CONCORD, NH (AP) – Six former executives of the state-run New Hampshire juvenile detention center were arrested Wednesday in connection with the abuse of 11 children over the course of a decade, including one who continued to work with children for nearly 20 years after he accused of holding a boy while his colleagues raped him.
Formerly known as the Youth Development Center, the Sununu Youth Services Center has been under investigation since July 2019, when two former advisers were charged with raping a teenage boy 82 times in the 1990s.
Those charges were dropped last year to bolster the extensive investigation, but both men were arrested again on Wednesday and charged with rape, the attorney general’s office said. Two others were also charged with rape, while the other two were charged with complicity in rape. The allegations stretch from 1994 to 2005.
The Attorney General’s office did not comment on the possibility of further arrests, but said the latest developments were “only a step forward” and that the investigation will continue.
“Today’s arrests show that this government is committed to holding these perpetrators accountable for their odious acts,” said Governor Chris Sununu. “This is not over yet and we will continue to investigate these gruesome allegations.”
The center is named after former Governor John H. Sununu, the current Governor’s father.
Several of those arrested on Wednesday have previously been named in a civil suit filed last year in which more than 200 men and women allege that they were physically or sexually abused as children by 150 staff at the Manchester facility from 1963 to 2018. According to their lawyer, children were gang raped by counselors, beaten while raped , forced to compete for food in “fight clubs” set up by counselors and locked in solitary confinement for weeks or months.
“My clients are delighted that the state has taken the important next step to hold these men criminally responsible for the unspeakable crimes they committed,” said lawyer Rus Rilee. “We are confident that this is just the beginning of the arrests and charges of not only all perpetrators, but also those who allowed it.”
The new detainees include Lucien Poulette, 65, of Auburn, who is charged with 33 cases – including rape and sexual assault – involving seven victims between 1994 and 2005. Bradley Asbury, 66, of Dunbarton, is accused of complicity in the rape. from a former resident between 1997 and 1998. And Frank Davis, 79, of Hopkinton, is charged with one rape and five sexual assaults involving two victims between 1996 and 1997.
In place of the dozens of charges they faced before, Jeffrey Buskey, 54, of Quincy, Massachusetts, is now charged with five rape charges involving four children between 1996 and 1999, while Stephen Murphy, 51, of Danvers, Massachusetts , is charged with five rape cases involving three children between 1997 and 1999.
James Woodlock, 56, of Manchester, was charged with three charges of complicity in rape between 1997 and 1998. David Meehan, the lead prosecutor in the civil suit, alleges Woodlock beat him repeatedly, held him while Buskey raped him and told him he “just misunderstood events” when speaking during a group counseling session.
Woodlock later left the Youth Development Center job and became a juvenile probation and probation officer, a position he held on until he went on leave in 2017. He declined to comment on Meehan’s allegations when a reporter visited his home in early 2020 and his employment ended Wednesday, the Department of Health and Human Services said.
“The alleged actions that took place several decades ago in the former Youth Development Center are terrible,” said Jake Leon, spokesman for the department. “The ministry continues to cooperate with the ongoing investigation and prosecution of these charges.”
The New Hampshire men are expected to appear in court Thursday as Massachusetts authorities attempt to extradite Buskey and Murphy. The messages were left for their lawyers on Wednesday; it was unclear whether the others are represented by lawyers.
In 2000 and 2001, the State Department for Children, Youth and Families conducted a seven-month investigation into 25 complaints of physical abuse and neglect at the center, including a boy who said he lost the tip of his finger when staff hit a door and others who accused employees of wrapping boys’ heads in towels and hitting them against pool tables. In five cases it was concluded that teenagers had been abused.
A newspaper article published during that investigation quoted Brad Asbury, the then head of the department of the state officials’ union at the youth center, as saying the allegations were offensive.
“We’ll take them personally,” Asbury said. “That stuff doesn’t take place. It will not be tolerated. We don’t have time to abuse them. ”
This story has been corrected to show that four of the men are accused of rape, not five, and two are accused of complicity in rape, not one.