH.org
CONCORD — Teenager Kristy Gesse was raped more than 100 times by the group home owner picked out by the state Department of Health and Human Services employees supposed to protect children.
“They had so little respect for Kristy’s life and safety, that they carelessly and recklessly sent Kristy to go live with a monster,” attorney Nathan Warecki said during Monday’s closing arguments.
The closing arguments in Gesse’s civil lawsuit against the state wrapped up the trial that started last week in Merrimack County Superior Court. Jurors will now decide how much blame the state must accept in Gesse’s case, and possibly how much it will have to pay.
Gesse’s lawsuit is the first of the 300 contract home lawsuits brought by adult survivors who say they were physically and sexually abused in group homes that were paid by the state to take in children.
After going through the facts with jurors, including the fact state employees knew years before Gesse’s abuse that Saddleback Mountain Retreat owner Peter Tsetsilas was accused of raping a different teen girl, Warecki put a number on the state failures for jurors to consider. One million dollars per rape, or at least $100 million in total for the crimes Gesse suffered.
“Kristy would never have been in danger if they had done their job,” Warecki said.
Gesse had been removed from an abusive home and placed at Saddleback in Deerfield in the fall of 1992. Owner Peter Tsetsilas soon began raping her, and in February of 1993 Tsetsilas kidnapped her and checked her into a Concord motel under a false name. There the daily rapes continued until she was finally rescued after 24 days.
But records uncovered during the discovery phase of litigation revealed that a different girl, L.O., reported in 1985 that she was being raped at Saddleback by Tsetsilas. Those records indicate that DHHS employees stifled the police investigation into L.O.’s accusations.
In 1988, despite the L.O. investigation and in defiance of DHHS policies, Saddleback’s group home license was renewed.
Deputy Solicitor General Sam Garland conceded bad things happened to Kristy Gesse, but said none of what happened to her is the state’s fault. Jurors should not impose 2026 standards on 1980s child welfare professionals.
“Now sitting here today, we can look back and say they got this completely wrong, right?” Garland said. “I think that would be a fair conclusion to the evidence you heard. But that’s not the question before us.”
Instead, Garland called back to the state’s expert witness, Matthew Madaus, who testified that state employees were simply following the rules, laws, and procedures in practice during the 1980s and 1990s. Madaus is a licensed social worker with no experience working for a child welfare agency, a law enforcement agency, or any other organization that investigated child sexual abuse.
But that line or argument only goes so far, and doesn’t stand up to much scrutiny. Garland used the 1988 license renewal to show that DHHS employees were following the law at the time.
In 1988, state law dictated that DHHS would have been required to search for any criminal convictions when considering a license. Since Tsetsilas was never charged for L.O. ‘s 1985 report, there would have been no conviction.
But Warecki showed jurors the actual DHHS policy for license renewals in place in 1988, which disqualified people who were accused of sex crimes against children, were subjects of open criminal investigations, or had a child removed from their care. L.O. was removed from Saddleback after she came forward, identified Tsetsilas as an abuser, and the dormant investigation had not been officially closed by 1988.
“He should not have gotten a license for at least three reasons,” Warecki said.
Gesse was never taken to a doctor after her 1993 rescue. She had suffered daily rapes, and beatings, and was malnourished when Tsetsilas was finally stopped. She finally took the state to court in 1994 to get legally emancipated and get away from her DHHS custodians.
A subsequent DHHS internal investigation done after the rescue found that Gesse’ allegations were substantiated. The abuse happened. The state now says that copies of the internal investigation records no longer exist, a fate shared by most of the state records related to Saddleback and Gesse.