The man overseeing New Hampshire’s settlement fund for people abused at the Youth Development Center says the state has an obligation to compensate those who suffered while in state custody.
Former State Supreme Court Chief Justice John Broderick was appointed to oversee the settlement fund when it was set up in 2022. Since then, he has been meeting personally with victims to help structure financial settlements as an alternative to civil lawsuits.
But the settlement fund is now on shaky ground because of state funding shortfalls, and rising skepticism from lawmakers about the claims process.
Broderick spoke with NHPR Morning Edition host Rick Ganley about what’s at stake.
Transcript
The legislature created this settlement fund in 2022. Can you remind us of the purpose of this fund? It's rather unique.
It is unique, and the state should be proud of it. I'm certainly proud to be a part of it. By 2022, there have been hundreds of lawsuits filed in the Superior Court of our state by people who claim they were sexually or physically abused while in a YDC facility. Some of those claims went back 40 or 50 years, some of them are more recent. And finally, the state recognized to their credit that there had to be a better way.
And so Attorney General Formella took the lead, and they created the fund that now exists and the process that accompanies that fund. And the goal was twofold. One, they recognized that abuse victims needed an honorable, confidential, trauma-informed process to tell their stories, which is true. And they also recognized that it didn't make a lot of sense for the state of New Hampshire to throw themselves open to jury verdicts for the next eight or 10 years. It's hard to budget by jury verdict. And so the system they designed was trauma-informed, victim-centered, relatively informal.
And it also put up guardrails. So the state knew in any given case what the maximum award could be. The state also had the opportunity, which was important for them to decide what categories of abuse would actually be covered and what might not be covered. In the superior court system they don't get to do that.
You're the person in the room as people are recounting their experiences as part of the settlement process. What are you hearing from people who are putting themselves through this. Why do you think they do turn to the settlement fund and want to tell their stories?
I think a lot of these folks might want to have a Superior Court jury verdict, but they know they don't want to go through that process, and they don't want to wait five or six or seven years and go through appeals. I think they want closure. And the value of it – I've seen it over and over. We try to create a relationship of trust and safety in that room, and sometimes they're reliving their abuse in real time. There are long pauses. People sometimes are crying. It's very moving, and I know it's important.
So many times where people have ended those hearings, sometimes crying, they'll say things like, 'Thank you for listening to me. I feel safe here.' Sometimes they ask to get up and actually hug – not me, unfortunately – but to hug Jen, who does most of these interviews with me or Paula. They feel grateful, and it doesn't increase the amount of their award, but it tells me the intensity and the value of what we do, and I can't take any credit for it.
I give credit to the Attorney General. I give credit to the Legislature. If you look at it just from a financial point of view, what we're doing makes great sense for the state, and they can budget for that. And from an emotional, honorable point of view, it's the only system that I think should exist.
If the next budget doesn't include enough money for the settlement fund going forward, the state wouldn't be able to pay people who have already been promised the reward?
The way the statute is written – I think the state is certainly interested in paying any installment that's due in fiscal year 2026 and any installment due in 2027. But oftentimes under the statute, I make awards that go out for ten years or eight years or six years. If those years are not funded when that comes due, the statute says they will become judgments against the state of New Hampshire and collectible as a judgment against the state of New Hampshire.
So not to be paid out periodically, but all at once.
Yes. So when those become due, the challenge for us is – as you can imagine – I think the system that we're running is working. And I think claimants who have committed the system by the hundreds hope that it works because it's dignified and confidential, but limited financially. The State did that, I'm not critical of that at all. But if that goes away, those people are going to go back to the Supreme Court, wait in a very long line – I know something about trials, I did that for decades.
And I also know that trials can be trauma inducing. I was a lawyer and they were trauma inducing to me. So for someone who's been sexually or physically abused as a kid 20, 30, 40 years ago, they try to bury most of those memories and to dust them off in front of a jury and be cross-examined like maybe you're not being honest – that's pretty traumatizing.
So as lawmakers are crafting this very tough state budget that they're working on now, what would it say about priorities if they were to back away from their commitment to this fund?
I'm not in the Legislature and I don't have to balance those. So I speak from a perspective of trying to keep the promise in the system they designed, and I've gotten to meet these people. I know who they are. I know what it's like for them. And it's so opened my eyes about trauma and abuse.
This went on for 50 years in the state. And those were different times, I think. People had different perspectives. That's not who New Hampshire is, not who we are now. It isn't who we are when Attorney General Formella said it's the right thing to do when he opened this fund and the Legislature was very proud of it, and they should be. I tell them all the time, it's a genius system. I just don't want to backslide. I think it's an obligation to people we – the state – have to people we abused.
