Home for 65-year-old Maurice Fazekas is a U-Haul in Claremont. If he gets the $120,000 the state has offered him for the abuse he suffered at its former youth detention center, Fazekas will buy a van. If he doesn’t, he’ll move to the streets.

Fazekas’ payment was supposed to be a promise, not an if.

Fazekas is one of nearly 800 people with claims pending before the state’s Youth Development Center settlement fund. With the fund down to about $13 million, lawmakers who enthusiastically established it three years ago appear to be backing away over concerns about how victims’ lawyers are being paid.

They’ve declined to replenish the fund as expected and have called for an audit with two more months to file claims.

At issue is how the fund’s administrator, former state Supreme Court Justice John Broderick, pays victims’ lawyers. Lawmakers want him to spread their payments out so more victims can be paid now. Attorney General John Formella, who championed the fund’s creation as the “right” thing to do, has raised the same questions.

Broderick told Senate budget writers Monday he supports the idea but said he’s not clear the law allows him to.

Broderick said he tried but failed to persuade Attorney General John Formella to clarify his legal authority to restructure attorney’s payments. He said he was also unable to persuade Formella to work with lawmakers to change the statute.

Instead, Broderick said he persuaded the law firms that represent nearly 95%of the people filing claims to voluntarily take their fees over time.

“You can change the statute to take away virtually all of my discretion,” Broderick said. “I’m not complaining about that. It would make my job easier.”

Meanwhile, Fazekas and hundreds of others with pending claims are in limbo. The proposed state budget includes just $20 million to cover claims the next two years, well short of the $150 million the prior Legislature intended.

“Right now, I’m homeless, living in the back of a U-Haul,” said Fazekas, who said he was sent to the youth center around age 13 from running away from abusive foster families. “So this fund that I’ve been fighting for, for the last year was like, like a rope because I’m hanging on one right now, and I’m still waiting for them to finish what they agreed to.”

Fazekas said he learned about the settlement on Facebook, from an ad placed by the Shaheen and Gordon law firm. The firm represents him and more than two dozen others who called on lawmakers earlier this month to settle with victims as they promised. Fazekas said pursuing a claim wasn’t easy.

“All the bad memories I had of that, I had to go through them and sift through them and remember things that I’d forgotten a long time ago,” he said.

What helped, Fazekas said, was Broderick and his team.

“I mean, I really do look like a homeless person now, so I’m used to seeing a whole lot of judgmental eyes. And strangely enough, Judge Broderick didn’t have that. He had kind eyes,” Fazekas said. “I could tell he was hearing me and not judging me. And believe me, with my life, judges always make me nervous. He didn’t do that at all.”

The legislature created the settlement fund in 2022, on Formella’s advice. It was seen as a way to help victims while also protecting the state from thousands of potential lawsuits stemming from what has been revealed to be among the biggest youth detention abuse scandals in American history.

The state has paid $156 million from the fund to settle with nearly 300 people. Nearly 180 of those settled for less than $500,000, while 115 have settled for between $500,000 and $1.5 million. Only two payments have been higher.

Meanwhile, the Attorney General’s office has settled two lawsuits from individuals who opted not to use the settlement fund, one for $10 million, the other for $4.5 million. And, a jury awarded a third victim $38 million in May, which the state is appealing.

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