MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) — A jury began deliberating Friday on whether a New Hampshire man held down a teenage boy while he was raped at a youth detention center in 1998.
Bradley Asbury, now 70, served as a house leader at the Sununu Youth Services Center in Manchester. He's accused of restraining 14-year-old Michael Gilpatrick on a staircase with help from a colleague, while a third staffer raped the teen and a fourth forced him to perform a sex act.
It's the second criminal trial to stem from a broad 2019 investigation into historic abuse at the center. Asbury is among 11 men who worked there or at an associated facility in Concord who were arrested.
The case turns on the testimony of Gilpatrick, now 41, who said he’d struggled to cope with the attack for many years and that talking about it at the trial was part of a healing process. He said he wanted to hold the perpetrators accountable and recalled having an out-of-body experience during the alleged attack.
“I can see it happening, but I can’t do anything,” he testified. “I was just not there. But there.”
Gilpatrick got into several heated exchanges during cross-examination, and at one point called the defense lawyer a “sick man” as the attorney urged him to repeat his claim of rape over and over.
During closing arguments, the lawyer, David Rothstein, said “I want to apologize to anyone I may have upset during that exchange, or any other exchange.”
Rothstein said Gilpatrick lived in an imaginary world in which he'd created villains to explain things that had gone wrong in his life.
“Mike Gilpatrick falsely accused Brad Asbury of a crime that he not only didn't commit, but which, in every shape and form, was virtually impossible to commit,” Rothstein said.
He said there were no eyewitnesses or corroborating pieces of evidence, and that Gilpatrick had changed crucial details over time to suit the narrative. He said such an attack on an open staircase in the middle of the facility would have been seen or heard by somebody else.
He said Gilpatrick was motivated by money, pointing out he'd already received more than $146,000 against an anticipated payout from a related civil case.
The prosecution said Gilpatrick didn't have perfect recall of all the events surrounding the alleged rape but had always been consistent in his recall of the key event. He couldn't tell anybody at the time, the prosecution said, because Asbury was in charge.
“Instead of guiding Mike, counseling him, showing him a better way to go out and live his life, these four grown men, including the defendant, shattered the trust," said state Assistant Attorney General Adam Woods.
Asbury, who is charged with two counts of being an accomplice to aggravated sexual assault, faces a maximum prison term of 20 years on each count if found guilty.
An earlier case against Victor Malavet ended in a mistrial in September after jurors deadlocked on whether he raped a girl at the Concord facility. A new trial in that case has yet to be scheduled.
The investigation has also led to extensive civil litigation. 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 jury awarded David Meehan $38 million in May for abuse he says he suffered in the 1990s, though that verdict remains in dispute as the state seeks to reduce it to $475,000.
The Associated Press generally does not identify those who say they were victims of sexual assault unless they have come forward publicly, as Meehan and Gilpatrick have done.