InDepthNH.org (https://indepthnh.org/tag/ydc/)
Lawmakers trying to make sense of the staggering price tag to settle decades of horrific child abuse perpetrated by state employees got details they asked for on the Youth Development Center Claims Administration and Settlement Fund.
The state’s first criminal trial against alleged YDC scandal abuser Victor Malavet got underway Monday in Merrimack Superior Court with his defense team declaring his innocence and accusing the then-15-year-old girl of trying to cash in.
Victor Malavet went from being investigated at his state job for allegedly abusing a teen girl to working as a police officer, and then a safety officer at two different New Hampshire college campuses.
Facing a potentially debilitating number of civil trials that could consume the court for decades, Rockingham Superior Court Judge Andrew Schulman is pushing forward with a schedule for the 801 Sununu Youth Services Center – formerly called YDC – abuse cases on his docket.
Legislative budget writers Friday approved changes to the Youth Development Center Settlement Fund program to align with legislation passed this year to make it more attractive to victims of sexual and physical abuse from about 1990 to 2000 at the Manchester facility.
The state is paying an out-of-state law firm to vet claims by victims who were abused as children while incarcerated at the Sununu Youth Services Center in Manchester – then called YDC – out of the same $160 million the legislature approved to compensate victims through the settlement fund.
Gordon Thomas Searles, 68, one of the 11 former employees of the Sununu Youth Services Center – formerly called YDC, who was charged with aggravated felonious sexual assault has died in Manchester, according to his attorney Joseph Fricano of Nashua.
Mark Knights of the firm Nixon Peabody said, “The fund has already spent over $100 million on awards to claimants, the Administrator’s expenses, and the Attorney General’s outside lawyers.”
The state’s new proposed schedule to hold “bellwether” trials in the Sununu Youth Services Center abuse scandal is getting called out as a lie by lawyers for the survivors, while the state accuses them of trying to game the cases for cash.