A lawsuit alleging abuse at a NH youth center is going to trial. There are 1,000 more to come

By HOLLY RAMER
Associated Press

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — The first of nearly 1,200 lawsuits alleging decades of abuse at New Hampshire’s youth detention center goes to trial this week. David Meehan sued the state in 2020 after going to police three years earlier with allegations of physical and sexual abuse he says he suffered as a teenager at what is now called the Sununu Youth Services Center in Manchester. Eleven former state workers have been arrested since then and more than 1,000 other former residents have filed lawsuits of their own. Meehan’s case, being heard in Rockingham County Superior Court, will be the most public display yet of an unusual dynamic in which the state attorney general’s office is both prosecuting perpetrators and defending the state against allegations raised in the civil cases.