By DAMIEN FISHER, InDepthNH.org
MANCHESTER — Closing arguments are set for Friday as the state’s second criminal trial against an alleged abuser in the Sununu Youth Services Center, also known as YDC, scandal is wrapping up after just three days of testimony.
Bradley Asbury, 70, is charged with being an accomplice in the brutal rape of former YDC resident Michael Gilpatrick in 1998 when Gilpatrick was 14. Though he’s only facing criminal charges in the one case, Asbury looms large in the accounts of many other adult YDC survivors as the man who terrorized children and staff as the house leader in the Sununu Youth Services Center’s notorious East Cottage.
Survivors like Gilpatrick and David Meehan have said Asbury controlled East Cottage with near unchecked authority, reportedly ran a squad of staffers like Jeffrey Buskey, Stephen Murphy, and James Woodlock to enforce his discipline through beatings and terror and used intimidation tactics to silence other adults who witnessed his abuse of power, according to testimony in the civil cases. Gilpatrick alleges Asbury and Woodlock held him down while Buskey and Murphy committed the alleged rape.
But jurors in the Hillsborough Superior Court — North in Manchester haven’t heard much about Asbury’s frightening reputation among the survivors. Gilpatrick got in trouble with Judge Will Delker when he testified that he had called Asbury “Hitler.” Instead, jurors heard Asbury’s own words caught in a recorded interview describing himself as a lenient supervisor who went out of his way for the kids in lock up.
“They actually called me Mr. Easybury. Anytime I could give the kid the benefit of the doubt, I would take it,” Asbury is heard telling the New Hampshire State Police detectives who arrested him in 2021.
Asbury was fired in 1994 for alleged physical and emotional abuse of the children under his authority, but was able to get his job back through a Personnel Appeals Board appeal. The state did not introduce any evidence about his employment record during the trial.
The recording, taken under direction from the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office, was introduced Thursday by prosecutors with Trooper Joshua Quigley testifying. The recording was edited to remove parts of the conversation, leaving a fairly standard interaction that casts little light on the charges.
When he was arrested in 2021, Asbury was a key suspect in the abuse scandal that moved New Hampshire Attorney General Gordon MacDonald to create a special task force to investigate and prosecute the alleged abusers. Quigley, a member of the task force, was the final witness for the state, and the anti-climatic recording the final piece of state’s evidence Thursday.
Asbury is heard denying any improper or abusive behavior took place while he was in charge. Specifically asked about the rape, Asbury expressed incredulity.
“I don’t remember that ever happening with anybody. To my knowledge none of that ever happened. I would have known about pretty much anything,” Asbury said.
The task force indicted 11 men in 2021, and none since. Testimony in Meehan’s civil trial confirmed that the task force is no longer actively investigating the abuse claims. That’s despite hundreds of named abusers in the approximately 1,000 civil lawsuits filed by survivors.
The state already watched a jury deadlock in the trial against Victor Malavet, a YDC staffer accused of grooming and raping a teen girl in the early 2000s. A mistrial was declared in that case at the end of September, and the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office has yet to say if it plans to retry Malavet.
Shadowing the criminal trial is the fact that the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office is actively defending against the civil claims, engaging in, at least, the appearance of a conflict of interest.
Gilpatrick is one of the YDC survivors who is suing the state, and that trial is set for early next year. In the criminal case, the Attorney General’s Office is trying to prove Gilpatrick was raped, but next year the Attorney General’s Office will try to disprove the rape as it tries to fend off a large damages award.
Gilpatrick was an important witness in Meehan’s trial earlier this year, when the jury awarded $38 million after finding the state liable for Meehan’s abuse. But the final amount of the award is being challenged by the state, which wants to pay Meehan just $475,000 in compensation for hundreds of rapes and beatings he suffered as a child.
Meehan’s lawyers are asking the New Hampshire Supreme Court to now weigh in on the damages dispute.
