First criminal trial starts in New Hampshire youth detention center abuse scandal

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — A New Hampshire prosecutor told jurors Monday that a former youth detention center worker “took exactly what he wanted, where he wanted it and when he wanted it” when he repeatedly raped a teenage girl, while his attorney said the accuser concocted the allegations for money.

The case against Victor Malavet marks the first criminal trial arising from a five-year investigation into allegations of abuse at the Sununu Youth Services Center, though unlike the other eight men facing charges, Malavet, 62, worked at a different state-run facility. Charges against a 10th man were dropped in May after he was deemed incompetent to stand trial. An 11th man who was charged died last month.

While the others worked at the Manchester facility formerly known as the Youth Development Center, Malavet worked at the Youth Detention Services Unit in Concord, where children were held while awaiting court disposition of their cases. He’s charged with 12 counts of aggravated felonious sexual assault, all against a girl held there in 2001 when she was 15 and 16.

Prosecutors say Malavet started paying special attention to the girl soon after she arrived, treating her better than other residents and giving her special privileges. He’s accused of assaulting her in a candy closet, storage room and TV room.

“This defendant took exactly what he wanted,” Assistant Attorney General Audriana Mekula said in her opening statement. “He raped a child, a child locked away in a detention facility, isolated from her family and the outside world. He used his authority as a youth counselor at YDSU and his control over her daily grades and restrictions and her special privileges to take what he wanted.”

Malavet’s attorney, Maya Dominguez, argued that the girl, now 39, made up the allegations in an attempt to get money from the state. She is among more than 1,100 former residents who are suing the state alleging abuse that spanned six decades.

The accuser “has a million-dollar motive to lie,” Dominguez said. “Money can change almost anything. It can change memory, it can change motive, it can even change someone’s morality. But the one thing that not even millions and millions of dollars can change? That’s the truth.”

Dominguez said the allegations initially were made up by another girl seeking to cause trouble for the accuser. The alleged victim told investigators at the time that she and Malavet had never so much as hugged, but “she kept that seed in her pocket for nearly two decades,” Dominguez said.

Mekula, who displayed a photo of the teen, said the girl didn’t tell investigators at the time because she was scared. She also was scared every time she was raped, “because if she did not give him what he wanted, he had the power to control her life at YDSU,” she said.

The other girl mentioned in the defense’s opening statement was among the first witnesses called by prosecutors Monday. She testified that she and the alleged victim were friends — not enemies as the defense suggested — and that she reported inappropriate behavior she witnessed, including Malavet “making out” with the girl and what appeared to be the girl touching him sexually.

“It was scary to tell at that point but I knew something was going on,” she said.

The witness also said Malavet later groped her breasts and suggested she was jealous of her friend, but she didn’t tell authorities about that until recently when she filed her own lawsuit.

Jurors also heard from Evelyn Clark Smith, a former staffer at the facility. She said she reported Malavet after watching him feed shrimp to his accuser in a suggestive manner and seeing the girl lick sauce off his finger. She also investigated how the girl was repeatedly able to wear her own black thong instead of state-issued underwear and suspected Malavet had retrieved it from a locked storage room.

According to court documents, Malavet’s accuser was transferred to the Concord unit from Manchester after she assaulted a staffer with a metal pipe and escaped. After being tried as an adult, the girl spent 10 years in prison for the assault.

In a 2021 interview, the woman said she was too scared to report the abuse she suffered.

“I didn’t want it to get worse,” she told The Associated Press.

In the only civil case to go to trial so far, a jury awarded David Meehan $38 million for abuse he says he suffered at the Youth Development Center in the 1990s, though the verdict remains in dispute.

Together, the two trials highlight the unusual dynamic of having the state attorney general’s office simultaneously prosecute those accused of committing offenses and defend the state. While prosecutors likely will be relying on the testimony of the former youth center residents in the criminal trials, attorneys defending the state against Meehan’s claims spent much of that trial portraying him as a violent child, troublemaking teenager and delusional adult.

The AP generally does not name people who say they are the victim of sexual abuse unless they come forward with their story publicly, as Meehan has done.

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This story has been edited to correct that the prosecutor who gave opening statements is Assistant Attorney General Audriana Mekula, not Senior Assistant Attorney General Meghan Hagaman.