I commend AG John Formella for being the first AG to recognize the horrors and speedy effort to set up a fund to pay the victims of abuse in the centers. However, I also have to say that the proposed fund is effectively lipstick on a pig.
The “pig” is the people at the top: public officials and heads, employees or representatives of state agencies who were aware of what was going on and who allowed it to continue despite multiple warnings over and over from the US DOJ OIG and individual complainants.
None of these NH officials or members of state agencies should be allowed to claim sovereign or qualified immunity when the evidence indicates they worked in collusion across executive branches and ignored conflicts of interest in federal and state laws.
They should not have a right to privacy for their involvement because they either directly or indirectly allowed state and federal laws to be broken and turned a blind eye because it was financially and politically beneficial for them to do so.
The FRM Ponzi Scheme report revealed the failures across state agencies, including the banking department, department of revenue, and the AG’s office. What we have now is the FRM Ponzi scheme on steroids because the state has consistently failed to hold its own accountable.
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Outwardly pretending to care about child sex abuse and domestic violence to gain recognition with the federal government and raise federal dollars, when the reality is the reverse. A web of cover-ups, self-dealing, and evading responsibility.
The US DOJ OIG wrote in 1999 to Kathleen Kerr at the DHHS/DCYF to state the agency’s failures. The same year Sylvia Gale was cited for conflicts of interest and appealed a motion to have her step down from the Neighborhood health center of Nashua.
That same year Edward Arsenault (convicted in 2014 of theft and bribery) started to charge the Diocese of Manchester for cell phones, computers, expensive meals. He was working with police, press, and I understand Nixon Peabody and David Vicinanzo as well as Jim Rosenberg in the AG’s office where Lauren Noether was employed (who later was involved with Children’s Trust Foundation, which was reported to the Boston FBI in 2016 for suspected child trafficking).
Nixon Peabody and David Vicinanzo’s involvement with victims of abuse at the State Detention Centers smacks of insider dealing again which would keep all of those at the top safe from an investigation. That’s not good enough – particularly because a lot of those at the top are elected officials who have been public leaders and who have been entrusted to follow state and federal laws by the public.
Anna Carrigan faced retaliation for bringing up child abuse under DCYF and related agencies. The state dismissed her lawsuit just as it dismissed David Meehan’s class-action lawsuit. Governor Sununu dismissed it too.
Now AG John Formella is the first AG in decades to actually do something, but it took federal investigation and federal arrests for this to happen. Why did employees abuse children at the detention centers? Because they were allowed. Why are young adults abused in solitary confinement? Because it is allowed. Why are children bullied and coerced by police and public officials? Because it is allowed.
It is time to investigate, charge and prosecute the people at the top – all the way to the top – who allowed this to continue when all the warnings were there for decades, and they did nothing. They continued to collect the federal dollars.
AG Joseph Foster declined to investigate sexual assault at Phillips Exeter Academy, where Governor Maggie Hassan’s husband had been principal. Why? I suspect because Maggie Hassan appointed him to his job. DCYF admitted to deleting files of sex abuse at Phillips Exeter Academy.
HAVEN, which was given a contract with Phillips Exeter Academy, never criticized the DCYF or the AG’s decision. Why? Because Debra Altshiller and Amanda Grady Sexton are Dem Reps/Dem Caucus and the agency relies on the goodwill of the Governor for its budget.
As Maggie Hassan was the Democratic nominee for Senator of New Hampshire, they weren’t going to criticize her or her husband for a cover-up of sexual assault at Phillips Exeter Academy.
Essentially the AG, DCYF, and NHCADSV became complicit in the cover-ups at Phillips Exeter Academy as a result.
Rep. Prudhomme-Obrien wrote at the time that it smacked of a cover-up. She, too, was ignored. Andy Martin, a candidate for Governor, also brought it up. He, too, was ignored.
In 2002, Father Gordon MacRae, a victim of corrupt police officer James F McGlaughlin, received a letter from an attorney at Nixon Peabody asking him to confess to a sex crime with a person he’d never met or heard of. MacRae was incarcerated at the time (he’s still incarcerated even though James McLaughlin’s egregious misconduct has been known by the state since 1985, when it was first reported nine years before MacRae’s trial).
The argument made to MacRae by the attorney at Nixon Peabody was that he should plead guilty to the allegations so that the Diocese could make a quick and easy settlement. David Vicinanzo was also involved with the Diocese at the time. I understand that the attorney at Nixon Peabody became the future AG Gordon MacDonald, who was ‘exploring his options” over Judge Charles Temple’s ruling to have the list of corrupt police officers released.
I believe that the release of James F. McLaughlin’s name is one that Gordon MacDonald personally wanted to hide because of Father Gordon MacRae and the Diocese of Manchester.
James F. McLaughlin went on to send unsolicited sexual images of children. It is a felony to send sexual images of children. It is federal entrapment if done by a police officer. Yet James McLaughlin was lauded for his techniques which he then taught others. He received a lifetime achievement award from the New Hampshire Fire Department and Police Officers Association in 2016.
Gordon MacDonald went on from Nixon Peabody to become Attorney General and New Hampshire Supreme Court Chief Justice.
Let’s not forget: he/his law firm asked Father Gordon MacRae to confess to a crime with a person he’d never met because it would make for an easy settlement on the back of another crime Father Gordon MacRae been convicted of that had been fabricated off a rumor created by Sylvia Gale of Catholic Children’s Services (Later at DCYF, CASA NH) and corrupt Police Officer James F McLaughlin.
Sylvia Gale received an award from CASA NH in 2020 for her services for children’s welfare even though in 1999 it was asserted she had a conflict of interests; and even though she fabricated the tale that led to Father Gordon McRae’s prosecution and incarceration.
Police Detective Julie Curtin was rewarded in 2016 for her work in NH v Owen Labrie and “justice for the victim.” Yet she, too, lied, created, and fabricated a tale, dividing and conquering teenagers until they fell into line with the desired outcome she and the prosecutor wanted.
She lied to both teenagers directly involved and on her sworn affidavit. Later both she and AG Gordon MacDonald were exposed when her other unlawful activities (under his direction) were documented in Lacy Crawford’s memoir “Notes on a Silencing.”
Amanda Grady Sexton, Councilwoman for Concord and Chair of the Public Safety Committee, was also rewarded for her work in the wake of the Owen Labrie trial and St Paul’s School suits. Yet she created and fabricated news that contradicted the records for her own political and financial gain, accessing federal grants and obtaining contracts with St Paul’s School.
Owen Labrie was put in solitary confinement for his own safety as a result of the malicious portrait Amanda Grady Sexton and her cohorts created from which they profiteered while putting his life in danger, for life. Other students have suffered in the wake of this as well. The Concord PD, Merrimack DA, AG of NH, and NHCADSV had no regard for the privacy of students or schools at all. It was a money-making venture for them. Child welfare was irrelevant.
US Attorney Scott Murray called NH v Owen Labrie “A victory for victims rights.” His job as county attorney was not to create political victories; it was to uphold the public duty of his position, which includes the safety and welfare interests of the community (including teenagers and young adults at St Paul’s School); he serves as a public official, not the political interests of the NHCADSV or the financial interests of state representatives or civil attorneys.
AG John Formella has a choice: he either works according to the laws of his profession, the American Bar Association and the New Hampshire Laws pertaining to child abuse and the reporting of it; or he works in order to help ameliorate a cover-up which led to the enrichment of certain public officials, state agencies and law firms.
It would appear that with the addition of Nixon Peabody and David Vicinanzo to represent the victims of abuse in the State Youth Detention Centers, the second option is prevailing. I’m very sorry to hear this. It takes courage as a principled individual to stand up against the corruption of a club to which you belong and want to remain a part. But I sincerely hope that AG John Formella will find that courage because the future safety of children and young adults against the corrupt practices of state agencies is imperative.
Unless he holds his own accountable, he is not really fixing the problem but pushing it under the rug. There needs to be accountability of every state agency. Friendships, allegiances, family connections are not an excuse to cover up child abuse.
The FRM Ponzi scheme report revealed that the AG’s office, banking department, department of revenue were all guilty of ignoring the problems that had been raised for years by victims. Who got punished?
The AG’s got away and went on to other lucrative positions, including the founding of Primary Bank, which has given and forgiven PPP loans to the companies owned by its directors, one of whom is on the board of directors for the Children’s Advocacy Centers.
Donna Soucy, legal counsel to the banking department, escaped gaining a prominent position in the NH Democratic Party.
Bill Gardner, the Secretary of State, kept his position and only just retired three weeks after the Senate Ways and Means Committee launched an investigation into the Pandora Papers.
The public is now being asked to pay $100 million for abuse victims at the State Detention Centers, where the DCYF was telling interns to rip up files while a criminal investigation was in process.
DCYF, CASA NH, NHCADSV, AGs office, police departments, Children’s Advocacy Centers, and others have known for decades about what is going on because there have been complaints not only from the public but from the US DOJ.
Worse, there has been profiteering and racketeering. So why should the public pay for these agencies and public officials when these agencies have abused public funds for their own financial or political gain? The public officials, the law firms they have engaged, and the state agencies should be held accountable.
The public doesn’t pay to support public corruption, so why is the public being asked to pay victims for the horrific abuse that resulted from public corruption? A $100 million fund is the easy way out. Holding public officials and state agencies accountable is necessary.
Maximus Inc should be required to open its books for New Hampshire as well as every prosecutor involved in juvenile prosecution in New Hampshire; every agency involved in domestic and sexual abuse and child welfare; every police department; every law firm that profiteered from this and the AGs office.
The public has a right to know about the inter-government agency conspiracy and collusion that has prevailed, allowing this horrific abuse to continue for decades.
Those in charge have been allowed to fail upwards and cover up for each other and leave the taxpayers with the bill for the misconduct of officials paid for by public funds. Further, some of these non-profits seem to be running for-profit enterprises.
Caroline Delaney of the Department Of Revenue filed a statement of financial interest in CASA NH. Amanda Grady Sexton of NHCADSV gave an interview to the National Crime Victims Law Institute in which she specifically states that she works with police and prosecutors to shape the messaging pretrial.
The NHCADSV endorsed a hostile environment suit filed by Chuck Douglas Esq on behalf of Sex crimes worker Jennifer Adams v DA of Merrimack County Robin Davis. That lawsuit alleges that there was an altercation between Jennifer Adams and DA Robin Davis over a particular case and arrest.
It would appear that the case in point was the arrest of 17-year-old Griffin Furlotte. Several months later in November 2019, Griffin Furlotte, who had been held for months in pretrial detention, told the court how he had been treated as a “monster.” He was actually innocent until proven guilty, and yet he was treated as a monster.
In his plea hearing, a teenage girl told the court that for months she had been bullied, lied to, stalked, and force-fed enumerated versions of events that had occurred between her and Griffin. Another teen female asked for the sex offender registry because anything less would be “a slap on the wrist.”
Outside the courtroom one of the girls told a reporter that she felt manipulated by the prosecutor. The NHCADSV had intervened before the plea hearing which originally did not require sex offender registration. The NHCADSV I believe, was involved in bullying the teenage girls to get the result that they wanted because they are the recipients of federal grants for the Adam Walsh Sex Offender Registration Management Program.
Amanda Grady Sexton, Lyn Schollett, and the NHCADSV have also gone out of their way to malign, defame and label a scholarship student at St Paul’s School, Owen Labrie. Labrie had to be put in the torturous environment of solitary confinement “for his own safety.”
While in solitary, he lost a significant amount of weight and will have PTSD for life due to the abuse he suffered while inside.
They also maligned St Paul’s School using associates such as Alexander Prout and RP Hale to write Op-Eds to maliciously defame it and harm its reputation. Ironic, isn’t it that the NHCADSV advocated for a “compliance officer,” Jeff Maher, who came from a corrupt police department and worked with an agency that has covered up hundreds of cases of child abuse.
DA Robin Davis wrote to the LEACT commission in 2020, asserting that police go around her when they are not satisfied if she doesn’t prosecute. Who do they go around her too? The Attorney General.
The Attorney General, per NHCADSV in September 2019, has a goal to increase the successful prosecution of sex offenders. The current guidelines for the SART materials do not indicate anywhere that a target could be innocent. “Trauma-informed” training is specifically designed to gain evidence that supports prosecution, ignoring exculpatory evidence.
Teenagers and young adults are the lowest hanging fruit – not old enough to understand that they are the easiest targets and not rich enough to get adequate defense.
Jim McLaughlin taught other police officers his techniques. These included the entrapment of teenagers. And then once these teenagers are entrapped or framed, the State of New Hampshire, its police departments, AG’s office, Senators, Congress members use this to petition for federal funds to fight child sex abuse, stalking, bullying which their own public employees get away with under their watch and under their direction.
It is time to hold those accountable in the agencies supposed to address domestic and sexual violence, child welfare, police departments, AG’s office, and law firms who have profiteered, deliberately, and knowingly covered up child sex abuse and domestic violence, bullying, stalking when it might incriminate their own agencies or their friends.
The public should not have to pay for a racket.
The racketeers should pay for that racket and the horrific and lifelong PTSD that they have caused. I’m quite sure that those racketeers have done well out of this over the decades and have trusts, LLCs, and hidden accounts which may be found in the Pandora Papers. For example, one of the companies cited in the Pandora Papers is a large auto dealer. Could this be Autofair whose CEO is Andrew Crews who is on the board of Child Advocacy Centers?
Corruption at the top creates victims at the bottom. It’s time to hold those accountable at the top for the horrific abuse suffered by children and young adults which they deliberately and knowingly ignored while applying for and receiving federal grants to address the very issues to which they turned a blind eye.
Editor: Email sent by the author to the AG’s office and at least one State Rep. It has been lightly edited.