MANCHESTER, NH – For the second time this year, Stephen Murphy is sitting in a courtroom being tried on allegations he repeatedly sexually assaulted a 14-year-old boy 28 years ago at the Youth Development Center, the state’s juvenile detention center.
In January, a Hillsborough County Superior Court Northern District jury deadlocked about his guilt or innocence in the rape of a different 14-year-old boy on a stairwell in East Cottage. The judge declared a mistrial in that case.
Murphy, 56, of Danvers, Mass., is being tried on eight counts of aggravated felonious sexual assault, four accusing him of forcing a 14-year-old boy to perform fellatio on him and the other four alleging he used his authority as a youth counselor to have the teen perform the sexual act on him.
The trial was delayed about 20 minutes on Monday after Judge Amy Messer asked jurors if they had read any news accounts about the case or viewed any broadcasts concerning it since their selection last week. Two jurors raised their hands. She then asked if any juror had read signs held up by protestors Monday morning outside the courthouse. Two had.
That resulted in the judge clearing the courtroom of all spectators while she and attorneys questioned them further.
In the morning, a few protestors carried signs outside the courthouse questioning the veracity of former YDC residents who alleged staff physically and sexually abused them when they were court-ordered detained at the Manchester facility.
Lou Byrne of Clinton, Mass., was one of the protestors. A friend of Murphy’s, he held two signs, one saying “Someone is Lying. Duke Lacrosse. Scandle. (cq) Look it up. Innocent until guilty.” The second sign said: “?ABUSE? NOT A Word? For 20 YRS?”
Another person held a sign that said, “???? No $MONEY$ NO CASES.” The sign referred to the more than 2,000 people alleging abuse who have filed claims against the state by former YDC employees. So far, the state has agreed to pay $210 million in claims.
Once the courtroom was reopened, 14 jurors were in place and the trial began.
Senior Assistant New Hampshire Attorney General Charles Bucca, began his 10-minute opening statement with, “27-28 years ago Stephen Murphy raped a child named David.”
He said Murphy, a youth counselor, was supposed to mentor and guide David. Instead, he was the correctional officer who coerced David to perform fellatio, the prosecutor said. He did that, Bucca said, by physically beating him into submission.
“This case is about dominance and sexual violence,” he told the jurors. “It was not just for sexual gratification. It was to show him who was boss.”
He said David may not be able to tell the jurors the exact dates of the rapes but the state will be able to prove all the elements of the crimes. The state, he said, is not required to provide a date of the offense.
Bucca said they will hear from former YDC employees, law enforcement and Meehan’s wife, who David first disclosed the rapes to, and why he kept it a secret for so long.
Defense attorney Charles Keefe, in his 30-minute opening, told the jurors that David’s story has shifted and changed over the years. David, he said, has testified in court several times so he is “well prepped.”
David, he said, has been making these claims over eight years. Keefe said he expects David will be emotional at times but “that’s not evidence.” He said the evidence will show a man who struggles with reality and believes in conspiracy theories.
He said documents also will show that Murphy wasn’t working on Nov. 1, 1997 when David alleges he was raped. David alleges he was assaulted around Halloween.
One of the allegations is that Murphy sexually assaulted the teen in a checkroom. Keefe said that was an area where the youths obtained towels and toiletries. It was located on the main floor in an area where people were around. He said the alleged assault was loud and violent “and nobody saw or heard anything.”
Keefe also pointed to the time of another alleged assault in May 1998. On May 9, 1998, David punched another resident in the face and was disciplined. David filed a complaint that day against Murphy and another youth counselor, Jeffrey Buskey, who restrained him because “he became aggressive,” Keefe told the jurors. In that complaint, he said he was thrown on his back and hit with a knee but, Keefe said, he never claimed he was sexually assaulted.
The narrative continues to change, Keefe said, with David claiming Murphy kneed him in the head. Other times, he claims he punched him or choked him. Sometimes the assault happened on the wire frame of the bed, other times the mattress was on the bed.
His story, Keefe said, hasn’t stopped changing.
“The evidence will show you Stephen didn’t do it,” he said.
The David in this case is David Meehan, the lead defendant in the civil case against the state. Manchester Ink Link normally doesn’t identify an alleged victim of sexual abuse but Meehan went public with his allegations.
He is expected to take the stand, the third time he will have testified about what happened to him as a child at the YDC. Meehan made his allegations public in 2017 because his son was in trouble and he feared he would end up in YDC, later renamed the John H. Sununu Youth Services Center, and be raped.
When Meehan contacted law enforcement, the state launched an investigation into the YDC. Ultimately, 10 men were charged with abusing children detained there.
Meehan, three years later, filed a civil suit against the state. It was the first of more than 1,100 cases brought by people sent to the YDC who alleged they were physically and/or sexually abused there.
Meehan’s civil case went to trial in 2024 in Rockingham County Superior Court. He testified he was sexually and physically assaulted hundreds of times by YDC staff while detained there for four years until he aged out at age 18.
The jury awarded Meehan $38 million. Within minutes of the verdict being announced, the state contended the jury’s verdict was legally limited to $475,000. That’s because the jury form was marked to indicate the state was liable for one incident that caused Meehan’s years of suffering and mental illness. Under state law, an incident is capped at $475,000.
Jurors were not told about the $475,000 limit per incident.
Jurors who contacted defense attorneys later said they meant he suffered from one case of PTSD resulting from hundreds of incidents of assaults.
Defense attorneys are appealing the judge’s ruling.
The first witness called on Monday was Gene Murray, a former YDC youth counselor who knew Murphy when Murray worked there from 1992 to 1998. He described Murphy as “loveable,” “very nice,” and “thoughtful.”
Bucca, through Murphy’s testimony, introduced log books kept daily by the YDC staff. The communications log book contained notes staff would leave for employees on othershifts.
Bucca had Murphy read some of those notes from 1998 which recorded discipline meted out to Meehan, which resulted in him being detained in his bedroom for weeks on end. It also recorded him being suspended from school. It also recorded an incident when Murphy and Jeffrey Buskey restrained him because the teen had become aggressive.
Murray said there were no cameras or videos in the cottages and agreed with Bucca that, as a result, if there were an incident it was the resident’s word against the staff member.
The trial is to resume on Wednesday.
In January, A Superior Court judge declared a mistrial late Wednesday afternoon in the case of Stephen Murphy, the former Youth Development Center youth counselor accused of raping a 14-year-old boy in 1998, after a jury deadlocked, unable to reach a verdict.
In September, a jury found James Woodlock guilty of raping Meehan, then 14, in 1998 at the YDC.
Around noon, jurors informed Judge Amy Messer that they were deadlocked in the case of Stephen Murphy, 55, of Danvers, Mass. He is charged with one count of aggravated felonious sexual assault.
The jury was brought into the courtroom and Messer encouraged them to go back to the deliberation room and try to come to an agreement. At that point, the jury of 11 men and one woman had deliberated for about eight hours over two days.
Just before 4 p.m., after another 3 to 4 hours of deliberation (the jury had the option of resuming deliberations while they had lunch) they again informed the court they were deadlocked. What the jurors had voted was not revealed.
This is the second criminal trial to end in a hung jury of a state employee accused of sexually abusing a child court-ordered to a state-run juvenile detention facility.
Last September, a Merrimack County Superior Court jury was unable to reach a verdict in the case of Victor Malavet, 62, of Gilford.
Malavet is charged with 12 counts of aggravated felonious sexual assault involving a 15-year-old girl. He is accused of raping Natasha Maunsell, who also went public with her allegations, in 2001 when she was held at the Youth Detention Services Unit in Concord where he worked. The judge declared a mistrial in the case.
He is to be retried in June.
At some point, the court will set another date for a retrial.
Murphy is accused of anally raping Michael Gilpatrick, now 41, of Nashua, when he was a 14-year-old boy, while two of Murphy’s co-workers held him down and a third employee orally raped him on a stairwell at the YDC.
The trial spanned three days last week with attorneys making closing arguments on Tuesday. An emotional Gilpatrick testified about what allegedly happened to him. Murphy also took the stand, denying he ever sexually assaulted Gilpatrick.
Assistant New Hampshire Attorney General Audriana Mekula, in her closing argument, told the jurors Gilpatrick may be unclear on dates and times but what he has said in his two interviews with police, in two depositions, at two meetings and at two trials has never changed: Bradley Asbury, 70, of Dunbarton and James Woodlock, 60, of Manchester, held him down on a stairwell, while Murphy and Jeffrey Buskey, 55, of Dorchester, Mass. raped him.
For decades, she said, Gilpatrick told no one about the rape because he was embarrassed and believed he was to blame for it. She said he doesn’t remember dates or times but testified the assault happened sometime in late May or early June 1998 after he was returned by police to East Cottage at YDC, after he went AWOL on a furlough home.
Gilpatrick told jurors he was held down by Asbury, the house leader, and Woodlock, while Murphy and Buskey, 55, of Dorchester, Mass., raped him.
It was the second time he took the stand in a criminal case against former YDC workers. In November, testified against Asbury who was convicted of two counts of being an accomplice to aggravated felonious sexual assault. Asbury was convicted of two counts of being an accomplice to aggravated felonious sexual assault. His sentencing is Jan. 27.
Defense Attorney Charles J. Keefe, in his closing argument, told jurors that Murphy didn’t do it and his client is the victim of a false accusation. The evidence, he said, backs up Murphy’s testimony.
“Steve didn’t rape Michael Gilpatrick. He told you he didn’t do it. The evidence told you he didn’t do it. Even Michael Gilpatrick’s own testimony told you he didn’t do it. The evidence presented to you in this trial demands only one verdict, and that is a verdict of not guilty because not only did the State fail to come even close to proving its case beyond a reasonable doubt, the evidence has shown you Stephen is innocent,” said Keefe.
Manchester Ink Link normally does not identify alleged victims of sexual assault but Gilpatrick and Maunsell both went public with their accusations.
Keefe also told jurors if what Gilpatrick described happened – being swept off his feet by Buskey and Murphy, face-planting on the floor, and being carried up the stairwell, his head banging on the floor and against the wall, causing him to go in and out of consciousness, and then being raped by two men – he would have injuries and bruises. He would have screamed. Yet, Keefe said, there are no medical records documenting injuries and no witness to any of it.
“If something like this actually happened, it would have been violent. It would have been loud. There would have been struggling and fighting – the banging of Mr. Gilpatrick’s head on the floor and walls and stairs; and there would have been screaming… This would have been loud. People would have seen or heard all of it in that building. But nobody did because it didn’t happen,” Keefe said.
He was seen by medical personnel, records for which do not document any injuries, the defense attorney said.
Keefe maintained that in the time frame that Gilpatrick said the rape occurred, none of the four men worked at the same time. He also pointed out more than a dozen inconsistencies in Gilpatrick’s account to show how his story has changed over time.
Mekula rebutted Keefe’s statement about the four men’s work schedules and held up for the jurors to see their YDC timecards from June 5, 1998 which, she said, shows all four men worked that day, providing collaboration of what Gilpatrick said.
Mekula asked the jurors to think back to something that had happened to them years ago and see if they remember details such as the date, day of week or time of the incident.
She also pointed out to the jurors, Gilpatrick testified that he froze while being assaulted and did not scream.