Carleigh Beriont: Feds should investigate NH youth detention center

Recently, lawyers for nearly 2,000 survivors of abuse at the Sununu Youth Services Center — the place most Granite Staters still know as the Youth Development Center — asked the New Hampshire Supreme Court to hold the state to a deal it already broke.

The timeline laid out in the brief is staggering. After years of disappointing turnout in the YDC Settlement Fund, the state agreed in 2024 to revise the program, raising payouts and creating an independent administrator with final say over awards. On the strength of that agreement, attorneys urged their clients to drop their civil suits and file claims. Roughly 1,700 of them did so by the June 30 deadline. One day later, Gov. Kelly Ayotte’s changes stripping the administrator's independence and handing veto power to Attorney General John Formella went into effect. Formella has already used that power to veto about 20% of the settlements approved by former Chief Justice John Broderick before he stepped down.

In Broderick's own words: "That's not trauma informed. That's trauma inducing."

He is right. The state convinced traumatized adults to give up their day in court, then changed the rules the moment they could no longer turn back. That is not how a government keeps faith with the people it has harmed.

While this betrayal of past survivors unfolds, the state is continuing to fail the children inside the facility today.

Earlier this month, the New Hampshire Office of the Child Advocate and the Disability Rights Center reported that staff at the YDC still use illegal restraints on children who don't comply with directives. The Child Advocate documented 15 children held in a near-six-week lockdown, denied full educational services and, at points, even access to fresh air. One child suffered a broken bone during an illegal restraint and waited 48 hours for medical care.

I am a teacher and a parent. And I am horrified. Anyone who works with kids knows that when a child is dysregulated — frightened, traumatized, or lashing out — physical force is almost never the answer. Yet I reviewed training materials currently used at the YDC and found a "force-first" posture that treats children as threats to be subdued.

The structural problem is impossible to ignore. The Attorney General's office insists there is no abuse occurring at the facility, in direct contradiction to two independent watchdog agencies. The same Attorney General now holds veto power over settlement payments to abuse survivors. The Superior Court judge who dismissed the survivors' lawsuit removed himself from the case only after questions emerged about whether he had applied for an open Supreme Court seat that Gov. Ayotte — the most prominent named defendant in the case — gets to fill. Every state institution that should be holding others accountable has a conflict pointing back to the same office.

This is what a broken system looks like. And it has been broken for years.

Back in September 2023, Concord attorney Mike Lewis wrote to U.S. Attorney Jane Young, describing the YDC scandal as the gravest legal failure in New Hampshire in his lifetime and asking the U.S. Department of Justice to step in. Young replied the same day to say she had recused herself from the matter entirely because of her prior role as deputy attorney general when YDC charges were first brought. Lewis told the Boston Globe he was devastated to learn that, for the previous 18 months, New Hampshire's top federal prosecutor had been quietly unable to act on the most serious abuse scandal in modern state history.

Two and a half years later, the abuse continues, the settlement fund has been gutted, and federal authorities still have not opened a formal investigation. We cannot afford another two and a half days of waiting, let alone another two and a half years.

All people in state custody, including children, are protected under the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act. Under that law, the U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division has the authority to investigate conditions in state-run juvenile facilities and bring a pattern-or-practice case where warranted. California, Florida, New York, Texas, and Vermont have all been the subject of similar federal action to protect the rights of vulnerable children. New Hampshire belongs on that list.

Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan and Representatives Chris Pappas and Maggie Goodlander should publicly and in writing call on the Justice Department to open a formal investigation into the Sununu Youth Services Center. A request from New Hampshire's full federal delegation would create the public and institutional pressure this situation demands.

The children currently held at the YDC cannot wait for another commission, another subcommittee, or another internal review. The survivors who trusted the state's word are already in court trying to enforce a deal that should never have needed enforcing. The U.S. Department of Justice can act. Our delegation can ask it to. If we cannot protect children, who can we protect?

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Carleigh Beriont is the chair of the Hampton Selectboard, a candidate for Congress in the First District, and teaches about the intersections of religion, ethics, and politics at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.