Disability Rights Center reports more potential abuse at Sununu Youth Services Center

The Disability Rights Center-NH has announced that it too has found evidence of potential abuse occurring at the Sununu Youth Services Center, formerly known as the Youth Detention Center or YDC, in Manchester — just weeks after the Office of the Child Advocate independently released its own findings of potential abuse and neglect.

In a letter to Gov. Kelly Ayotte and Health and Human Services Commissioner Lori Weaver, the Disability Rights Center said it has learned that staff at the facility have implemented a new policy involving illegal restraints. The policy reportedly instructs facility staff to physically guide children by hand around the facility. If the child refuses to be guided, staff are reportedly instructed to escalate to using a more severe method, such as a prone restraint. Prone restraints, which involve forcing somebody to the ground with their belly facing downward, can sometimes suffocate or even kill a child if done aggressively, according to social work and child welfare experts. Severe restraints can also have lasting psychological and traumatic impacts, many experts say.

“It appears to be a purposeful effort to agitate the child through unnecessary and unwanted physical contact,” the letter reads. “This contact, in turn, leads to a predictable escalation of a previously nonemergent situation to justify restraining the child.”

New Hampshire state law prohibits restraints from being used “explicitly or implicitly as punishment for the behavior of a child” in state facilities and allows staff to use them only “to ensure the immediate physical safety of persons when there is a substantial and imminent risk of serious bodily harm to the child or others.” Additionally, staff practice of guiding children by hand, specifically when the children have no freedom of movement, is also considered a restraint under state law as the Disability Rights Center interprets it.

The Disability Rights Center said its investigation is ongoing and that it will be continuing visits to the facility and examining facility records.

This comes just weeks after the New Hampshire Office of the Child Advocate — a watchdog agency tasked with investigating abuse and neglect in the various youth-focused systems within state government — released a report outlining separate concerns about the facility. The child advocate’s report detailed children being forced into overly restrictive lockdowns in their quarters without receiving adequate education or access to the outdoors. The report also described security camera footage of a staff member breaking a child’s bone during an illegal restraint.

The Sununu Youth Services Center has a dark history of abuse. The facility, which serves as the state’s detention center for children in trouble with the law, has faced a deluge of allegations made by former detainees in recent years, including physical beatings, emotional abuse, and rape. It’s spiraled into one of the largest juvenile justice abuse scandals in U.S. history. Lawsuits from the victims have forced the state to pay out millions of dollars in settlements so far, and more cases are pending.