MANCHESTER, NH – David Meehan, taking long pauses and deep breaths at times, testified Wednesday to being forced to perform fellatio on Stephen Murphy, during their “one-on-one” counseling sessions at the Youth Development Center in the late 1990s.
It was day two of the trial of Murphy, 56, of Danvers, Mass., a former YDC youth counselor charged with eight counts of aggravated felonious sexual assault of Meehan, then a 14-year-old boy court-ordered detained 28 years ago to state-run juvenile detention facility in Manchester. The assaults allegedly happened between October 1997 and September 1998.
Manchester Ink Link normally doesn’t identify an alleged victim of sexual abuse but Meehan went public with his allegations when he filed a civil suit against the state of New Hampshire three years after he went to police.
Murphy denies the allegations and maintains Meehan, over the years, continually changes his account of what allegedly happened at YDC.
Under questioning by Senior Assistant Attorney General Audriana Mekula, Meehan, now 44, testified about his difficult childhood and his mother putting cigarettes out on him, leaving scars about his body. After he aged out of YDC at 18, he said he almost immediately began using drugs to dull the memories of what happened to him.
“It doesn’t go away, things that happened at YDC,” he said.
He was court-ordered to YDC in December 1995. Mekula showed the jurors two photos of Meehan as a young boy at YDC.
He was assigned a room in East Cottage at the juvenile detention facility with Murphy assigned his counselor.
Meehan described his room, which he called his cell, as having concrete walls, a metal bed bolted to the floor and a heavy steel door that automatically locked.
He said he doesn’t remember specific dates when he was sexually assaulted but knows the first time Murphy allegedly assaulted him was around Halloween 1997 and the last time was around September 1998 when he was “injured pretty badly” and hospitalized at the Elliot Hospital.
Mekula asked him if Murphy provided one-on-one counseling and Meehan said, “Yeah.” Did he do anything else, she asked.
“He would make me suck his dick,” Meehan replied. “He was sticking his dick into my mouth and ejaculating.”
Meehan said he was a virgin at the time.
Meehan said in November 1997 he was anticipating being furloughed home for Thanksgiving. However, he said someone at YDC – he didn’t say who – told him if he wanted to be furloughed he had to break up with his girlfriend, Erin, who years later would become his wife. He did as he was told and was granted the furlough.
But prior to the furlough, he testified, Murphy came to his cell, and as youth counselor James Woodlock held the door, forced him to his knees and sexually assaulted him again. “He forced his dick so far down my mouth that I was choking,” Meehan testified. At some point, he said, Murphy ejaculated.
Meehan said he was scared and cried. Murphy, he testified, pulled up his pants and walked away.
Mekula asked if he told anyone. “Who was I supposed to tell if my counselor is the problem?” Meehan said. He didn’t tell his parents, he said, because he barely spoke to them and he said they would believe what the staff told them, not him.
Another time, he said, Murphy assaulted him in the checkroom, where supplies such as toiletries and towels were kept. Meehan was working there when, he said, Murphy sucker punched him in the kidney from behind.
He said Murphy then forced him to the floor and repeatedly thrusted his penis in and out of his mouth until he ejaculated. That day, Meehan said, he lost his checkroom job.
Again, he told no one what happened. “It was a ‘them against us’ atmosphere,” he said.
Meehan didn’t return from his Thanksgiving furlough and ultimately Exeter Police picked him up and returned him to the juvenile facility in January 1998. He immediately was placed on a 10-day room confinement.
Murphy again came to his cell, he said. Meehan said he wanted to be tough and wanted to fight but Murphy quickly hit him in the back in the kidneys and dropped the 15-year-old down to his knees. It was then Meehan decided to stop fighting. “I gave Murphy what he wanted,” he said.
After that, the assaults occurred at least monthly during routine one-on-one counseling sessions, sometimes in an L-shaped section of the second-floor hallway of East Cottage and other times in his cell, Meehan testified.
He said the last assault occurred when another teen said something to him and he hit him, knocking him down a school stairwell.
He was immediately placed on a 10-day confinement in his room. Once again, he said, Murphy came into his cell.
Meehan testified Murphy pushed him from behind and told him to strip. He complied. But he didn’t want to engage in oral sex and he started fighting back, he said.
“He never penetrated me,” Meehan said. “He tried. I wouldn’t let him.”
Murphy pushed him on his bed and pinned down his arms and legs. Murphy, he said, tried to force himself on him but Meehan said he wouldn’t let him do it.
“I feel his sperm hit my face,” he said. Meehan punched Murphy in the mouth and Murphy started bouncing Meehan’s head against the wall, knocking him unconscious, he testified.
“I wake up and I’m alone,” he said.
He testified he didn’t keep count of the number of times he engaged in oral sex with Murphy. He resisted at first but eventually, he said, he relented, hoping that if he was nice to him that it would be reciprocated. It didn’t make a difference, he said.
One time, he ended up on room confinement for 45 to 50 days straight.
In the time he was at YDC, he said he did tell Tom Searles, the head leader of King Cottage, that he was raped. At the time, Meehan was housed there and he had bruises on his face. Searle noticed them and Meehan said he told him about the rapes.
“It doesn’t happen little fella,” Searles replied. Searles’ comment, he said, reinforced that he “couldn’t trust anybody.”
Searles, who was among the 10 former YDC employees charged with assaulting youth, has since died.
After his hospitalization in September 1998, he was sent to Orion House in Newport, NH. He liked it there, he said, because he was safe.
Later, however, for no apparent reason, he was returned to YDC. There, in a group session, he confronted Woodlock about what had happened to him. “I called him out,” Meehan said.
He immediately was returned to Orion House and, from there, he went to live with his girlfriend’s family until he turned 18.
It is the third time Meehan has 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 previously testified, he feared his son would end up in YDC, later renamed the John H. Sununu Youth Services Center, and be raped.
In April 2024, he testified in the civil case in Rockingham County Superior Court and in September 2025, he testified against Woodlock, who was convicted of two counts of being an accomplice to his rape. Woodlock was accused of standing guard while Murphy raped the 14-year-old boy.
In January, Murphy was tried in Hillsborough County Superior Court Northern District jury on charges of raping another 14-year-old boy on a stairwell in East Cottage. The judge declared a mistrial in that case when the jury deadlocked.
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.
The jury in the civil trial 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.
Murphy’s trial resumes Thursday when Meehan will retake the stand.