Jurors on Tuesday convicted a former youth counselor and house leader at the state’s juvenile jail of holding down a teenage boy as other staff raped him in the late 1990s.
After deliberating since Friday, the jury found 70-year-old Bradley Asbury guilty on two counts of aggravated felonious sexual assault (accomplice), which each carry a maximum potential sentence of 10 to 20 years in prison.
The guilty verdict is the first to come out of a sweeping criminal investigation launched several years ago by the Attorney General’s office and marks a major milestone in the YDC abuse scandal in which more than 1,000 people claim abuse in civil lawsuits. Click here to explore an interactive timeline of all the lawsuits.
“I would like to thank the jury for their service and our entire trial team for their excellent work in this case,” New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella said in a statement. “We are grateful for this result and will continue our work to seek justice for YDC victims.”
Asbury will be sentenced on January 27.
Asbury was convicted of aiding three other YDC staff in the rape of Michael Gilpatrick sometime between the fall of 1997 and the following summer. The other former staffers – Jeffrey Buskey, Stephen Murphy, and James Woodlock – all face their own upcoming criminal trials.
During the trial, Asbury’s attorney David Rothstein accused Gilpatrick of fabricating the allegations for money, as he is seeking damages from the state in an ongoing civil lawsuit set for trial in 2025.
Prosecutors with the state Attorney General’s office argued Gilpatrick did not tell anyone about the assault because he was afraid of Asbury, who was the house leader of the cottage where Gilpatrick was detained at YDC.
Gilpatrick first testified to abuse by Asbury, Buskey, Murphy, and Woodlock – a group he called “the hit squad” – earlier this year as part of a landmark civil lawsuit brought against the state by David Meehan.
During that same civil trial, a former state official testified about an investigation into a similar but separate youth detention facility that resulted in Asbury’s firing in 1994. In a termination letter to Asbury, the then-head of the state Division for Children, Youth, and Families wrote that his conduct demonstrated a “callous disregard for the rights of residents.” Asbury challenged his firing, and was eventually rehired at YDC.
The outline of the arguments in Asbury’s criminal trial resembled those presented at the trial of Victor Malavet, the first former state employee to go on trial in connection with the YDC abuse scandal. Malavet’s attorney also argued that a civil lawsuit for monetary damages filed by his accuser gave her an incentive to lie about the allegations. The Malavet trial ended in a hung jury. It is still unclear whether the state intends to retry the case.
The state dropped three other YDC cases over the past year – one because the defendant was found not competent to stand trial, another because the defendant died, and a third over a lack of evidence.
The state has charged only a small fraction of the more than 300 former staff who are named as abusers in the civil lawsuits. Some alleged YDC victims don’t trust the state to investigate itself and continue to call for a federal investigation instead.
The state has so far agreed to pay out more than $100 million to settle claims of abuse at YDC and other state-run or contracted facilities dating back to the 1960s.
