CONCORD, NH – Staff members at the Youth Development Center in the 1980s encouraged youths to sexually assault a co-worker who filed complaints with administrators about their abuse of children detained there, according to a lawsuit filed last Friday.
Rachel Roe, as she is identified in court documents, was tipped off to the plan by two youths. When a disciplinary hearing was held, employee Bob Oullette claimed the plan to assault her was “just a joke.”
Oullette kept his job while Rachel Roe was made to sign a “non-disclosure agreement.” Roe, who was not represented by an attorney, was told if she talked about the incident, she would be fired and be in violation of several state laws.
She has kept quiet all those years but is now cooperating with the state in its investigation into staff physically and sexually abusing children court-ordered to the juvenile detention center, now known as the John H. Sununu Youth Services Center.
Shortly after the disciplinary hearing, three older male teens cornered Rachel Roe in a remote space “she had been sent to inexplicably,” at YDC and tried to sexually assault her. She pushed one into a sharp object and screamed loud enough to attract other personnel before the assault could be completed. Still, she suffered serious injuries to her neck, back, and head, including the loss of numerous teeth and a broken nose. She left YDC soon after.
That incident is detailed in the lawsuit filed by John Doe #441, who is now 49 years old.
Unlike Rachel Roe, Doe couldn’t leave the YDC and, he said, the retaliation against him for “ratting” on the guards who wanted Roe punished by rape, was “swift and brutal.”
Staff pushed and shoved him constantly, calling him a “snitch.” They spit on him and spit on his food.
Not long after disclosing the rape conspiracy to Rachel Roe, guards, including Frank Davi, Jonesey, Miss P and others, stormed his cell. According to the lawsuit, Davis used a martial arts move to partially paralyze him; guards took hold of his arm and wedged his fingers into the door jamb, while one of the guards slammed it shut. Doe pulled his hand with all his might, but the door caught his small finger, crushing it. He screamed in pain and the guards started beating him, telling him to shut up. Blood was everywhere.
Davis and Jonesey took Doe to a doctor but told him to tell the doctor the injury was an accident or “he would get it worse when they returned,” according to the lawsuit. He complied. The doctor repaired the crushed finger as best he could, removing bone fragments and stitching the incision. The finger is still deformed three decades later.
Doe’s story of abuse by employees at the state-run facility begins when he was 11 years old.
Doe was adopted. His father was abusive, beating the child with a two-by-four and throwing knives and forks at him at the dinner table. His father “regretted adopting” him because he was not the son he expected and ultimately rejected him.
After a particularly bad beating, Doe went to police and reported his father’s abuse. Police did nothing and the 11-year-old ran away from home. A CHINS (child in need of services) petition was filed and for the next several years – from age 11 to 17 – he was in and out of state custody, including several stays at YDC.
At YDC, a group of guards — including individuals he knew as Cronin, LaVenture, Oullette, Davis, the Searles brothers, Jonesey, Miss P and others treated him with “unrelenting scorn and abuse.”
Staff members beat him often and enlisted a large, muscular older resident to persecute Doe, who then 13 or 14 years old, was small and thin. The older teen taunted and assaulted him. When Doe complained to staff about the abuse and asked to be protected from his abuser, staff purposely placed the older teen in Doe’s cell where he anally raped Doe.
The staff then spread the word that Doe “liked it,” that is, being raped.
Doe became suicidal as a result and sliced his wrists. He was revived and then placed in isolation for a lengthy period. Eventually, he was transferred to a privately operated state-contracted facility.
He was treated harshly there but not raped. Eventually, he disclosed the rape to a counselor. Almost immediately, he was returned to YDC and the “care” of his abusers.
According to the lawsuit, back at YDC the torture and recrimination began immediately.
Rachel Roe witnessed guards taunting Doe with “just do it,” i.e. commit suicide. Other taunts included: “Let’s have a [John Doe #441] blood bath.” “Time for [John Doe #441] to do a ‘Carrie,’” (a reference to the horror film in which the title character is doused with a copious amount of blood); “When he hangs himself, we will put him up on display.”
According to Rachel Roe, the guards moved Doe from a secure cell to one with a crack under the door allowing them to push razor blades into his cell. Eventually, Doe used one of the blades to cut his wrists. Someone pulled him from the cell before he bled out.
Rachel Roe was already reporting the abusive treatment of Doe and others by her co-workers prior to Doe’s suicide attempt. She placed notes in the complaint box, handed complaints to her supervisor, who criticized her for constantly complaining and sometimes crumpled the note and threw it at her. She continued to complain, in writing and verbally, about the staff attempting to induce Doe’s suicide as well as the beatings and general cruelty of the staff toward the children.
After Doe recovered from his suicide attempt, he learned of the guards’ plan to have other residents sexually assault Roe to teach her a lesson. The guards offered residents extra “levels” or privileges, or that generally their “lives would be made better,” if they attacked Roe and had sex with her.
Doe and another youth, both of whom respected Rachel Roe as one of the few guards who was fair and kind to them, tipped her to the plot.
Roe, who had several young children to support, was alarmed and terrified. She went to Ronald Adams, the head of YDC, to report the guards’ conspiracy to instigate her rape. He treated her complaint dismissively, saying he didn’t have time to deal with, that she shouldn’t make a big deal of it and that she should take the issue to Bob Boisvert, director of operations.
Boisvert also tried to dissuade her from raising the issue and “making a fuss.” Eventually, he agreed half-heartedly to convene a disciplinary hearing for Oullette and others. Throughout the process, she was made to feel like she was a “troublemaker” for complaining about the conspiracy to retaliate against her abuse complaints by sexual assault.
More than 650 people are expected to file lawsuits against the state and former staff at state-run and state-contracted facilities for children.
Legislators approved a $100 million settlement but attorneys for the plaintiffs say the offer is
inadequate and they intend to proceed to trial with the majority of the cases.
Lawyers Rus Rilee and David Vicinanzo filed the master lawsuit with the court. The cases are in the discovery phase with the state’s initial discovery package in the consolidated cases will amount to more than three million pages.
