Second lawsuit alleges abuse at New Hampshire youth center

A man who alleges that he was raped by multiple staffers at New Hampshire’s youth detention center in the 1990s has filed the first lawsuit against the state, the facility and former workers since a judge dismissed a class action suit in May

CONCORD, N.H. -- The warnings came through the wall vents at King Cottage: Beatings had begun. Michael Gilpatrick, who spent three years at New Hampshire’s youth detention center in the late 1990s, said he and other boys sometimes stood on their toilets, yelling into vents to spread word of approaching staff. “Once they went into the first room, and restrained the first person and beat him, they’d go right down the line and do it to every single one of us,” he said. “You can hear it happen. You can’t necessarily see it, because you’re locked in yourself. And who knows what else they were doing in there, because a lot of us kept that stuff to ourselves.” Gilpatrick, 38, isn’t keeping much to himself these days. He filed a lawsuit Monday alleging he was physically and sexually abused at the former Youth Development Center in Manchester, which has been the target of a criminal investigation since 2019 and is slated to close in 2023.