CONCORD, NH (AP) – Six former staff members of New Hampshire’s state-run juvenile detention center were arrested on Wednesday in connection with the abuse of 11 children over the course of a decade, including one who continued with children for nearly twenty years after becoming accused of letting a boy down while colleagues raped him.
The Sununu Youth Services Center, formerly known as the Youth Development Center, has been under investigation since July 2019, when two former counselors were charged with raping a teenage boy 82 times in the 1990s.
These charges were dropped last year to bolster the extensive investigation, but both men were re-arrested on Wednesday and charged with rape, the attorney general’s office said. Two others were also charged with rape, while two others were charged with being accomplices to rape. The allegations range from 1994 to 2005.
The Attorney General’s Office did not comment on the possibility of further arrests, but said the latest developments were “a step forward” and that the investigation would continue.
“Today’s arrests make it clear that this government is committed to holding these perpetrators accountable for their heinous actions,” said Gov. Chris Sununu. “It is not over yet, and we will continue to investigate these heinous allegations.”
The center is named after the former government John H. Sununu, father of the current governor.
Several of those arrested on Wednesday were mentioned earlier in a civil lawsuit filed last year in which more than 200 men and women allege that they were physically or sexually abused as children by 150 staff members at the Manchester facility from 1963 to 2018. According to their lawyer, children were gang-raped, beaten while raped, forced to compete for food in ‘battle clubs’ set up by counselors and locked up in solitary confinement for weeks or months.
“My clients are delighted that the state has taken the important next step in holding these men criminally responsible for the unspeakable crimes they have committed,” said attorney Rus Rilee. “We believe this is just the beginning of the arrests and accusations of not only all the perpetrators but also of all those who allowed it.”
The new arrests include Lucien Poulette, 65, of Auburn, who is charged with 33 charges – including rape and sexual assault – involving seven victims between 1994 and 2005. of a former resident between 1997 and 1998. And Frank Davis, 79, of Hopkinton, is charged with one count of rape and five counts of sexual assault involving two victims between 1996 and 1997.
Instead of the dozens of charges they previously faced, Jeffrey Buskey (54) of Quincy, Massachusetts, is now charged with five counts of rape involving four children between 1996 and 1999, while Stephen Murphy (51) of Danvers, Massachusetts, is charged with five counts of rape involving three children between 1997 and 1999.
James Woodlock, 56, of Manchester, has been charged with three counts of being an accomplice to rape between 1997 and 1998. David Meehan, the chief prosecutor in the civil case, alleges that Woodlock repeatedly beat him while Buskey threatened him raped and told him that he “simply misunderstood the events” when he spoke during a group counseling session.
Woodlock later left the post of Youth Development Center and became a young probation officer, an official he continued 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 service was terminated on Wednesday, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.
“The alleged actions that took place in the former Youth Development Center decades ago are appalling,” said department spokeswoman Jake Leon. “The department continues to cooperate with the ongoing investigation and prosecution of these charges.”
The men in New Hampshire are expected to appear in court on Thursday, while authorities want extradition from Massachusetts for Buskey and Murphy. The lawyers left messages on Wednesday; it was unclear whether the others were represented by lawyers.
In 2000 and 2001, the State Department for Children, Youth and Families investigated 25 complaints of physical abuse and neglect in the center for seven months, including a boy who said he lost the tip of his finger when staff members slammed a door on it. and others who accused staff members of wrapping boys’ heads in towels and hitting pool tables. The conclusion was that teenagers were abused in five of the cases.
In a newspaper article published during the investigation, Brad Asbury, then head of the union’s chief of staff at the youth center, was quoted as saying the allegations were offensive.
“We take them personally,” Asbury said. ‘Those things are not happening. It is not tolerated. We do not have time to abuse them. ‘”
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This story has been corrected to show that four of the men are charged with rape, not five, and that two of the men are charged with being accomplices to rape, and not one.