MANCHESTER, NH — A Hillsborough County Superior Court North jury deliberated all day Monday without deciding the guilt or innocence of Bradley Asbury, a former Youth Development Center house leader, of holding down a 14-year-old boy while two other staffers raped him 26 years ago on a stairwell at the state-operated juvenile detention facility.
The jury has now deliberated for nearly 12 hours after hearing testimony over 3 ½ days last week.
Asbury, 70, of Dunbarton is charged with two counts of being an accomplice to aggravated felonious sexual assault.
He, together with James Woodlock, 60, of Manchester, is accused of holding down 14-year-old Michael Gilpatrick on a staircase at YDC while two other staffers, Jeffrey Buskey, 55, of Dorchester, Mass. and Stephen Murphy, 58, of Danvers, Mass., allegedly raped him.
The allege attack took place days after Gilpatrick went AWOL from a furlough home to see his family. He was picked up by police and returned to YDC on May 27, 1998.
Asbury has denied the allegations and his attorney, David Rothstein, maintains Gillpatrick made up the story and that money is the motivating factor behind the false accusations.
Gilpatrick, 41, of Nashua, was the second person, after David Meehan, to come forward about the staffers abusing children in their care.
Meehan was the lead plaintiff in what was initially filed as a class action lawsuit against the state. When a court denied the class action, more than 1,000 people, including Gilpatrick, filed their own individual lawsuits. Allegations of abuse span six decades.
Meehan’s civil case went to trial in April, resulting in a jury awarding him $38 million. However, Judge Andrew Schulman issued a preliminary order saying the payout should only be $475,000, citing state law limiting the amount of damages to that amount for a single incident.
Schulman said he “reluctantly granted” the state’s motion in which it cited the state cap of $475,000. The jurors awarded Meehan $38 million but marked only one incident of abuse on the jury verdict form.
During Meehan’s civil trial, Gilpatrick testified about four employees he and other teens called “the hit squad.” According to the Associated Press, Gilpatrick referred to Asbury, an alleged member of the squad, as a “very bad man. Not only did he have power over all the kids, he had power over the staff as well.”
In testifying last week in the criminal trial, under direct examination by New Hampshire Assistant Attorney General Audriana Mekula, Gilpatrick said he referred to Asbury as “Hitler.” Rothstein objected.
“I’m just being honest,” Gilpatrick said. “That’s what we referred to him as.”
Assistant New Hampshire Attorney General Adam Woods, in his closing argument, told the jury Asbury was the man in charge of East Cottage and the muscle that allowed two of his “cohorts” in 1998 to rape a scrawny Gilpatrick in a stairwell. He said that was when Gilpatrick’s life shattered. While his memory of events isn’t crystal clear, Woods said the rape is “seared in his memory.”
Rothstein, in his closing argument, said his client is falsely accused of a crime he didn’t commit and “that was virtually impossible to occur.” East Cottage, where the alleged attack occurred, had an open concept design on the first floor and an open stairwell. Sound carried and echoed throughout the cottage, he said. Yet, no one heard or saw the alleged attack or reported it, including Gilpatrick until he reported it to state investigators in 2020.
Rothstein told the jurors Gilpatrick lives in an imaginary world where he “created his own reality” holding YDC responsible for anything that happened to him in his life.
The defense attorney maintained, as he did in his opening, that money is the motivator behind Gilpatrick’s accusations. Gilpatrick received $146,000 from Universal Funds, in anticipation of a payout from his civil suit against the State of New Hampshire. He does not have to repay the money, although Gilpatrick said he told Universal Funds he intends to pay it back.
Rothstein told the jurors the attack couldn’t have happened because Buskey wasn’t working the same shift as the other three staffers, including Asbury.
Woods, in his closing, rebutted that. He told jurors YDC’s daily logs and staffers’ timecards showed that all four men worked shifts that overlapped in early June 1998.
A log, he said, also indicated that the boys went to bed at 7 p.m. on June 3, 1998. Normally, the logs would indicate three different times when groups of boys, ranked at levels based on their behavior, would be locked in their rooms with the latest about 9 p.m. But that night, the log listed only the 7 p.m. bed time for all the youths.
“With Brady Asbury in charge, Mike had no chance. He had no chance with James Woodlock, Stephen Murphy or Jeffrey Buskey,” Woods said.
Manchester Ink Link normally does not identify individuals named in sexual assault cases but Gilpatrick went public with his allegations.
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