Jury Wanted State To Pay $16 Million To Saddleback Victim

By Damien Fisher, NH Journal

As attorneys for New Hampshire’s Department of Health and Human Services are fighting the $4 million in damages due to sexual abuse survivor Kristy Gesse, NHJournal has learned all of the jurors wanted her to have the full $16 million that was handed down at the end of this summer’s trial.

“She should have been compensated a lot more than $16 million,” one juror told NHJournal.

Gesse was a teen when she was raped 106 times by Peter Tstetsilas, owner of the now-defunct Saddleback Mountain retreat, a group home paid by the state to take in children for DHHS. When Gesse was placed at Saddleback in the early 1990s, DHHS officials knew Tstetsilas had already been accused of sexually assaulting a different girl and reportedly helped to quash that investigation.

Gesse’s trial ended with the jury deciding on a $16 million verdict. But the damages will be split among the state, Tstetsilas, his wife, Beverly Tstetsilas, and Saddleback because of one of the questions the jury answered on the final jury form. The state is responsible for just 25% of the total, with the deceased Tstetsilases and their out-of-business group home responsible for the rest.

“That’s not what we meant, that’s not what we intended to happen,” the juror said. “If we had understood what that meant, we would have picked a total that was appropriate.”

Soon after the verdict became public, jurors were horrified by the outcome, the juror told NHJournal. The jury’s foreperson sent a letter to Merrimack Superior Court Judge John Kissinger asking him to call the jury back so they could make sure Gesse got the full $16 million.

“The verdict in the trial of Kristy Gesse vs. State of New Hampshire does not accurately reflect the intentions of the jurors. The jurors unanimously voted that the State of New Hampshire is required to pay Kristy Gesse 16 million dollars,” the letter states.

The juror who spoke to NHJournal said the closing jury instructions and the form the jury had to fill out were confusing. Question 3 asked jurors to give a total dollar amount Gesse should receive in damages, and Question 5 asked jurors to assign a percentage of fault between the state, Saddleback, Peter Tstetsilas and Beverly Tstetsilas.

“Most thought Question 3 could not be about what a dead person owed. Why would it matter? She can’t get money from them,” the juror said. “It’s not right for the jury not to understand the question.”

The juror told NHJournal she feels misled by the court, that the question was intentionally vague, and that the jurors’ questions about the confusion were never answered in a way that helped them understand what they were being asked to decide.

“The rules were opaque, and we were somewhat misled,” the juror said.

The foreperson’s letter states that jurors asked Kissinger for clarification during deliberations as they wrestled with Question 3, and he did not give a clear answer.

“The jurors spent the most time determining the meaning of Question 3, and when they could not come to an agreement on the meaning of the question, they posed a yes or no question in writing to the judge. The yes or no question to the judge was meant to determine if Question 3 was asking if the ‘total’ was referring to the State of New Hampshire alone. The response provided was ambiguous and left the jurors to decide this matter on their own. The majority of the jurors felt the question was referring to the State of New Hampshire alone because they were the only defendants in this case, and they were the only party available to provide monetary restitution,” the letter states.

Gesse’s lawyers have already filed an appeal with the New Hampshire Supreme Court challenging the jury’s apportionment of damages, and the state recently filed a cross-appeal challenging the entire decision.

The state’s notice of appeal does not go into detail on its argument but indicates plans to challenge Gesse’s ability to sue New Hampshire under the statute of limitations, among other arguments. The jury found Gesse’s claims against the state could proceed because she did not fully know about the state’s role in her Saddleback placement before 2020.

The juror who spoke to NHJournal is angry the state is questioning their decision on the statute of limitations. The juror said the appeal flies in the face of the state’s initial reaction to the verdict: an unsigned statement saying it respected the decision.

“Clearly, now, they are deceiving everybody when they say they respected our verdict,” the juror said.

This story was originally published by the NH Journal, an online news publication dedicated to providing fair, unbiased reporting on, and analysis of, political news of interest to New Hampshire. For more stories from the NH Journal, visit NHJournal.com.