Warmington slams Ayotte over child advocate cuts amid new Sununu Center revelations

The Sununu Youth Services Center has been rocked in recent weeks by new allegations of abuse and neglect, and Cinde Warmington, a Democratic challenger in the New Hampshire governor’s race, blames Gov. Kelly Ayotte and a budget cut she signed into law.

Specifically, Warmington points to cuts to the Office of the Child Advocate. The OCA serves as the state’s watchdog overseeing child-focused institutions, such as the Sununu Youth Services Center, a juvenile detention facility in Manchester. In June, Ayotte, a Republican, signed the state budget into law, which included the elimination of four of nine positions in the OCA, including the employee responsible for reviewing reports of restraints and seclusions.

Months later, in March, the OCA reported it discovered possible abuse and neglect occurring at the Sununu Youth Services Center. The allegations included an overly restrictive lockdown that denied children access to the outdoors and an adequate education, and an employee of the facility breaking a child’s bone while performing an illegal restraint. The allegations are the latest in a long history of abuse and neglect at the facility (which was formerly called the Youth Detention Center) that has resulted in millions of dollars of legal settlements paid by the state to victims.

“To be clear, Kelly Ayotte’s budget cuts to the Office of Child Advocate have allowed this abuse to persist, and worse, she has created yet another generation of victims — kids,” Warmington said at a Concord press conference Wednesday morning. “She weakened the watchdog responsible for protecting these kids and our state lost the sole employee who’s responsible for monitoring reports of restraints and seclusions. The result? Seclusions, restraints, isolation that went undetected, and a child physically restrained and left with a broken bone.”

However, when asked by the Bulletin earlier this month whether that layoff delayed her office’s discovery of the incident, Child Advocate Cassandra Sanchez gave a more nuanced answer.

“I don’t actually know in this situation that that would have been the case,” Sanchez said. “In this situation, when we did actually get to the point of going back and looking at restraint and seclusion reports, which we are doing as part of our larger review now, we were finding that a lot of the documentation was not done correctly, so even if we had somebody reading them in real time when they were getting entered, if they’re not filled out correctly, we don’t actually have the context to truly understand what’s going on. And I don’t know that we would have been alerted to this issue because of the documentation concerns.”

Sanchez acknowledged that reviewing restraint and seclusion reports is “a critical component” of preventing abuse and she has been an outspoken critic of Republicans’ cut to her team, but “this situation, and the uniqueness about what was happening at this timeframe, with some major issues with the way in which they were documenting these incidents, I don’t know that (the restraint reports) would have painted this picture so clearly for us.”

In a follow-up interview after Warmington’s statement, Sanchez said the staffing cuts overall have led to less frequent visits to the Sununu Youth Services Center, and staff never visited the facility in February. She said that if they had, they would’ve discovered the situation. 

“If we were going out every single month, we would have caught that in February,” Sanchez said.

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Asked whether she’d spoken to Sanchez about the situation and what her response was to the Bulletin’s reporting, Warmington said she had spoken to her and “my response to that is that that is also a failure of leadership — that the paperwork was improperly completed so that the OCA was not aware of the injury that happened, which would have made that particular incident report rise to the top.”

During the press conference, Warmington broadly railed against the governor, who oversees the departments that operate the Sununu Youth Services Center, for the incidents. 

“There were 15 kids at the Sununu Youth Center,” Warmington said. “Fifteen kids! Fourteen now, because the child with the broken bone has been removed. Kelly Ayotte, could we even keep 15 kids safe? How can we expect her to protect the children in state custody? We can’t.”

Since the OCA’s report, more allegations have emerged. 

The Disability Rights Center-New Hampshire — a federally funded watchdog focused on children and adults with disabilities — announced that it too had discovered potential abuse and neglect independent of Sanchez’ team. The DRC reported that it discovered a policy involving restraints being used in non-emergency situations — a violation of state law — as well as dangerous restraint techniques. A state Senate subcommittee was formed to look into the allegations, and it has heard reports that children were being strip searched in the facility despite the fact that there is a body scanner on site. Lawmakers also learned that a child was denied water as a motivation tactic to force compliance with staff directions.

The budget cuts to the OCA came after an intense debate with Republican lawmakers. In her original budget proposal in January 2025, Ayotte did not recommend any cuts to the OCA. However, House lawmakers who were less bullish on the state’s financial outlook proposed eliminating the office entirely as a cost-saving measure. Ayotte condemned the House’s decision at the time and worked with senators to restore the office. Through negotiations between the two chambers, the Legislature came to a compromise that resulted in the four OCA employees being laid off. Despite opposing cutting the office throughout the legislative session, when the budget made it to her desk in June, Ayotte signed it with the cuts in place.

Sanchez has vocally condemned the cuts.

“It absolutely did have an impact,” she said in July when the cuts were enacted. “It had an impact on the people that we have available to do the work, which is going to have an impact on the work that we’re able to do and the effectiveness of the office.”