By DAMIEN FISHER, InDepthNH.org
CONCORD — Natasha Maunsell entered the Merrimack County Superior Court Tuesday, swore an oath to tell the truth, and then re-lived her past of alleged sexual abuse as a teen locked up in a state facility.
Maunsell, 39, told her story to the 14 strangers on the jury, Judge Daniel St. Hilaire, hostile defense attorneys, a room full of spectators, and Victor Malavet, 62, of Gilford, the former YDC staffer she alleges sexually abused her in the early 2000s.
“I felt very threatened in the candy room the first time [Malavet] pushed my head down to give him oral sex,” Maunsell said.
Malavet is charged with a dozen counts of aggravated felonious sexual assault and is the first of nine alleged YDC abusers to go to trial. His lawyers deny Malavet abused Maunsell when she was incarcerated at the Youth Detention Services Unit in Concord.
Maunsell came forward in 2020 to speak to investigators with the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office YDC Task Force as an avalanche of abuse allegations and evidence of decades of coverup started coming to light.
But telling her story this week is forcing Maunsell to confront her past lies and misdeeds as defense attorney Mariana Dominguez looked to discredit her as an accuser.
Maunsell said she initially lied to YDC’s staff in 2002 when she denied Malavet was sexually abusing her. Maunsell testified she was too scared to tell adults about Malavet’s abuse.
“I was terrified. I can feel my fear and my terror and I’m back to being that girl again,” Maunsell explained.
Dominguez forced Maunsell to explain to the jury why she was being held in the pretrial detention facility. Maunsell was charged with assaulting two staffers in a different youth detention facility, reportedly hitting them over the head with a lead pipe.
Maunsell told jurors she dreaded being sent to the pretrial lockup at the YDSU after the assaults. It was the spring of 2001 and she was then 15.
“I felt a lot of fear about my life, about being back in the juvenile facilities,” she testified.
After the first several weeks inside, Maunsell said Malavet showed a special interest in her. He talked to her, included her in card games, and talked about the Bible and the Christian faith with her. But Malavet used the trust he built with Maunsell to get her alone and force her into oral sex before he raped her, she testified.
“I didn’t want what was happening to me to be happening. I felt I had no control, no say,” she testified.
Malavet was investigated in 2002 after staff and other residents spoke up about his inappropriate conduct with Maunsell. One staffer said he was spending too much time with the teen, and was seen doing disturbing things like hand feeding the girl. Former YDSU resident Viviana Rosario reported seeing the two make out when they thought they were not seen.
Malavet was not charged in 2002 after Maunsell declined to confirm the abuse, but his supervisors did transfer him out of the unit.
Maunsell testified she did not tell her father about the abuse until years later, and she generally did not tell anyone else. It wasn’t until another former resident contacted her that she agreed to tell her story to a lawyer and investigators. Dominguez tried to insinuate that Maunsell is only making the accusations to enrich herself through her civil lawsuit.
“You agree there is money to be gained in a civil suit,” Dominguez said.
Confronted about her past lies as a teen, Maunsell testified she is telling the truth now.
“I don’t have intentions to manipulate any truth,” Maunsell said.
Maunsell is one of 1,300 YDC survivors who are suing the state over the alleged physical and sexual abuse they suffered, and the coverup of that abuse inside the state agency. This year, the first civil trial of a former YDC resident who was incarcerated as a child resulted in a jury awarding David Meehan $38 million in damages, which the state claims should only be $475,000.
The Attorney General’s Task Force indicted 11 former YDC staffers, all men, in 2021. There have been no new indictments since, despite hundreds of named abusers in the lawsuits who still could be brought to justice.
Since the indictments were handed up, alleged abuser Frank Davis was deemed incompetent to stand trial, and Gordon Thomas Searles died.
Maunsell is expected to return to the witness stand on Wednesday.
