The State’s Janus-Faced Position in the YDC Cases

by
Op-Ed

$100 million + of public funds plus resources of multiple state agencies are at stake. I urge you to consider the following and act accordingly to prevent further abuse of public trust and funds:

The attached article regarding the YDC child sex abuse claims and the parties involved contains statements regarding a “Janus-faced position”.

I note:
“Meehan’s attorneys asked Judge Andrew Schulman in January to prohibit the state from undermining Meehan’s credibility and trustworthiness through cross-examination based on a legal doctrine that prevents a party from taking a position in one legal proceeding that contradicts a position it took in another.

“The State cannot be allowed to take a Janus-faced position — wholeheartedly proffering David’s allegations of abuse on the State’s criminal proceedings while disavowing or discrediting those same allegations in David’s civil action,” they wrote.”

The State has held this Janus-faced position several times before. But so have have attorneys suing the State (particularly David Vicinanzo, Chuck Douglas) and the NGOs they engage with from SNAP to NHCADSV.  

They are collectively playing a game with public funds, public trust, children’s and families lives; defrauding the citizens to enrich themselves. This is abhorrent.

I am a victim of witness intimidation by some of the parties involved. I wrote to Russ Rilee (who brought the David Meehan et al. class action suit on YDC abuse) about my research and beliefs about what was going on.  I asserted that there was a “Kids for Cash” scheme, and I named names. Many of those are involved in the YDC cases, and they include members of NH Bar, Law Enforcement, and Public Agencies. My letter was forwarded to the NHCADSV, who then hired Timothy McLaughlin of Shaheen & Gordon to threaten me with a defamation suit if I did not recuse my statements regarding the NHCADSV’s and Amanda Grady Sexton’s involvement in a “Kids for Cash” Scheme.
It’s unlawful to intimidate witnesses. It is even more unlawful when the law firm intimidating the witness is tied to a Senator for the State of New Hampshire who was Governor in the 1990s under whose governorship YDC abuse was taking place.
Senator Jeanne Shaheen appointed AG Phil McLaughlin (her mentor, she says), whose son – Timothy McLaughlin – is the attorney at Shaheen & Gordon who threatened me on behalf of Amanda Grady Sexton, who happens to be on Senator Jeanne Shaheen’s re-election campaign committee, on the City of Concord Council, married to the political director of WMUR and Director of Public Affairs for the NHCADSV.  The AG’s office under Phil McLaughlin and others before and after him disregarded complaints about YDC while licking their lips with extortion of the Diocese of Manchester over priest sex abuse claims, which were quickly filed by Chuck Douglas and quickly settled by Gordon MacDonald and David Vicinanzo with former Monsignor Edward Arsenault who went to jail for defrauding the Diocese. The Diocese and Children’s Catholic Charities are indivisible from each other and from DCYF, which has deleted files of child sex abuse or ordered others to do so.
New Hampshire Law Enforcement, Court officials, Civil Attorneys, NGOs, and DCYF have been involved together in this decades-long “Kids for Cash” scheme.
It is a model that dates back to the 1980s to Sylvia Gale of DCYF, the Diocese of Manchester, Laurie List Police officer James F McLaughlin, and Peter Heed Esq, who would be referred kids as clients when he was in private practice by James F McLaughlin. Peter Heed was rewarded by becoming DA for Cheshire County and then AG for New Hampshire until he was accused of sexual assault by social workers at a publicly funded state conference on sexual violence.
The pattern for “Kids for Cash” was so lucrative that it has flourished until now. But it was all paid for using public funds. The money they all made has been hidden in shell companies, real estate, and non-profits hiding as charitable foundations. Primary Bank and Merrimack County Savings Bank appear to be two of the financial institutions most likely involved.  Coincidentally, two members of Nixon Peabody (law firm for the Diocese) are on the board of Primary Bank along with former Governor John Lynch, under whose tenure as Governor the FRM Ponzi Scheme was exposed.  Shaheen & Gordon have represented directors of Primary Bank, and David Vicinanzo has been appointed as special prosecutor for Shahen & Gordon. I believe that Glenn Perlow of NH Trusts is also involved as well as the Secretary of State, Department of Revenue and Banking Commission. Perhaps this is why lawyers from the Banking Commission have been involved in the declamatory hearings for the John Doe v City of Keene Police et al. (James F McLaughlin’s case to be excused from exposure on the Laurie List). Case 213-2021-cv-00185
Several local journalists appear to have been engaged with these parties to leverage their position for whichever side of the door they need to be on. The Boston Globe, WMUR, Concord Monitor, AP have all been involved. Amanda Grady Sexton of the NHCADSV states in this document and on her bio that the organization works to shape and control media for police, prosecutors and civil attorneys, working with journalists.
The State and these parties are involved in it again with the YDC cases from which they will receive a large percentage of public money set aside to handle the complaints/trials/settlements.  These parties have already made significant amounts of money through this coordinated racket. The public has paid for it. The public has not received one cent of the benefit, but the parties involved have made millions.

There have been no plans put in place to prevent this from happening again. What guarantee is there that ten or twenty years ago there will be more cover ups of child sex abuse by state employees discovered and another sign off on $100 million to deal with those?

The public cannot have confidence in the courts because the State of New Hampshire has worked with NGOs and civil attorneys and media to manipulate judicial outcome for their own self-serving, unconstitutional and financial ulterior motives and now they are about to do it again.
There is already in-fighting between David Vicinanzo and Chuck Douglas over legal fees for plaintiffs. I understand that David Vicinanzo also argued with Russ Rilee about fees for book deal rights for YDC victims. As a film and TV agent who deals with book deal rights on occasion, I am quite horrified that these attorneys are putting self-enriching book deals ahead of their client’s interests. In my profession, we are not supposed to put our own interests ahead of those of our clients. We would lose our talent licenses.  I believe that professional codes of conduct for New Hampshire attorneys stipulate the same. Why are these not enforced?
As you can see – this is a cash cow payday for them. 

So how does this Kids for Cash deal work. I will lay it out here from the case I investigated which led me to this discovery:

In 2015, State prosecutors (Catherine Ruffle, Joseph Cherniske under Merrimack County DA Scott Murray) stated in the criminal trial of NH v Owen Labrie, that St.Paul’s School (a private school with large endowment) was not on trial.

The State’s witnesses which it called to argue its charges against Owen Labrie included present, former students, and faculty of St Paul’s School.
The school and its board of trustees were represented by former NH AG Michael Delaney. (Michael Delaney was AG when the FRM Ponzi Scheme implicated his office. Michael Delaney defended Judge Judy Introcaso when she pled guilty of fraud. She’d magically divorced with a back date on the documents overseen by Susan Carbon, who oversees $400 million from the DOJ OVW, for which New Hampshire’s Law Enforcement, NGOs, and AG’s office are beneficiaries).

According to records from NH v Owen Labrie (including a statement to the US Senate Judiciary Committee from the State’s primary witness/complainant: Chessy Prout) the prosecutor/s (Catherine Ruffle, Joseph Cherniske) allowed state witnesses tampered with by former AG Michael Delaney, to testify.
Amanda Grady Sexton of the NHCADSV informed Prosecutor Catherine Ruffle of the tampering. Present in the witness holding room when the alleged tampering happened was Sandra Mathieson – from the Office of Victims Advocate. Nevertheless, not one of these said anything despite the fact that they were ALL paid for by the public.
Why not? Because it wasn’t in their personal and political financial interests to do so. But it was in the public’s interest because the public was paying for the investigation and the trial.
The prosecutors prevented a line of questioning to one of these witnesses (Andrew Thomson) and then told the judge (Larry Smukler) that a deal had been made with this witness by the school (represented by former AG Michael Delaney – the attorney who has been accused of tampering with the witness group this particular witness was a part of).
Andrew Thomson’s mother was legal counsel to then-Governor Maggie Hassan and on the board of trustees of St Paul’s School. She had avoided deposition by being out of the country. She has also worked in the AG’s office, and she works at UNH: Lucy Hodder Esq. She was also an endorser and close friend of Congresswoman Ann Kuster, who used the trial for her political campaigning, writing the introduction to the book ihavetherighttobook.com, which Government Affairs PR rep Dan Hill promoted. He claims he worked alone with Chessy Prout, whom he met in 2015, but the evidence strongly indicates that he worked with the NHCADSV, Amanda Grady Sexton, Steven J Kelly Esq, Chuck Douglas Esq, Steven D Silverman Esq, Congresswoman Ann Kuster and SurvJustice/the White House “Not Alone” task force tied to UNH.  In other words – not alone.  The NHCADSV and Congresswoman Ann Kuster promoted the “memoir” ihavetherighttobook.com. It compares Owen Labrie to Donald Trump and an “Al Qaeda terrorist.”  NHCADSV is supposed to be a non-partisan organization for its non-profit status. It is not. It was a front for Kuster, Shaheen, and Hassan’s political campaigns using DV & SA.
According to Amanda Grady Sexton’s bio:
“In 2016 Politico named Amanda one of “the most pluggedin activists and elected officials” inNH, and the Boston Globe called her one of NH’s “most desirable endorsements for candidatesseeking the Presidency.”
The prosecutors sealed the admission of their knowledge of a deal having been made for State “tampered” witness Andrew Thomson.
The New Hampshire Supreme Court ordered that information to be unsealed eight months later, long after the jury verdict and sentencing.  When it was unsealed, prosecutor Catherine Ruffle retracted the admission that a deal had been made, and so did St Paul’s School (via its counsel: Michael Delaney, who was endorsed by Sandra Mathieson, introduced by Maggie Hassan for consideration for the First Circuit Court of Appeals).
Public records also indicate that Jim Rosenberg of Shaheen & Gordon, who was the counsel for Andrew Thomson, met the prosecutors during the trial and organized for his name not to be included in the Prout/Doe v St Paul’s School suit filed by Chuck Douglas, Steven J Kelly, Steven D Silverman.  Had it been included, discovery would have backfired on the prosecutors since Andrew Thomson had sent the State’s primary witness – Chessy Prout –  an invitation to a “secret snuggle” and a “lap dance” – documented in Chessy Prout’s memoir. The discovery in the civil suit would have undermined the entire premise of the criminal trial, and all indications are that there was an agreement in place between the police, prosecutors, and civil attorneys to prevent that from happening. They worked in sync.
All of this information is in public records.
The Concord Monitor published an article on May 10, 2016 about Andrew Thomson which has recently been disabled. I suspect at the request of those parties who are involved in the YDC cases hoping that the public doesn’t remember. We do.

Although the prosecutors stated that St. Paul’s School was not on trial in August 2015 and used witnesses from the school to argue their case against Owen Labrie, their statements in sentencing (October 2015) contradicted this position. Instead of focusing on the defendant, they spent most of their sentencing statements portraying St Paul’s School as a den of rape culture. But the school was not on trial. The State took a Janus-Faced position. When they wanted witnesses from St Paul’s School to work with them to convict Owen Labrie, they said the school wasn’t on trial. When they were done with those witnesses and got to sentencing, they changed their minds because they saw a windfall coming down with civil suits. The lawyers for those civil suits sat in the criminal trial and trained Chessy Prout, the State’s primary witness and prosecutors.
These civil attorneys had been introduced via Laura L Dunn Esq, who’d been recommended to the Prout family by Concord Police Detective Julie Curtin sometime between 5 and 15 months before the criminal trial. These attorneys also worked with Amanda Grady Sexton of the NHCADSV who was controlling the media.  In return, her organization, the NHCADSV, gets kickbacks from the civil settlements.
The NHCADSV (as they are in the YDC cases) worked both sides: for the State and for the civil attorneys. They were financial beneficiaries via federal grants, kickbacks from civil suits, and settlement agreements with the School, which they lobbied the AG for. They lobbied the AG for a Grand Jury Criminal Investigation into St Paul’s School, but they have not done so for YDC even though AG Gordon MacDonald referred complainants of YDC to them.
The number of YDC complainants stretch into the thousands unlike St Paul’s School where there were a handful at the most.  A grand jury investigation into YDC would implicate DCYF and that would implicate NHCADSV and UNH. They don’t want a grand jury criminal investigation because they don’t want to jeopardize the federal grants they have received for decades.
Greed and desire to protect the reputation of the NHCADSV, civil attorneys and public officials is what is at the center of the YDC conflicts of interest and inability to address them transparently.  

In May 2016, DA Scott Murray stated that police and prosecutors had done a thorough investigation into St. Pauls School and found no other prosecutable misconduct apart from the alleged activities of Owen Labrie. Thus contradicting the statements made by the prosecutors to the judge, which were unsealed eight months after the trial.  The entire goal of the trial was so that the NHCADSV could get inside St. Paul’s School and extort it with an in-house “compliance officer” spy who spends his afternoons hanging out at their office downtown Concord. I know this because I have been contacted by several who have been targets of this enterprise. AG Gordon MacDonald’s office was involved with it. So were Concord Police. So was UNH. So were civil attorneys Chuck Douglas (Chair of the NH Judicial Selection Committee), David Vicinanzo, Shaheen & Gordon (Jim Rosenberg, Timothy McLaughlin), Michael Delaney/McLane Middleton.  Coincidentally, Timothy McLaughlin is the son of former AG Phil McLaughlin, who ordered the Grand Jury Criminal Investigation into the Diocese of Manchester in 2002 and celebrated the “creative” solutions at his retirement party in 2015. 

In June 2016, Chuck Douglas Esq, Steven D Silverman Esq, and Steven J Kelly Esq filed a lawsuit against St. Pauls School, which benefited from being leaked to the Concord Monitor, NBC Today Show, and Vice Media before the school (Michael Delaney) was aware such a suit existed. I believe that a public official for the City of Concord, Amanda Grady Sexton, was responsible for the leak. She had called the criminal trial an opportunity and she had managed to restrict access by media to the trial. Her husband’s news channel, WMUR, was granted exclusive TV access. Preference was given to Susan Zalkind of Vice Media over Paige Sutherland Of NHPR, whose tweets were used in an exhibit to petition to restrict media access. Amanda Grady Sexton had been the informant to the prosecutor about witness tampering by Michael Delaney. Amanda Grady Sexton’s organization- the NHCADSV- were beneficiaries of the verdict and sentencing since they receive grants for Sex Offender Registration Management and from the Office of Violence Against Women.  

In July 2017, AG Gordon MacDonald (who dismissed YDC child abuse as “victim negligence”), ordered a Grand Jury Criminal Investigation into St Paul’s School. He cited discovery from the investigation into Owen Labrie to substantiate the necessity.  The NHCADSV had lobbied him for the investigation, suggesting that the NHCADSV – a lobbyist- had access to the discovery.  The NHCADSV’s attorney, David Vicinanzo, represented members of St Paul’s faculty during the investigation. The NHCADSV’s and Amanda Grady Sexton’s other attorneys, Shaheen & Gordon, represented the witness who had been allegedly tampered with by former AG Michael Delaney in the trial.
The order for the Grand Jury Criminal Investigation and reasons for it contradicted statements made by Merrimack County DA Scott Murray regarding the police and prosecutors’ thorough investigation and being presented with no prosecutable misconduct.  It also flew in the face of the State prosecutors’ trial statements that St Paul’s School was not on trial. In September 2018, on the same day that Owen Labrie’s first appeal was heard, Gordon MacDonald announced a settlement agreement with St Paul’s School, which materially benefited the NHCADSV, who had lobbied for the investigation in order to get a contract for themselves.

State prosecutors, the NHCADSV, Concord PD, civil attorneys at Shaheen & Gordon (Jim Rosenberg, Timothy McLaughlin), Nixon Peabody (David Vicinanzo), McLane Middleton (Michael Delaney), Douglas & Leonard (Chuck Douglas) and the AG’s office (Gordon MacDonald, Jane Young, Geoffrey Ward) have been involved in playing all sides to their advantage from criminal trial to civil suit to Grand Jury Criminal Investigation and Settlement.  This is straightup racketeering and profiteering that is extremely well documented in public records. 

I believe it is imperative for public disclosure of the arrangements between the above mentioned parties- including correspondence and financial disclosures- before the YDC criminal and civil trials commence.  The arrangements in the St Pauls and Owen Labrie cases seem to reflect similar arrangements in the Diocese of Manchester cases in 2002. Indeed, on the website of State Witness/Complainant Chessy Prout’s non-profit ihavetherightto.org there is a statement from September 15,2018 which draws the link between the Diocese Grand Jury Criminal Investigation and settlement agreement and the St Paul’s one. This proves that Chessy Prout’s non-profit and statements made by it were done in collusion with public officials, non-profits and attorneys in New Hampshire who had knowledge of that agreement which was made when Chessy Prout was 4 or 5 years old. 
“The school’s primary focus was protecting its reputation, protecting itself, rather than protecting the children entrusted to its care, and that is a summary of the evidence we saw during the course of the investigation,” MacDonald said.
“I Have The Right To” was registered in 2017 with Steven J Kelly Esq as the agent.  The above statement from the non-profit’s site is a clear indication that there was collusion and conspiracy involving public officials and the Attorney General.
McDonald’s statement can now be replaced with:
“The State’s primary focus is protecting its reputation, protecting itself, rather than protecting the children entrusted to its care, and that is a summary of the evidence we have seen during the course of the last several decades of complaints, deletion of files, cover ups and fake investigations”. 

Gordon MacDonald dismissed YDC complainants for “victim negligence”.  Any criminal case concerning YDC could end up appealed by the NH Supreme Court where he presides as Supreme Court Chief Justice.
Gordon MacDonald (David Vicinanzo’s ex partner from Nixon Peabody) referred complainants of YDC abuse to the NHCADSV. The NHCADSV’s counsel “pro bono” is David Vicinanzo.
Nixon Peabody is handling hundreds of the complaints. David Vicinanzo/Nixon Peabody will receive 30-40% of each settlement. The NHCADSV I believe will also be financial beneficiaries.
Chuck Douglas will have a say in the judges since he is Chair of the NH Judicial Selection Committee. Who are they all out to protect? Themselves and their accounts. We shouldn’t forget that Chuck Douglas authored the guide to “Family Law” and it is the family courts and their procedures that resulted in many children being taken from their parents and ending up in foster care or at YDC.  We should also not forget that Chuck Douglas was accused of tax evasion by Caroline Douglas and that he had a timeshare in Aruba, of all places. Aruba is best known for the Paradise Papers – offshore tax-free hidden accounts. He was the New Hampshire Supreme Court Chief Justice.
The NHCADSV have not petitioned for a Grand Jury Criminal Investigation into YDC as they did for St Paul’s School. They wouldn’t because they are aware of their own intertwining with the DCYF, which deleted files for David Vicinanzo’s client, Phillips Exeter Academy, when Governor Maggie Hassan’s husband was principal. It was her legal counsel’s son who, per state prosecutors, had a deal made for him with St Paul’s School. Information prosecutors decided should be sealed from the jury. Information that Amanda Grady Sexton, acting as go between for witnesses and prosecutors, civil attorneys and media I believe was aware of.
Gordon MacDonald promised the Grand Jury Criminal Investigation into St. Paul’s School.

In November 2019, I met S. Daniel Carter, who was an advisor to the White House “Not Alone” task force, which was officially partnered with UNH Prevention Innovation Research Center. This center is partnered with the NHCADSV.  He informed me that the real interest in NH v Owen Labrie (and why his partner Laura L Dun attended the trial with Steven J Kelly Esq) was in St Paul’s School as opposed to Owen Labrie himself. Statements made by State prosecutors and UNH Law Professors, as well as the NHCADSV, corroborate this.  

The State, Concord Police, the NHCADSV, and Civil Attorneys were interested in Government control of St Paul’s School and an extortion enterprise to drain St Paul’s School of its funds. This would have come out on July 18, 2019, on ABC/GMA, except that public official Amanda Grady Sexton stepped in to get ABC to block it from airing. 

The State, NHCADSV, Civil Attorneys are interested in money, not justice in the YDC cases.  Just as they were with St Paul’s School, Phillips Exeter Academy, the Diocese of Manchester and Dartmouth College.

There must be a transparent (ideally) federal investigation of the parties involved who benefited from the Diocese of Manchester investigation, the St Paul’s School investigation, the Phillips Exeter Academy investigation, the Dartmouth College Rapuano & Does settlement before their further participation in the YDC Civil and Criminal trials proceeds. 
Original email published with minor edits.

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