An increasing number of people are filing claims with a settlement fund created by New Hampshire lawmakers to resolve accusations of abuse at the former Youth Development Center (YDC).
According to a newly released report by the administrator of the settlement fund, former state Supreme Court Chief Justice John Broderick, 159 new claims have been filed since the start of this year, bringing the total number of claims to 418. In the previous quarter, 79 claims were filed.
To date, the settlement fund has agreed to pay out more than $66 million to 134 claimants – more than two-thirds of the $100 million fund. The majority of the remaining claims are still pending. Only two claims have been denied by the settlement fund administrator since the work began in January 2023.
Most of the claims allege both sexual and physical abuse. Ten of the claims were resolved for amounts between $1 and $1.5 million. Most were resolved for amounts less than $500,000.
In March, Broderick writes he and his staff held in-person hearings at the state prisons in Concord and Berlin. Some YDC settlement claimants are currently incarcerated.
According to the report, an increasing number of claimants are among the more than 1,100 people who originally filed lawsuits against the state. The first of those civil lawsuits, brought by David Meehan, is currently being heard by a jury in a weeks-long trial in Rockingham Superior Court.
Meehan’s attorneys are seeking upwards of $2.5 million in damages in lost income, pain, and suffering. If Meehan is awarded damages well above or well below the settlement fund cap, it could influence other alleged YDC victims in deciding whether to sue and have their day in court, or file a claim with the settlement fund.
The $66 million in payouts so far is an acknowledgment by the state of the historic scale of alleged abuse at YDC and more than 50 other youth facilities that contracted with the state. That acknowledgment stood in contrast to the state’s position in the Meehan trial, where the state has suggested to the jury Meehan may be lying or exaggerating about the abuse.
The new report also comes as state lawmakers advanced a bill that would increase the cap on payouts in the settlement fund from $1.5 million to $2.5 million and add new categories of compensable abuse, including solitary confinement. The legislation would also add another $60 million to the fund.
Attorneys representing the majority of alleged YDC victims, including Meehan, have expressed support for the proposed changes.
Should the bill pass, Broderick writes, he expects the number of claims “will rise significantly.”
