BRENTWOOD, N.H. (AP) — David Meehan, whose allegations of abuse at New Hampshire’s youth detention center sparked nearly a dozen arrests and more than a thousand lawsuits, finally took the witness stand Wednesday, seven years after he first told his wife, “They raped me.”
“I think I’m more ready than anybody else in this room to do this right now,” he said.
Meehan, 42, spent three years at the Youth Development Center, where he alleges he was repeatedly beaten, raped and locked in solitary confinement in the late 1990s. He went to police in 2017 and sued the state three years later. His lawsuit went to trial last week, and he began testifying Wednesday, describing his early years and arrival at the facility as a 14-year-old in 1995.
His attorneys displayed a photo of him as a smiling toddler clutching a football as he testified about physical abuse by his parents, including his mother’s habit of putting her cigarettes out on his face. They later displayed a closeup photo of Meehan’s face taken when he arrived at YDC and asked him to describe what he saw.
Not so Cool Britannia! Noel Gallagher gives damning verdict on Keir Starmer
Rough return to 'normal' sends Scheffler down the leaderboard at PGA Championship
Blinken reiterates US opposition to Rafah invasion
Elon Musk arrives in Indonesia's Bali to launch Starlink satellite internet service
The government wants to buy their flood
Hamas says to reconsider negotiating strategy
Trump, 78, suffers embarrassing wobble at Minnesota rally, with campaigners for 81 year
Columbia University encampment holds on as negotiation in progress
Company wins court ruling to continue development of Michigan factory serving EV industry
AI, digital technologies inject new impetus to cultural tourism boom
Independent UN experts urge Yemen’s Houthis to free detained Baha'i followers
UN report gives cautiously optimistic near