Buskey sex assault trial opens in Manchester with victim on stand

A sexual assault trial began Monday in Manchester for Jeffrey Buskey, a former New Hampshire youth counselor whose 2019 arrest helped expose one of the largest youth detention abuse scandals in U.S. history. Buskey is the first of several former workers to face a jury in cases stemming from more than 1,100 lawsuits alleging decades of abuse at the state’s youth detention facility.

Buskey, 60, of Litchfield, faces 21 counts of aggravated felonious sexual assault involving David Meehan. Meehan was 14 when he arrived at the Youth Development Center in 1995, a facility now called the Sununu Youth Services Center.

Prosecutor Audriana Mekula asked Meehan to describe the facility.

“Hell,” he answered.

Buskey’s case is the first to go to trial. Meehan filed the first of the lawsuits alleging physical, sexual or emotional abuse spanning six decades. His allegations led to Buskey’s arrest along with that of another former worker in 2019, an investigation the source describes as unprecedented, nine additional arrests and a settlement fund to compensate victims.

Meehan described Buskey’s transformation from trusted father figure to abuser during a prior civil trial. He said Buskey gave him soda and snacks and let him play basketball with a local high school team before subjecting him to near-daily rapes.

“It went from being somebody I trusted, that I thought was not just there to help me, but somebody I thought cared for me, to hurt,” he said.

The Associated Press generally does not identify those who say they were victims of sexual assault unless they have come forward publicly, as Meehan has done. A jury awarded him $38 million in May 2024, though the state is seeking to reduce the amount to $475,000.

In his opening statement, Associate Attorney General Thomas Velardi told jurors that Meehan had intended to take his experiences to the grave but finally told his wife in 2017 when he feared one of their sons might get sent to the facility.

“What you’re going to hear is a true horror story of what a 16-year-old boy was put through,” he told jurors. “The very thought of his own flesh and blood being sent to this same place where he was terrorized finally broke the seal for him on keeping this secret.”

Velardi said Buskey used violence and the threat of it to overpower or coerce Meehan, who eventually stopped fighting back.

“It just became a way of life, whether he was fighting or he was just trying to survive,” he said.

In a police interview transcript recently filed in court, Buskey couldn’t remember his home address from the 1990s and struggled to spell his then-fiancée’s last name, but brought up Meehan’s name unprompted. He denied abusing him, saying they had a “great relationship.”

“I was always nice to the kid; I was always trying to help him,” he said.

Defense attorney Delia McCarthy told jurors there is no evidence to corroborate Meehan’s allegations. She said Meehan’s room was in a central hallway in a building that was “like an echo chamber,” making it impossible that he could have been violently assaulted without anyone else noticing.

McCarthy also said the trial will highlight inconsistencies in Meehan’s claims. She said Meehan has suffered from mental illness since childhood and as an adult experienced delusions and hallucinations.

“This is an unbelievable story, contradicted by the records and the people who were there and told by an unreliable, deeply troubled storyteller,” she said.

Meehan was the first witness called to testify after the jury was selected Monday morning.

The youth center is named for former Gov. John H. Sununu. Lawmakers have approved closing the facility, which once housed upward of 100 children but now typically serves fewer than a dozen, and replacing it with a much smaller building in a new location. The facility now only houses those accused or convicted of the most serious violent crimes.

In other criminal cases stemming from the investigation:

• Three men have been convicted: Bradley Asbury, Stanley Watson and James Woodlock.
• Jurors acquitted Jonathan Brand.
• Jurors deadlocked in the case of Victor Malavet, leading to a mistrial.
• Charges were dropped against Trevor Middleton.
• Frank Davis was declared incompetent to stand trial.
• Gordon Searles died while awaiting trial.
• Stephen Murphy, who has pending charges, had one trial end in a mistrial and another end with an acquittal on three charges and a hung jury on five others.
• Lucien Poulette is awaiting trial.