The case of a worker at a youth center accused of holding a boy while he was being raped begins

MEREDITH, NH (AP) – The trial of a man accused of holding a teenage boy so his co-workers could rape and torture him at a New Hampshire youth center in the 1990s will begin Tuesday.

It is the second criminal case stemming from a wide-ranging 2019 investigation into historic abuse at Sununu Youth Services Center in Manchester. Bradley Asbury, now 70, is among nine men who worked at the Manchester facility or a related facility in Concord facing criminal charges.

Asbury and his co-workers are accused of barricading a boy in a dormitory where Asbury worked as a house manager in 1997 and a third worker raped him and a fourth forced him to have sex. The boy was about 13 years old at the time.

Three years earlier, Asbury had been fired from the Concord facility due to allegations of physical and mental abuse. But later he was rehired and transferred to Manchester, where he worked until 2001.

Asbury faces two counts of sexual assault. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of 20 years on each count. His attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment and prosecutors said they do not comment on active cases.

The previous case against Victor Malavet ended in a mistrial in September after jurors ruled on whether he raped a girl at the Concord campus. A new trial in that case has yet to be scheduled.

The investigation has led to a trial for damages. More than 1,100 former residents have filed lawsuits alleging physical, sexual or emotional abuse spanning six decades. In the only civil case to go to trial so far, a judge awarded David Meehan $38 million in May for abuse he says he suffered in the 1990s, though that verdict remains contested as the state seeks to lower it to $475,000.

The Meehan case provided a preview of the current case. Among those testifying was Asbury’s accuser, Michael Gilpatrick, who testified that Asbury and three other employees were known by youths at the dorm as the “hit squad.”

“The four of them used to hang out together, go to different cottages and beat the children,” he said. “They literally came and just went from house to house and beat all of us, in line.”

The Associated Press typically does not identify sexual assault victims unless they come forward, as Meehan and Gilpatrick did.

Gilpatrick, who spent three years in a Manchester facility in the 1990s, revealed that he ended up there after fleeing gang houses, breaking and entering and stealing food to survive on the streets.

He said the sexual assault involving Asbury happened after he ran away from work. He had spent days locked in his bare room wearing only his underwear when the staff brought him to the house manager’s office and went to the stairs, he testified.

He said the beating resulted in him being out of body.

“It was like I looked up and looked at it,” Gilpatrick said. “My body just feels empty.”

Gilpatrick said Asbury was a bad man.

“He didn’t have power over all the children, he had power over the workers.”

In 2000, during a federal investigation into physical abuse and neglect at the youth center, Asbury denied there was a problem.

“Those things don’t happen. It’s not tolerated,” Asbury told the Union Leader. “We don’t have time to torture them.”

The case highlights the state’s strange flexibility to simultaneously defend itself in civil cases involving a youth center while prosecuting criminal cases.

During the preliminary hearing, the state portrayed Asbury as a dedicated worker who gained recognition for organizing youth volunteer work. In the current situation, the state intends to portray Asbury in a very dark light.