Dysfunctional, Not Criminal: New Hampshire Attorney General's Office Clears Sununu Center Of Current Abuse

By Damien Fisher, NH Journal

Dysfunctional, but not criminal.

That was the conclusion of the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office after investigating current conditions inside the scandal-plagued Sununu Youth Services Center. Critics of the state’s oversight call the findings a whitewash.

“[O]ur investigation revealed significant operational challenges and dysfunction that are perpetuating instability for staff and youth,” the office said in a 56-page report released Tuesday.

“The lack of both a clear operating philosophy and strong leadership has led to serious safety issues. While these challenges are generally longstanding, they have been exacerbated by recent events and disagreements among the administration team at SYSC.”

The investigation covered operations from early January through late May. Investigators interviewed 40 current and former employees, contractors, supervisors, and administrators and reviewed more than 300 hours of video footage, as well as thousands of emails, reports, schedules, and other records.

But investigators did not interview any of the youths confined at the facility. Instead, they reviewed summaries prepared by the Office of the Child Advocate from its interviews with them.

Gov. Kelly Ayotte used the report’s release to call for a comprehensive response to the ongoing problems at SYSC.

“Any allegations of abuse should be taken seriously and investigated thoroughly,” Ayotte said. “I thank the attorney general for completing this comprehensive review. While the SYSC is operating within the law, there are unacceptable systemic issues that must be addressed.”

Ayotte directed the Department of Health and Human Services to address staffing shortages and work toward equipping employees with body-worn cameras.

“The state will work together with stakeholders to ensure the SYSC is a safe, respectful environment for both staff and youth,” Ayotte said.

DHHS Commissioner Lori Weaver said the department would move ahead with body cameras and conduct a comprehensive review of staffing, leadership, and other facility operations.

“The DOJ report found that SYSC is operating within legal boundaries, youth are not being subjected to illegal or abusive treatment, and there is no evidence of unlawful practices or systemic abuse of youth,” Weaver said.

Mark Knights, a Nixon Peabody attorney representing former residents who allege they were abused in the Youth Development Center, said the Attorney General’s Office cannot credibly investigate the facility while defending the state against abuse claims.

The office “is inherently conflicted with its competing obligations to investigate and prosecute abuse at YDC while defending the state from survivors seeking justice for horrific sexual and physical abuse they suffered as children in the state’s custody,” Knights said. “Their unilateral power to veto YDC settlement awards represents yet another layer of conflict.”

“History shows that every time an independent source has documented abuse at the facility, the AG’s office’s response has been to downplay the seriousness of that abuse and stymie any real investigation into the harm,” Knights added.

The current investigation did not address the decades of alleged abuse that have generated more than 1,600 civil lawsuits against the state and more than 2,000 claims through the state’s YDC settlement process.

Those allegations date to the 1960s and include claims of rape, beatings, prolonged isolation, and other mistreatment by state employees. The first lawsuit to reach a verdict resulted in a jury awarding former resident David Meehan $38 million after finding that state negligence enabled his abuse. The state is challenging how much of that award it must pay.

The Attorney General’s Office has also prosecuted former YDC employees, with the criminal cases resulting in a mix of convictions, acquittals, mistrials, and dismissed charges.

The latest investigation focused on reports from Child Advocate Cassandra Sanchez and the Disability Rights Center-New Hampshire alleging improper restraints, medical neglect, and an extended lockdown at the Manchester facility.

Sanchez reported in March that young people had been subjected to lockdowns lasting about six weeks, with limited access to school, recreation, and other programming. She also raised concerns about a youth who suffered a broken bone in his hand after a confrontation with staff.

The reports sparked angry reactions and prompted the creation of an ad hoc legislative committee to investigate. Committee members complained that the attorney general’s investigation initially prevented them from speaking directly with staff and youths inside the facility.

“The Attorney General’s report makes many of the same recommendations that our Ad Hoc Committee outlined in its own report back in May,” said state Sen. Victoria Sullivan (R-Manchester), who participated in the ad hoc effort.

“All members of the committee were very clear that we had lost confidence in the leadership at the facility.”

Sanchez did not respond to NHJournal’s request for comment Tuesday.

The attorney general’s report rejected the most serious allegations raised by the watchdogs.

“Overall, we conclude that SYSC is operating within legal boundaries and that claims that youth are currently being abused are unsupported,” the report states. “We did not identify any instances of physical or sexual abuse of youth, nor did we find any evidence of systemic abuse or lack of access to independent reporting mechanisms.”

The report did not make a blanket finding that no potentially criminal conduct occurred. It said a separate criminal investigation into a May 3 confrontation between youths and a staff member remained open at the time the report was completed.

The report also rejected the characterization that the entire facility was locked down for six weeks. Investigators found an initial one-week restriction period, followed by several weeks of a modified schedule that limited movement, classroom instruction, and other activities.

The restrictions were imposed after several violent incidents involving youths, according to the report. Although investigators acknowledged that educational services “could have been managed better,” they concluded the schedule was not unreasonable given the violence, staffing shortages and safety risks.

During part of the period, youths received only one classroom period a day, with additional work brought to their residential units. The report also found school was canceled on several days for reasons that were not always clear.

The report similarly rejected the allegation that staff broke a youth’s hand during a restraint.

Video showed the 17-year-old, identified as T.F., punching a window with his left hand while inside a padded room and immediately reacting as if he had injured it, according to investigators.

The youth was later involved in another confrontation with staff and was placed face down while employees applied handcuffs and leg restraints. State law generally prohibits prone restraints but permits temporarily controlling a youth in that position while transitioning to another form of restraint.

Investigators concluded that the three periods in which T.F. was prone — totaling about four minutes — were brief and legally permissible.

The youth maintained that staff broke his hand when they brought him into another room and he fell onto a bed with him. That portion of the encounter was not visible on surveillance video. The staff members involved denied injuring him.

After the confrontation, T.F. told a clinician his hand hurt. A nurse examined it through a window later that evening and offered him over-the-counter pain medication, which he declined. A pediatrician examined him the next day and ordered an X-ray. He was taken to a hospital and diagnosed with a fracture less than 48 hours after punching the window.

Investigators concluded the medical response was not unreasonable.

The report placed greater emphasis on the violence committed by youths against staff members. It detailed assaults involving punches, head-butting, and threats of sexual violence.

In January, one youth punched a staff member in the face, breaking his jaw in two places and knocking out a tooth. In May, a youth repeatedly punched a supervisor, causing a brain injury, and head-butted another employee, breaking her nose.

“These incidents caused many staff to become very upset and wonder when something similar would happen to them,” the report states. “Others expressed extreme frustration at the fact that the offending youths did not suffer any consequences and were returned to regular programming within a few days as if nothing had happened.”

Investigators concluded that the facility lacks enough experienced employees to operate safely. Mandatory overtime, staff burnout, low morale, and inadequate training have left the facility unable to respond consistently to violent incidents or maintain normal programming, the report found.

The report also described a deep philosophical divide between administrators and staff members who favor a security- and discipline-focused approach and those who emphasize therapeutic treatment and de-escalation.

“It quickly became clear that the staff consistently fracture onto one ‘side’ or the other, beginning with the administration team and trickling down, and that the lack of leadership on this issue paralyzes the facility’s ability to operate effectively,” the report states.

Former SYSC Bureau Chief Joshua Nye, who resigned in May after less than four months on the job, attempted to impose greater movement restrictions after the January assaults while new employees were being trained.

The report found that many of the facility’s problems predated Nye but concluded that he “likely lacked the sophistication and experience to adequately address them.”

The report also blamed the shadow cast by the historic abuse litigation for what investigators described as an “overcorrection” by current staff.

“While the abuse alleged in the litigation would obviously warrant changes in staff behavior, it appears that this principle has been taken to its extreme and staff are often unwilling to physically engage with youth at all out of fear of being improperly accused of abuse for simply doing their jobs,” the report states.

“To be clear, we found no evidence that any of the sexual and physical abuse alleged in the ongoing litigation currently exists at SYSC. We simply note that the litigation can have impacts on present-day operations.”

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.