A New Hampshire jury on Friday awarded $38 million to a man who claimed he was beaten and raped at the state’s youth detention center when he was a child.
David Meehan is one of hundreds of former residents who said they were repeatedly abused by employees at the Youth Development Center, or YDC, in Manchester.
Meehan went to the police in 2017 to report the abuse he said he suffered during the three years he stayed at the facility.
A lawsuit Meehan filed three years later sought to “hold the state of New Hampshire and others responsible for the lives they forever destroyed and to bring about system change so that this can never happen again to another child” in the state.
“They didn’t do anything they were supposed to do to protect me as a person or any of my rights as a human being,” he said in the lawsuit. “The juvenile justice system needs some type of oversight. I understand the need for privacy to protect the children, but they have put such a canopy over everything that we don’t know if the kids are safe.”
During the four-week trial, Meehan told jurors he was violently raped by a staffer when he was 15, which he described as his first sexual experience. He also took the stand to testify about a man he had grown to love as a father figure, but who eventually turned into an aggressor who once even held a gun to his head while sexually assaulting him.
On Friday, after three hours of deliberation, jurors in Rockingham County found the state’s negligence allowed him to be repeatedly abused.
He was awarded $18 million in compensatory damages and $20 million for the state’s negligence in allowing the abuse.
However, according to the state justice department, Meehan will only receive $475,000 due to a state law capping damages in lawsuits against the state per incident, New Hampshire Public Radio reported.
“They can say whatever they want,” his attorney, Rus Rilee, said. “All I can say is he got a verdict of $38 million.”
“David Meehan is overwhelmed and overjoyed today by what happened,” Rilee added.
With News Wire Services
