At 11 years old, Ronald “Chuck” Miles was sent to the residential treatment program at the now-closed Anna Philbrook Center after an altercation on the playground with another kid.
He was repeatedly assaulted and raped by the staff at the state-run school in Concord, he said.
Decades later, he was hesitant to come forward when the state established the Youth Development Center Claims Administration and Settlement Fund in 2022 to provide compensation for survivors of sexual and other abuse.
“I didn’t trust the state after what happened to me as a child,” he said.
On Thursday at Merrimack Superior Court, Miles, now 57, chose to shed his anonymity entirely as he spoke out against changes to the YDC claims process made by Gov. Kelly Ayotte and the New Hampshire legislature — changes that give the governor and attorney general control over how much compensation survivors like him receive.
Judge Daniel St. Hilaire heard testimony from victims who had suffered abuse at the state’s facilities as part of a lawsuit aimed at blocking changes to the settlement process.
In his testimony, Miles recalled researching former New Hampshire Supreme Court Chief Justice John Broderick extensively when he was appointed to oversee the fund. With Broderick, Miles believed he would have a confidential space to share his story and find closure, which changed his mind about trusting the state.
“He just felt comfortable to me,” he said. “I felt like I was going to be able to talk to this person who wasn’t going to necessarily judge me or anything like that.”
Receiving news that the next leader of the YDC settlement fund would be appointed by the governor and serve at the governor’s pleasure left him reeling.
“It made me feel just like I felt when I was a kid, swept under the carpet, like I don’t have a voice,” he testified. “It’s created huge anxiety for me. It messed my sobriety.”
More than 1,300 people have sued the state since 2020, alleging that they were physically or sexually abused as children while in state custody, mostly at the Sununu Youth Services Center in Manchester. Most of them put their lawsuits on hold after lawmakers created a settlement fund in 2022 that was pitched as a “victim-centered” and “trauma-informed” alternative to litigation run by a neutral administrator appointed by the state Supreme Court.
Broderick, in an hour of testimony and cross-examination, described the changes as “trauma-inducing” and insisted that they “aren’t fundamentally fair.”
Among the witnesses who were set to testify against the changes was Deborah Greenspan, who helped design and implement the 9/11 Victims’ Compensation Fund. However, her standing was challenged by the state’s attorney, and the judge agreed to block her testimony.